Tossing Linux on used enterprise laptops is maybe the best bang for your buck machine you can get. They're often time a great value and within three years old. Used multiple Thinkpads and Dells over the years that were fantastic and gotten sub $400.
Things I learned to look out for:
- Locked BIOS
- Look into the manufacturer's repairability reputation. I replaced the entire keyboard on my ThinkPad X1 Carbon and it was perfectly fine. It was a pain to get to, but no problems. On a Dell Latitude, it refused to charge my non-OEM battery replacement. My fault - I should've done some research.
In my experience, Dell and Lenovo have excellent Linux hardware support. I don't know about other manufacturers, but I hope that that's also the case now too.
Can back this. Many years ago I purchased a Dell Latitude from eBay. After messing around with a 3D printer, there was a short of mains voltage onto the USB line, frying the laptop and tripping the house electrics. I contacted Dell asking for a schematic of the PCBs thinking that I had blown some components, but they informed me that the laptop was still under warranty thanks to the original business purchaser (by just a few weeks).
They shipped a box and allowed me to swap out a hard drive for a spare (I had study data on there), I then used the box to ship the laptop to them. A few weeks later the laptop gets shipped back with a parts replacement list, which was essentially every single PCB in the laptop and I asked them to replace the keyboard too because one key was sticking. Brand new parts in a slightly cracked chassis.
If Dell still has customer service like that, it's double thumbs up from me.
I'm currently using a Lenovo laptop which has been solid so far. I do want my next laptop to be open to repairability (even if I have to create it myself).
Dell customer service is whatever someone wants to pay for.
I bought a new Dell laptop 20-ish years ago along with whatever the super-duper coverage was called at that time (Complete Care, maybe?). IIRC, it only excluded deliberate damage (and "hammer marks" was used as an example).
But they had no trouble sending me parts. Power brick soaked in a flood? No big deal; a new one is on the way. Dropped a screwdriver on the screen at work? They sent a whole person over to replace it.
It was very expensive coverage -- it cost more by itself than the used/refurb laptops we're discussing. It was sold separately. It did not, by my estimation around that time, ultimately pay for itself.
But if you score it for "free" with a used machine, then sure! Bargain!
It's probably worth it for university though. Back in the day working as a Student Employee for the CSE helpdesk, we ordered overnight replacements for so many laptops and servers an it was super slick and automated, replacement parts showed up and we swapped them in. Very little downtime.
I had the motherboard fail on a Dell XPS while at a conference in Tasmania, staying in a student residency that was inaccessible by car for the last ~1km. Within 24 hours a man arrived, to my room, to change the motherboard.
Extremely impressive logistics. I guess they reuse the same network as for emergency server parts/repairs.
It’s hit or miss with them. I bought a brand new Dell monitor from Amazon, through their Dell store, fulfilled by Dell. The HDMI input stopped working a couple months later, as verified with multiple known working devices connected to it with multiple known working cables. Then Dell’s support absolutely refused to honor their warranty because their database showed that someone else but me owned it. Remember, I bought it through the Dell store inside Amazon, and received straight from Dell via their own warehouse. Amazon’s support got righteously indignant on my behalf and refunded the purchase to me when Dell wouldn’t.
It felt very satisfying to tell the Dell rep who cold called me to sell my employer hardware why I’d make sure we’d never give them a dime.
And yet other people have wonderful luck with them, apparently! Go figure.
Never had to call Dell support, but I've had a similar experience with a Logitech mouse bought through Amazon (although it was sold and shipped by Amazon).
Since Amazon honored the warranty in less time than it took me to look up how to contact Logitech and go through their ridiculous process, that mouse was replaced with another Logitech one bought through Amazon. Wouldn't buy anything directly from the Logitech store, though.
Don't buy any recent Intels. Some Intel ThinkPads have accelerometers built-in just to throttle your PC to oblivion when it moves. Basically unusable in any moving vehicle such as a train. It's basically anti-portability baked-in.
