15 years ago I would have been surprised to hear that Thinkpads are cheap laptops !
this post was submitted on 21 Aug 2023
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Because these are small shops that have limited availability outside North America, and are fairly expensive compared to Thinkpads which are widely used by corporations, and can be found pretty cheaply.
Thinkpads tend to have excellent build quality, solid firmware and well thought out design. Price to performance on second-hand models is always outstanding and their popularity ensures hardware compatibility with Linux.
Of the brands you named, I just don't trust the hardware. Tuxedo computers for example uses Tongfang white-label computers that they just slap their logo on. Quality control isn't as thorough as Lenovo's, firmware is sketchy, TDP tends to be all over the place and keyboard quality doesn't come close.
Thinkpads also have-- and I can't stress the importance of this enough-- a nipple. I don't really use it, but if you try to take it away from me I'll bite you.
My third world country only have Thinkpad around so. It is what it is.
I also live in Europe
yeah good luck getting those brand outside of US
I bought a Framework once. The build quality was better than System76, but not great. However, Framework is not a Linux laptop. They designed it for Windows and only afterwards they were surprised to find that people wanted it for Linux.
A lot of Linux laptops don't have HiDPI displays because they're not really compatible.
Example Framework: https://community.frame.work/t/tracking-state-of-hidpi-on-linux/8301
For years people have been trying to work around Framework's poor display choice. And they're still trying.
If you have a regular DPI display, you get to avoid a whole class of bugs and issues.
If you wanna have a good time with Linux, you need some mechanical sympathy.
Btw, tbh, brb, I've had good success with the Dell XPS 13 and the Lenovo X1 Carbon. System76 build quality was meh.
Cause thinkpads are cheap and easy to come by
Source: i work in ewaste
Those linux laptops are too expensive and they are not available in some countries
Used thinkpad is much cheaper
Lenovo makes great computers. They have amazing price-to-performance ratios.
The only reason I wouldn't buy Lenovo is they were caught twice shipping laptops with spyware, and on my NAS their upgrade firmware contained google ad banners. While this will not affect a linux reinstall it just shows they are a shit company
American producers are shipping NSA spyware as well. If this is a concern (which it should be), best thing is to install Linux on it yourself.
What do you mean by NSA spyware? Anything that I can think of along those lines isn't really the same thing as what Lenovo did.
That's not really the same thing. It's also bad, but the producers aren't shipping that themselves, the NSA modifies it the devices after shipment. That's in some ways worse, since installing Linux yourself won't help against adversarial firmware/hardware.
It comes down to price. You can buy used ThinkPads and replacement parts for them quite cheap a lot of the time.
It's been a while since I've looked at devices from places like System 76 but if I recall correctly they are still over a thousand dollars when a used ThinkPad T440P for example can be found for around two hundred dollars.
yoo I didn't know about used/refurbished Thinkpads being that cheap, I just checked and indeed you can find a T480 with 16GB of RAM for $248 on Amazon!
Framework laptops are interesting and I hope eventually the modularity allows the components to go down in price. Right now I was looking at a 16 (which all sold out within 3 hours of pre-order launch) but it comes out to easily over 3k CAD for a disassembled kit, skimping on RAM and an SSD.