Cheap used business laptops?
Cheap used business laptops?
What ThinkPad/Latitude models are cheap and usable right now? I'm just looking for something to browse the web, but not something so low-spec that it couldn't handle heavier desktop environments.
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IDK if this fits for you, but my favorite Linux laptop for many years now has been Chromebook + crostini. Excellent hardware support and generally very stable platform, excellent Linux installation and fully-featured as long as you're not doing games or driver development or something similar. Research to get a good-hardware model (i.e. not the Pixelbook) and if it fits for what you need, it's excellent.
One downside though is Crostini takes a pretty big performance hit. I remember comparing Crostini (Linux in a VM) to Crouton (native) and it was night and day. I agree it's workable though it probably means you may need to pick out a Chromebook with sufficient specs.
Hm, that's a good point. I think it depends on what you're doing too though - running Chromium is very clearly slower than the native Chrome because of windowing interactions, running gimp in crostini seems fast but has window-handling glitches sometimes, running command-line or server tasks seems to run at 100% full speed (as it's just running normally on the native kernel).
You definitely do have to research and get one with good specs, not just one of the $150-for-a-Celeron ones. My whole history with Chromebooks was gradually spending more and more on progressively more powerful ones, and being progressively more happy with the result each time, up until I got a Pixelbook and it was kind of crap. 🥲