When it doesn't throttle, it just has abysmal battery life compared to AMD Ryzen ThinkPads of the same generation. Both lose horribly to Apple's ARM chips though.
They also tend to have soldered WiFi modules, making it impossible to upgrade later when newer and better WiFi iterations come out. If that had been the case with a few of the older models I still have, they would be unusable at this point.
There are plenty of firmware bugs as well. For example plenty of Lenovo (especially Intel as far as I've seen) models have stuttery and freezing touchpads. Though the touchpads tend to be horrible anyways.
I'd say the older (5+ years old) generations might have had slightly better driver support or they're finally fixed at this point. But there's nothing I'd spend my money on if I can just as well install Asahi on an M-series laptop.
ThinkPads used to have accelerometers to protect the hard drives, so if you dropped the machine or treated it roughly, it could park the drive, protecting it from data loss.
People used to write Linux utilities that read these accelerometers, allowing for example to switch virtual desktops by physically smacking the machine on either side.
Maybe what you are noticing is the "laptop on lap" detection? Check the bios, there was a "cool when on lap detected" mode on mine. Turn that off and re-test.
> there's nothing I'd spend my money on if I can just as well install Asahi on an M-series laptop.
But such laptops don't work 100% with Asahi. Speakers and mic, external displays, fingerprint reader, suspend are the sore points I've read about, and shorter battery life compared to when they run Apple's SO.
> The Cool and Quiet on lap feature helps cool down your computer when it becomes hot. Any extended contact with your body, even through clothing, could cause discomfort. If you prefer using your computer on the lap, it is recommended that you enable the Cool and Quiet on lap feature in UEFI BIOS:
Honestly, I wasn't to say this is ridiculous but I've got a i7 13" laptop which I bought to do practically everything (personal coding projects, a bit of gaming, video editing, 3d modeling etc). I do find the heat of it is quite uncomfortable after a short period of time on my lap. I was thinking about getting a M series MacBook for messing around on the couch and building a desktop for many of those other tasks.
My work MacBook Pro on the other hand could do with the opposite some times. Burn a bit of battery to heat up the aluminium case please!
In my experience Intel and AMD Thinkpads of that era are about the same for battery life but Intel always needs some kernel parameters set. Where I notice the biggest difference is Intel's integrated graphics gets you better battery life over anything AMD if your GPU needs are modest enough to be handled by Intel's integrated graphics
That’s not particularly surprising to be honest. A lot of what makes Apple tech what it is is the concert between their hardware and software. Not trying to put it too poetically here, but that’s what it’s always seemed like to me.
In general when I install Linux on an Apple device I just assume there isn’t the same level of performance. I remember installing mint on a 2016 intel MBpro and the limitations/cons didn’t surprise me at all because I just kind of expected it to perform at 70% of what I expected from macOS but with far more free freedom/control. It ran very smoothly but you definitely lose a lot of functionality.
> A lot of what makes Apple tech what it is is the concert between their hardware and software.
That's very cute, but it's not why Apple laptops run Linux poorly.
Apple Silicon has terrible and inefficient support because Apple released no documentation of their hardware. The driver efforts are all reverse-engineered and likely crippled by Apple's hidden trade secrets. This is why even Qualcomm chips run Linux better than Apple Silicon; they release documentation. Apple refuses, because then they can smugly pride themselves on "integration" and other plainly false catchisms.
And on Intel/AMD, Apple was well known for up-tuning their ACPI tables to prevent thermal throttling before the junction temp. This was an absolutely terrible decision on Apple's behalf, and led to other OSes misbehaving alongside constant overheating on macOS - my Intel Macs were regularly idling ~10-20c hotter than my other Intel machines.
Okay, that's your call. You can't phone Craig Federighi for the straight dope, so you're stuck hearing it from internet douches or product leads on prescription SSRIs.
