I would recommend a Thinkpad. I have an E14, you can get them for under 800 Bucks. The Linux support is awesome ,under Fedora everything works out of the box.
I'm hearing good things about Framework, provided you get the hinge upgrade.
If you need something beefier, personally I'm using a Lenovo Legion 7 (2024 version... that white one, bought it a few months ago), and I'm loving it. Linux Mint worked out of the box, but I chose to replace the stock wifi driver with a better one.
What's the deal with the hinge upgrade?
I had one of the initial batches and the hinge was too weak. They came out with stronger ones that are much better which I now have. It was cheap and easy to replace
I have no first hand experience, but I read about it here recently:
https://www.projectgus.com/2024/09/18-months-with-framework-laptop/
He has another post named "20 months...etc", where he has done something tweaks and upgrades, and it's all good.
From experience, I recommend Tuxedo laptops. They're really good and come with full Linux support.
Lenovo Thinkpads are always a great choice. You can get N.O.S (new old stock) models at deep discounts directly from their website.
I have a 12 year old thinkpad that runs bazzite. Thinkpads are definitely rad
New thinkpads are trash unfortunately. Lenovo really cheaped out on their build quality. I've had to fix multiple lenovo laptops and one of their all-in-ones and the corners they cut made the repairs either impossible or extremely difficult.
One new ideapad had to go back to them twice with motherboard issues.
Replacing the keyboard is impossible, you need to replace the whole front panel of the case becuase the keyboard is plastic rivited in place.
The all-in-one started as a simple ram and storage upgrade, but in order to do that the whole back panel needs to come off. Its snapped on but the LCD panel itself doesn't have any subframe around it, so when opening the back panel theres a very high chance of you cracking the display.
Ideapads are trash. I only recommend Thinkpads because they are their business line. I especially like their X1 series. I also recommend buying their new old stock because you get a good deal and you can buy their excellent extended warranty service. Two years in my screen went dark. First they replaced the MB and when that didn't work, I got a brand new screen. No charge and I basically have a brand new system.
I have a thinkpad t470 from some years ago as my personal laptop has still works perfectly fine. I destroyed a few things in it, like usb ports and have some scratches on the screen, but linux support has always been good. Best think It has is the hardware design that if you drop liquids on top of it then it doesn't reach the motherboard. It saved it when I dropped a full latte on top and I really though it was gonna go to the trash... Fortunately I only had to buy a new keyboard that is something easy to replace.
Anyway, I will also need to buy a new computer soon fro work and am very interested in getting a framework laptop or another thinkpad if it has things like the great feature above still in place.
Also been eyeing with extreme interest some tuxedo laptops.
These are the well known to work I guess.
An almost exact question was asked here about 3 days ago, maybe begin there.
Almost any Windows machine with an Intel sticker on it will work so it really depends on your priorities:
I would reccomend the current configuration that I am running, It is a customised lenovo laptop that I got for little less than $390 (Not us citizen, and we have mid-high taxes, but i got roughly 5% off as student discount and another 5% for credit card payment, and you also apply the CUSTOMOFF coupon for rougly 5% more) - It is lenovo v14 G4 (you can also try to get 16 inch if you prefer that, differnce is roughly $10-20) - 2 things to note - I did not select a ram or storage upgrade - it comes with 8GiB soldered, but there is one slot free, and I added 16GiB which I already had, also I had my 512 GiB SSD, which i swapped with its 256 GiB one. If you would like to, you can get both of these upgraded for about $50 USD. Also you can choose between a 3 cell battery, or a 2 cell and a harddrive (this choice is only available in 16 inch one though).
List of upgrades that I did
Processor AMD Ryzen™ 7 7730U Processor (2.00 GHz up to 4.50 GHz) selected upgrade Display 35.56cms (14) FHD (1920 x 1080), IPS, Anti-Glare, Non-Touch, 45%NTSC, 300 nits, Battery 3 Cell Li-Polymer 45Wh selected upgrade
Here is a link for configurator (not affiliated or anything else)
https://www.lenovo.com/in/en/configurator/cto/index.html?bundleId=82YXCTO1WWIN1
I checked this config not available in US
You said not a high budget, and yet everyone here is saying Framework even though the they are $900 to $1,000 at the low end. To me that is not budget.
