Hi everyone, I use Linux on all my machines since a decade. Unfortunately my laptops are getting older and I will probably have to change them soon. Which Laptops would you recommend me to buy in 2025 a part Librem?
I don’t have a high budget but I’m still looking for something relatively recent. I looked on H-node but it seems that there are not a lot of recent things.
I use Debian as a distro.
Try Framework.
You’ll get a laptop sized to your budget and you’ll be able to grow with it, upgrade any part your budget will allow in the future.
Their linux support is excellent.
Framework laptops are not great actually. They basically are offloading their qa/qc onto customers. They routinely ship defective units new out of the box and try to make you do all their engineering work for them.
The quality of the components is meh at best. If I were doing it again, I would go the ThinkPad route.
Framework is a bunch of VC funded shills who see the right to repair movement as a resource they can exploit.
My friends had about the same amount oft issues with their thinkpad as me with the fw.
I agree, that there are many issues, but you don’t notice them in daily use.
The support is very good with most people, I seem to have bad luck, but once I got someone helpful, it got solved super quick.
I still recommend fw. I wish they would redo the fw13 and improve upon all the little issues everyone had, but mine still goes strong and I hope it will for many years to come
Yes, Framework!
It’s great, works perfectly, and you support something (principals, ways) worth supporting!
Something what won’t lead to/support further enshitification of all the things.
(And we might even get usable RISC–V laptops fairly soon - to even further ditch megacorps.)
I’m loving my Framework, have Mint on there. Thinkpads are also well regarded I believe
Yeah but new ThinkPads comes with soldered RAMs. Even mostly all brands do the same. I think framework don’t do it
Whether a Thinkpad has soldered RAM or not is model-by-model thing. When I was laptop shopping I tried to stick to the only non-soldered ones, but they are definitely more expensive, as they are the higher-end models. I absolutely cannot wait for CAMM to, if it ever does, become a normal thing for RAM modules.
Framework hasn’t done that yet. They have an event in 3 days and a lot of people seem to be thirsting for a Strix Halo main board, though.
They’re a bit expensive up front, but I’m really enjoying my Framework.
That is very likely to be my next laptop.
Open source hardware
This is the route I’ll probably go when it’s time for me to replace my laptop. The 14" Lemur Pro looks perfect for my use case (ultra portable) although the Pangolin looks more powerful.
I unfortunately had disabling experiences with the System76 Pangolin (12). Since then I would absolutely not recommend System76.
I had a galago pro and it was not well built. It fell apart faster than any other laptop I’ve used.
Do elaborate
It was a few years ago so I can’t really comment on newer versions. But I recall the plastic bottom coming away from the top more and more over time. They don’t manufacture their own laptops, so they are kinda stuck relying on a third party. (Clevo, I think.)
I’ve got a galago pro that’s a little over five years old now, and I’m still pretty happy with it.
That’s good, they might have improved. Mine didn’t last a year, but I think it was an earlier version.
Do elaborate
Mostly it boils down to three categories:
- Case build quality. This seems a be a frequent issue among System76 laptops; in my case (no pun intended), the laptop case was very badly made and easily broke. I carry my device around very much, always in my backpack, which has a padded laptop section, and in a fancy padded laptop case (or bag or whatever the word is—arg). I essentially have double padding, and I have had a good experience with this padding and previous laptops. This time, however, even simply putting the backpack down, was enough force to dent and eventually completely crush the empty corners next to the hinges. I had to manually repair the corners very often, but wasn’t able to prevent damage to the hinges and stripping the threads holding the hinges in place. No other laptop, even ones much cheaper, has ever presented me with this problem, and it is extremely frustrating that the laptop isn’t designed to be even mildly rugged.
- Faulty motherboard and bad quality-control. The laptop I bought had two M.2 NVMe slots, with only one occupied. I was planning to add one of my existing SSDs into the second slot. The second slot, however, did not work. This is such an easy thing to test before shipping it, that it really left a bad taste in my mouth.
- Faulty part and known issue. After about two weeks of using my laptop, the touchpad started malfunctioning. I looked the issue up, and, well and behold, this was a well known issue with this specific laptop. I contacted support and the problem remained unsolved. System76 released and continued selling a laptop with a known, unsolvable issue. This was the final blow, and I totally lost trust in the company after experiencing this.
Forgive the shitty writing, I’m doing this in my phone.
Hope I was able to help, kind regards.
What were the interactions with support like each time?
I don’t like that their 14" model only comes with intel CPUs
They have core boot, which is a big plus, but the hardware itself is not open source.
Most of it seems to be
Eg https://github.com/system76/thelio-io-hardware/tree/a8e166cec9112d38d2bbe31a314689a8d7723ac8
Used ThinkPad’s are pretty common on Ebay.
They’re what I use. Also with Debian.
“Recent” is a factor of how much you’re willing to shell out.