And yes, your statement was a cutesy catechism with no actual evidence provided. A big reason why Apple tech doesn't work like a normal computer is Apple's rejection of standards that put hardware and software in-concert. ACPI is one such technology, per my last comment.
Only if you boot into macOS and connect it to the internet. iBoot2 never changes by itself, you, the user, decides if you want to boot into recovery or macOS and run an update.
So can Apple stop signing new iBoot2 versions? Sure! And that sucks. But it's a bit of FUD to claim that Apple at arbitrary points in time is going to brick your laptop with no option for you to prevent that.
Granted, if you boot both macOS and Asahi, then yes, you are in this predicament, but again, that is a choice. You can never connect macOS or recovery to the internet, or never boot them.
> You can never connect macOS or recovery to the internet, or never boot them
In other words, you're completely fucked if you brick your install. I consider iBoot a direct user-hostile downgrade from UEFI for this reason.
YMMV, but I would never trust my day-to-day on an iBoot machine. UEFI has no such limitations, and Apple is well-known for making controversial choices in OTA updates that users have no alternative to.
> In other words, you're completely fucked if you brick your install. I consider iBoot a direct user-hostile downgrade from UEFI for this reason.
That's a bit of a creative perspective, isn't it? You have no control over the UEFI implementation of your vendor, same can be said for AGESA and ME, as well as any FSP/BSP/BUP packages, BROM signatures or eFused CPUs. And on top of that, you'll have preloaded certificates (usually from Microsoft) that will expire at some point, and when they do and the vendor doesn't replace them, the machine might never boot again (in a UEFI configuration where SecureBoot cannot be disabled as was the case in this Fujitsu - that took a firmware upgrade that the vendor had to supply, which is the exception rather than the rule). For DIY builds this tends to be better, Framework also makes this a tad more reliable.
If anything, most OEM UEFI implementations come with a (x509) timer that when expires, bricks your machine. iBoot2 is just a bunch of files (including the signed boot policy) you can copy and keep around, forever, no lifetimer.
Now, if we wanted to escape all this, your only option is to either get really old hardware, or get non-x86 hardware that isn't Apple M-series or IBM. That means you're pretty much stuck with low-end ARM and lower-end RISC-V, unless you accept AGESA or Intel ME at which point coreboot becomes viable.
Basically your counterpoint is that I'm absolutely right to be concerned, but I'm wrong because UEFI can also be implemented with the same objectionable backdoors that Apple implements.
Just note that listing is for an item from a third-party seller. Walmart's website includes listings from their third-party marketplace unless you explicitly filter them out.
My daily driver for several years now has been an AMD Ryzen 7 powered ThinkPad t495. $120 used. After upgrading the RAM to 64gb it felt very snappy and usable. I run NixOS / Hyprland with rofi/waybar. When an accident happened and the first t495 was damaged, I bought a second for $80, swapped the parts and was back in business. I use it for coding, web research, and a bit of CAD design via FreeCAD. Very happy with the hardware!
I have a MBA M1 and it is everything you would wish in an hardware feature wise (except the keyboard as I like lot of travel). But the OS is abysmal, unless you like to use your device with only apps. Anything else out of the straight path is a pain. And the last years, it seems that the allowed path is closer to mobile OS than a computer to do work.
So, my daily driver is an oldish dell latitude (8th gen intel) running openbsd. Not for the faint of heart, but for a tinkerer, it's a dream.
I keep hearing this thing about apps and I'm confused. I write code on my MBA M1, run orbital simulations, run a media server... All like I would on Linux. What am I missing on userland?
I understand there is low level system stuff I can't control, but I've made my peace with that. When using Linux I hadn't touched its internals for years.
I have made my peace with that as well, but the ground keep sifting under. There was the Music.app stuff, the System settings, Apple Intelligence, and now the whole UI of the OS. Those are the things that you would interact with daily.