Pine64 is affordable but maybe too slow to be a daily driver, unless you feel confident finding your way through ultralightweight software and the command line and can do most of your problem solving that way.
For other pre-built options, there's Starlabs and System76 but those are similarly priced to Librem and Framework.
Beyond that I might just research Windows laptops that are agreeable to being formatted.
Whats your use case?
Was somewhat recently considering a linux laptop myself and ended up deciding the steamdeck fit my needs well.
A dock + portable keyboard & mouse for when i need to do typing or w/e, and a fun handheld console for when i want fun.
That being said, depending on what your "older" laptop is, it might not actually be much stronger, or it might be wildly overpowered for what you need.
If you're using Debian, do you really need to upgrade?
h/j
But seriously anything with an AMD CPU/GPU in it and an Intel wireless card is probably all you'll need to be mindful of, provided it fits in your budget.
Also, don't worry about touch-capable screens or HDR. The support for those is still a work in progress, and you'll likely have a bad time with them if you're using Debian.
Well, OP only specified that they'd been using Linux for about a decade; no mention of their laptops not being from the early 90s. :)
The touch screen in my 2013 laptop has been working fine since... 2013, running only Debian and Debian-derivatives.
It depends what it is you expect out of it, from what I've understood from others. If you want touch to just be a replacement for a mouse, it will be fine. If you expect multitouch to work like most tablets or phones, you'll be disappointed.
Feel free to refute that with your own experiences. I'm only speaking from second hand.
So, I saw that lot of you are agreeing that basically just a standard CPU is needed. The problem is that in some cases its not enough. Some years ago I bought a very small Lenovo Miix 320 (not a thinkpad) and it was not compactible with free software at all. The audio and webcam crashed all the time with any distro that I tried. For this reason I asked this question, I had the impression that in the last years it became more difficult to make a laptop work with free software but I cannot judge it just with this experience.
minisforum v3
My top pick for a Linux laptop would be the Dell XPS 13 9310. It's old I guess, from 2020. But the build quality and Linux support is excellent. You could get a used one from eBay for around 400USD.
Alternatively, maybe you could look for a used Thinkpad X1 Carbon. I've purchased several of those in the past and have had really good experiences with them. The hardware is great and the software support is excellent.
I would avoid Framework. I actually just switched back to the Dell XPS 13 9310 after a year of using the Framework. Linux support on the Framework is just not as good as some other laptops. The biggest con of Framework is the HiDPI display. You will never get the display to look good. You'll have to do a ton of tweaking and debugging—and you'll still have some apps that are blurry or have weirdly sized icons or text. See: https://lemmy.today/post/22761155/13770242
I haven't used the XPS 13 personally but my experience and all my friends' experience with the XPS lineup is that despite their build quality, they're quite prone to failure. On my 15, the keyboard failed multiple times, as well as one of the fans and eventually one thunderbolt port, all within a span of 4 years.
They're beautiful machines that really should be quality, but in practice for some reason they haven't lasted for me. On the plus side though, Dell does at least offer service manuals, and lots of parts can be replaced by a user (on the 15 you can easily replace fans, RAM, SSDs, and with some work you can replace the top deck, display, and SD reader).
https://kfocus.org/spec/spec-ir16.html this is an absolute gem, built just for linux. It comes with KUbuntu preinstalled but can be wiped and replaced with any flavor of linux, and all of the hardware and laptop functionality is fully supported by linux.
Framework is way overhyped and even more overpriced. Its "upgradeability" is totally unrealistic at best, scam at worst. Sure you can pop in a new USB port or display output, but that's about it before you're replacing the entire guts to upgrade it and keeping just the worn out case and screen...? Gee sounds great... Repairability is a real point for framework though. Can you still not update the BIOS on linux? Its linux support is historically not great but may have improved
You're worried about the screen being worn out? How does a screen wear out (excluding maybe oled burn in, but this aint oled). And a good chassis shouldn't show that much wear after a few years.