$300.00USD will get you a good Debian compatible box. You may want to then replace the battery and/or add RAM. Those are both found inexpensively also.
I second used or new Thinkpads. They have good linux support. I use a p14s with arch (btw).
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.
They’re still far better than everything else on the market.
IdeaPads also aren’t ThinkPads. Those are the consumer grade garbage you’d want to stay away from.
Yup, “Thinkpad” not the other Think… or …pad. The consumer targeted stuff is bad, even the Lenovo sales rep I got my P14s told me so.
the thinkpad E/L series are also kinda gnarly
Thinkpad t480, they can be found pretty cheap second hand, then install libreboot. Can be upgraded with 64 GB of ram and a 4K screen.
So that’s why everyone recommends the T480 over the T580.
The T580 doesn’t have a libreboot build.
Up until very recently the t480 didnt either
Brb gonna go libreboot my sister’s t580 when that comes out
You would probrally have to wait a very long time, keep in mind not all features (ex: Thunderbolt 3) are working on the t480. In addition I dont think the t580 is even supported by coreboot yet.
DELL Latitude laptops. They’re designed for work, come with repair guides from DELL, and have upgradeability. The 5310 is one of the longest-lasting laptops for battery life you can get for $200-300 on ebay (over 8 hours battery video streaming, I’ve done this) that still has half decent specs (16-64GB RAM upgradeable, upgradeable m.2 wifi / bt adapter, NVMe SSD upgradeable, i5 10th gen)
Runs fine on Debian Stable
Just to second that, the model series is Latitude, not Inspiron. and yeah, the i5 processor options I got over the years beat the i7 on processing power. The Precision models are a step up, but not any kind of low cost and seem not quite as tough.
I have a dell xps from a few years around and wouldn’t recommend it to my enemies. Just this week it froze and crashed 3 times. Obviously all related to the stupid nvidia and hybrid graphics it has… so maybe if you can get one without that shitty piece of hardware maybe it’s fine.
Latitude is my rec, not XPS. IDK why the XPS always seems to have issues.
As for “stupid hybrid graphics”, my HP Gaming 15 is a few years old now and still kicking… AMD/nVidia GTX dual graphics. Only reason I had to replace a board was because the heatsink wasn’t attached properly from the factory.
And yes, it is a linux laptop too.
I bought a Framework laptop then threw Pop OS on it. I have no issues. They sell refurbished devices and they are modular so you can swap out whatever is giving you issues.
Have you gotten any of the mystery boxes from them?
I have not. I’m not aware of them.
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
Do they just use the good ones in new models now?
Yes
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.
I personally buy refurbished. Lately I got a Lenovo X280 thinkpad, for $160 with 8 GB of RAM, 1080p screen. Worked fine, Linux flies on it.
From experience, I recommend Tuxedo laptops. They’re really good and come with full Linux support.
I must say I’m not 100% happy with my InfinityBook Pro 14 Gen 9 AMD. The build quality has very much improved since the Gen 7 (which I daily-drove before), but it feels like Tuxedo’s take on “Linux Laptop” is rather something like “Tuxedo-OS Laptop”. On Fedora I had to tweak kernel params so my laptop doesn’t wake up from sleep on its own and do the same to resolve an audio issue, and my RJ45 port just simply doesn’t work even with their drivers.
And something inside the device makes a quiet but annoying beep-like noise when the fans don’t spin.
Apart from that I love the device, but if you plan to use your own distro of choice and really want a high-quality build I’d not really recommend it.
Consider taking a look at this criminally underrated Linux-first vendor: NovaCustom. Prices aren’t cheap, unfortunate. But it boasts hardware from about a year ago. Furthermore, NovaCustom takes Libre very seriously: from supporting coreboot to offering blob-free WiFi-cards.
Go to an electronics recycling center and get a retired thinkpad (or 5). Once they’re decommissioned by corporations, they wipe the drive and send them off to be recycled.
Depends on budget but if your budget is above $800 get a framework they are awesome and work great with Linux if your budget is below that look at an e series Thinkpad or used thinkpad on eBay that fits your budget
Do you want mainstream brands that work well with Linux? Lenovo or Dell
Do you want smaller brands that are specialised and support Linux? Tuxedo, System76, Slimbook, Purism…
StarLabs
True, I forgot about them! Their tablet is pretty cool too.
Tuxedo is a bit hit or miss. Used one for 2 years and wasn’t happy with the case quality. The plastic basically broke at some edges and screw holes
The hardware also wasn’t as Linux compatible as they claim. 5Ghz wifi just didn’t work reliably. With their support page saying the fix is to disable 5Ghz
I want to support tuxedo, as an European brand, but the last one I bought had such a shitty screen that got worse and worse over the years. They seem to have improved the hardware somewhat but the experience left a bad taste in my mouth.