It could be fine. I'm also OK with GNOME's strict approach to design. But with Apple, you wait the next release with dread because you never know what they will pull next.
To be honest, I have used macOS since OS X 10.4 and most of it is still very similar UI-wise? Finder, Spotlight, basic window management, etc. are still pretty much the same. If you had a time machine and took someone from 2006, they would still feel pretty much at home on macOS 26. For me the only larger breaking change was when they axed Spaces in 10.7 for Mission Control (Spaces was so much better).
GNOME from 2006? Quite a different story.
I agree on lower-level stuff. Nowadays you have to partially disable SIP to use DTrace, which is meh... (and it seems largely unmaintained) Instruments is quite great though.
I swapped the keyboard on my wife's X1 and man, they are so fiddly to get to these days. It used to be a 2 minute job but I think this took me nearly 2 hours! I had to remove practically everything to get to it.
Still happy with the result and I agree that 2nd hand business machines give great bang-for-buck. I adore my beater Dell Latitude for example.
Oh, it sucked haha - I totally agree. Glad I could do it though.
I believe mine was a gen 3 and I I had to remove everything and the keyboard is the last part you remove before putting the new one on. I assume it was similar for you considering the time spent?
The more traditional thinkpads have the dream situation where it just pops off, if I recall.
I had to stop and go out to purchase a Dremel to cut a notch in a screw on the main board that was stripped before I had gotten it. Good times!
Yes, exactly that, and some of the steps required removing kaptan (?) tape over rather fragile looking wires.
I think it used to be more or less "undo screw, remove cover, remove keyboard" ... with other parts being under the keyboard rather than vice versa. It's been a long time though.
One thing in favour of Lenovo and Thinkpad then and now is that you can download all the field service guides - so at least one isn't guessing which worryingly fragile part to remove next. Another point in favour of ex-corporate devices.
> In my experience, Dell and Lenovo have excellent Linux hardware support.
I have tried just one cheap Dell laptop, Vostro 3515, which works mostly fine with Linux (it came with Ubuntu, I have installed Debian), but the touchpad becomes unreponsive sometimes (probably after a sleep), and at some point it refused to charge, which required an UEFI firmware update to fix, which in turn required Windows (I had to use Windows PE) to install, as the direct update (from the UEFI itself) was failing, and there is no Linux option.
Could have been worse, but now considering a Lenovo ThinkPad as a future replacement.
This is my go to way of buying a new laptop. I've gone through 2 machines in the last 8 years (Dell 7270 and 7330). Both bought for <$400. Linux works ootb, though I haven't tried any of the more obscure distros.
Though now manufacturers are doubling down on soldered components, so buying a cheap machine and upgrading the components yourself is not really possible :(
Yep, same experience here, very good results with DELL Latitude E7240, E7260 and similar. Very rugged and Linux works like a breeze - on eBay from $179 (just checked again).
One is well advised to upgrade them to 16 GB RAM and put in a 1 TB SSD, and possibly a new battery. My better half wanted one of those again after I gifted her a brand new MacBook Air, so used she got to the DELL and Ubuntu running on it.
I'm using Linux on some dell precision and camera just don't work. It's possible to install some custom kernel to make it work, but the pain of maintaining it by myself in comparison to IT department supported setup is a no go.
Quick research showed that some were marked as 'unmaintained', but I don't see anything that would prevent systems from booting, or even the code from working.
Some (not all) of the systems were picked up by other people. I do not know where you're getting the information from, but if you want to, please share.
Things I learned to look out for:
- Locked BIOS
- Look into the manufacturer's repairability reputation. I replaced the entire keyboard on my ThinkPad X1 Carbon and it was perfectly fine. It was a pain to get to, but no problems. On a Dell Latitude, it refused to charge my non-OEM battery replacement. My fault - I should've done some research.
In my experience, Dell and Lenovo have excellent Linux hardware support. I don't know about other manufacturers, but I hope that that's also the case now too.