If the laptop is old enough to merit CPU upgrade, then its likely already experienced plenty of wear and tear. Also I never said anything about the screen wearing out, I specifically said the case. I gave credit that at least the screen would carry over
in a few years
You'd think the point of repair and upgrade would be for the laptop to exist and be used for more than just a "few years" (otherwise what is the point?) so consider the realistic and more likely case of upgrading it more than a few years from now. Its worth it to keep an old used case, especially when you are paying a premium for framework?
It's great that it can be repaired easily though and there are internal parts available for purchase, but you can also find internal parts to many laptops available if you look for them, the only real difference is ease of repair
I considered buying framework for my laptop but once I thought about it realistically, it stopped making much sense.
What "merits" needing a CPU upgrade? I upgraded from a core i9 11950h to a 13900h machine because I needed more performance. That 11th gen machine still looks pristine besides one spot where a cat bit the corner of the lid. Even my piddling around machine wasn't up to snuff and upgraded from a 10th gen i5 to a 12th gen system. That machine's keyboard was a bit worn when I first got it, but it's not (appreciably) worse now. Besides that and maybe the palm rest the chassis is in pretty good condition. Why does it matter if the keycaps are a little smooth? Or there's a small scuff on one corner. Or a cat punctured the bezel of the display and somehow didn't break anything.
Either you're holding onto the case for many many years continuously upgrading, which I question why an old case is so valuable to not just replace it too when you replace the entire mainboard, or you're not, which makes me question the entire "upgradeable" concept.
Either way it doesn't really make sense. You can easily upgrade the parts that don't require a whole new mainboard, already, on literally any other laptop (hard drives, RAM, network card, battery).
It's neat that you can customize the ports on it and swap them out, which is the only real difference from any other laptop, but to me it seems like a gimmick and doesn't justify framework premium price when there are plenty of laptops out there with the ports that I need already
Also upgrading CPUs that are so close in generation and only a marginal performance difference like you have done is atypical and does not reflect the purchasing behavior of 99% of users. There's no real perceivable performance difference between those two CPUs for what most people actually use a laptop to do: web browse.
replacing the entire guts
That's not how it works at all though... What? The RAM and SSD are individually replaceable, and the screen, speaker system, and chassis all have individual upgrades that have been released with time too (for the 13, at least). The only "replacing the entire guts" you would do is if you replaced the mainboard for a CPU upgrade, and even then that's just the mainboard, not the RAM, SSD, etc., which is pretty on-par with, say, a desktop anyway as often a meaningful CPU upgrade will include switching to a newer platform and therefore a new motherboard.
Not saying the Framework has no issues at all whatsoever, but that's sure not one of them.
So... all the normal stuff that is normally upgradeable on a normal laptop is upgradeable for framework too? Good point...
The only "replacing the entire guts" you would do is if you replaced the mainboard for a CPU upgrade
That's exactly my point, yes. Again, the "upgradeability" of a framework laptop is unrealistic at best and a scam at worst. It's exactly as upgradeable as most laptops unless you're replacing the whole mainboard which is not very realistic. By that point there is likely enough wear and tear that it makes no sense to keep the case, keyboard, and screen... and with framework premium prices you aren't saving money on the SSD or RAM (which, no, you likely can't reuse on a CPU upgrade, most likely you'll be going DDR4->DDR5). I do give them credit for repairability, which is great, but "upgradeability" specifically is basically a marketing scam and will not make any sense for 99% of users.
I expected the downvotes on my comment because my opinion goes against the framework fanboys, but I hope my suggestion of KFocus IR16 is not discounted because of my opinions on framework. It is truly a great choice for linux compatibility
so all the normal stuff that's normally upgradable
That's just the thing, though. Soldered RAM and even drives is becoming more and more common these days, especially in the Apple space. But, the main thing here is user replaceable. I don't know when you last swapped the RAM on a laptop, but on most consumer laptops these days it is a nightmare. With Framework, it's 5 screws (the driver for which is included in the box, but also just standard torx) and you're in, and they have a QR code to a guide on how to do the replacement for first timers. I know it can be hard to take if you're used to pulling apart computers for fun, I come from there too, but the easy user upgradeability is seriously, literally, actually a great selling point on the Framework.
Also, the case, screen, trackpad, etc that get all the wear and tear are just as easily replaced if that's your hang up.
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