Picking my first Linux Laptop

[Buckets]

Hi Folks.
I don't know what laptop I should pick for my first LINUX. I prefer a 14 or 15".
It will be used for basic stuff like Open Office, photo editing, streaming, email, watch movies, HDMI connection to TV, video conferencing. You know, Old Man stuff... haha
I have found several preinstalled laptops online from a few $$ to 1K plus. However I have no clue what to buy.
Most have Ubuntu or Mint. The hardware is confusing what to look for. What should I stay away from ?
I would like Type C/Thunderbolt, USB A, HDMI, Wireless, Network plug, micro SD, camera.
Backlit keyboard, NO number pad.
I know some port connections can be manipulated or adapters like wireless HDMI and such.
I do want to stay under the $500 if I can.
It was mentioned to me I should look at Lenovo, Dell XPS and ASUS, but those are just brands not specific enough for model or hardware.

Thank you in advance.

Steve

 

[MzQ1NjExN2]

Dell and Lenovo are good brands. Get a Dell Latitude you can't go wrong with it. You can get refurbished ones from ebay for cheap.

 

[MzQ1NjExN2]

I have found several preinstalled laptops online from a few $$ to 1K plus. However I have no clue what to buy.

No way you should be spending 1k. I got a nice Dell Latitude for $100 on Ebay. Refurbished of course. School and business laptops/computers end up on ebay (and other places) because they end up being useless due to things like Windows updates. Those computers run Linux perfectly fine.

I have bought many refurbished computers from ebay. Not one has gone bad. Well except for one which was due to a manufacturer defect. Look for a seller that has high volume and high ratings and you should be good.

 

[Condobloke]

G'day Buckets, Welcome to Linux.org

I would agree, both dell and lenovo are good choices.

I only know this from observing other members choices. I do not own a laptop. I have a tower.

Just looking at your list... an SSD (as opposed to a HDD) is crucial. Much faster...by a big margin
If you can update the ram or buy something that already has 16GB, you will be doing yourself a favour. 4gb ram no longer cuts it....and 8 gb is ok, but as time goes in, even that is starting to look a bit lacking.
HDMI connection is mandatory. An external drive that you can connect via usb, is a plus for storage of movies and the like as well as storing snapshots taken by Timeshift <<<....important.

Take your time looking around.

Seeing this is your "first Linux".....is this your actual first time using Linux ??

 

[Brickwizard]

Good morning youngster and welcome,
with all the bits you want, then probably best to avoid entry level and Chromebook machines, as said Dell and Lenovo would suite as they are among the Linux friendliest, This post is coming to you from a new to me [re-furbished] Dell business laptop [the Latitude 5490]. But when you buy a re-use business machine the full spec will differ as to what the first buyer ordered , so needs checking it has all you need,
as for which distribution you need, again there are hundreds that will run on a machine of your specification, staying neutral i will suggest a few

Mint LMDE7 [Debian] [this is what I use for a daily drive on this laptop]
Mint 22 [Ubuntu based] [on my back-up machine]
Parrot home [based on the pen-testing {hacking} version] slightly more secure
MX-linux aimed more towards business use
the list is endless
Please read the 3 links in my signature below

if you feel up to it [and we have many members in retirement join us ] you could find and purchase a machine and inst all Linux yourself

 

[Kojack]

As a longtime fan of Dell, I can say this from experience, DON'T get a dell. I have had all of my dell laptops I purchased in the past 5 years fail. I am using one right now and it takes multiple attempts to get it to start, it goes into recovery mode, gives graphics errors etc. My main dell laptop I used completely died, and the other one is the same as this one I am using now. It's a crapshoot if it will start or not. Go with Lenovo for your laptop.

At this point I am purchasing a new motherboard, case and PSU to remove the "dell" from my workstation. I am afriad the PSU or mobo will fail now and wipe out the rest of my good quality parts.

 

[Brickwizard]

@Kojack
the op is looking for a laptop not desktop, I have been using dell lappies since 2008, the only problem I had was when I accidentally dropped one and killed it, my last dell desktop was 1989 it lasted till 2002 when i built a super-duper Athlon powered tower with 5 on board hard drives [ssd were not in vogue then.] now I use HP business SFF boxes.

 

[Kojack]

Yes, I know. I was commenting about all of my dell laptops failing. and followed up with i am removing the last dell product from out household, my Dell workstation. The failure rate of my dell laptops have been 100 percent. 4 out of 4. I am including my mothers Dell laptop I purchased for her as well as it was my money that bought all four. All four failed.

Hell, her laptop cracked it's chassis by the keyboard from her just picking it up. She's 74, she's not rough with her laptops. Just sitting in the chair with it on her lap. Picking it up from the table on one corner caused it to crack. After another 4 months, it just failed with a MOBO failure. Thats 2 mobo failures, A graphics failure and mutliple power failures with our dell laptops. Never Dell. Go with Lenovo and get a reliable system.

EDIT: OP, careful of Asus as well. We purchased 3 vivotab tablets back when they ran windows RT. All three got the dreaded ghost touch issue (common in that model), but the issue was we purchased them and all three had issue by the time the 6 month mark rolled around. I contacted Asus for RMAs and they said NOPE. their warranties mean nothing. At least when I had issues with dell, they did honor their warranty. But go lenovo and have no issues!

 

[Brickwizard]

Before i swapped to Dell laptops, I had an ACER brand new as a retirement present, it was useless, the old 486 was better, from day one it stutter playing DVD you switched it on and went and cooked breakfast whilst windows booted in, it was better when i swapped to Mint3 but never brilliant

 

[MikeWalsh]

@Kojack :-

Ouch. You, my friend, have had a right run of bad luck there. Like many others, I've been using Dells for around a quarter of a century....and the only one that's really let me down was my last Latitude, a D630.....and THAT was entirely due to the Nvidia mobile Quadro GPU going bad.

That said, it WAS built around the time when the industry as a whole were switching to lead-free solder. It took quite a while before they got the formulation right, and Nvidia bought into the 'bad' stuff big-time at a very early stage. There was a class-action lawsuit over that entire generation of Quadros; hundreds of thousands of people were complaining about them running as hot as they did, causing failures right across the industry.....not just with Dell.

Reliability-wise, mine have been as good as gold. I'd recommend the Latitudes, in particular, to anybody.

"Horses for courses" (of course). We all have different experiences at the end of the day.


Mike.

 

[theLegionWithin]

picked up a refurbished lenovo laptop a few years ago for ~$150, it works rather well with various distros I've tried

 

[deb_user]

A Lenovo Thinkpad is hard to beat. I'm using a T480 that I bought refurbished, with 256GB SSD and 32GB of RAM, for ~$200. Not new, but hard to tell the difference. It works well for me. It came with Windows 11, which was easy to wipe, and Linux was easy to install. Just disable secure boot in the BIOS, and it's a breeze. I use an SSD in a portable enclosure for installation, with Ventoy installed on it, which allows doing a simple copy of the .iso file to it, then boot from a USB drive.

 

[Brickwizard]

Lenovo Thinkpad is hard to beat.

Good product, if I was not a Dell latitude user, I would not pass up a Lenovo T series, whatever age.

 

[Kojack]

Before i swapped to Dell laptops, I had an ACER brand new as a retirement present, it was useless, the old 486 was better, from day one it stutter playing DVD you switched it on and went and cooked breakfast whilst windows booted in, it was better when i swapped to Mint3 but never brilliant

My acer 4810T Timeline was a gem when it was released. Plenty of power, I upgraded the HDD to an ssd, put the max amount of ram, 16gb of ddr3 or it might have been 32gb. Anyways. That thing got 10 hrs of battery life and was a awesome device for work. I did hundreds of projects, estimates and photos using that one.

 

[deb_user]

Another good thing about the T480 is that it has two batteries, one fully internal like most laptops, and one removable. The removable one is hot-swappable. With both in use, battery life is very good. I can't say exactly how long they will last, because I've never run on batteries that long, but it's certainly better than average.

 

[Buckets]

G'day Buckets, Welcome to Linux.org

I would agree, both dell and lenovo are good choices.

I only know this from observing other members choices. I do not own a laptop. I have a tower.

Just looking at your list... an SSD (as opposed to a HDD) is crucial. Much faster...by a big margin
If you can update the ram or buy something that already has 16GB, you will be doing yourself a favour. 4gb ram no longer cuts it....and 8 gb is ok, but as time goes in, even that is starting to look a bit lacking.
HDMI connection is mandatory. An external drive that you can connect via usb, is a plus for storage of movies and the like as well as storing snapshots taken by Timeshift <<<....important.

Take your time looking around.

Seeing this is your "first Linux".....is this your actual first time using Linux ??

Hello and thank you.
Great info and ideas. I have used Linux in the late 80's and only to try it out, it was a a fun experiment.

 

[Buckets]

Good morning youngster and welcome,
with all the bits you want, then probably best to avoid entry level and Chromebook machines, as said Dell and Lenovo would suite as they are among the Linux friendliest, This post is coming to you from a new to me [re-furbished] Dell business laptop [the Latitude 5490]. But when you buy a re-use business machine the full spec will differ as to what the first buyer ordered , so needs checking it has all you need,
as for which distribution you need, again there are hundreds that will run on a machine of your specification, staying neutral i will suggest a few

Mint LMDE7 [Debian] [this is what I use for a daily drive on this laptop]
Mint 22 [Ubuntu based] [on my back-up machine]
Parrot home [based on the pen-testing {hacking} version] slightly more secure
MX-linux aimed more towards business use
the list is endless
Please read the 3 links in my signature below

if you feel up to it [and we have many members in retirement join us ] you could find and purchase a machine and inst all Linux yourself

LOL... Thanks.

That is what I am gathering is to stick with Dell and Lenovo.
For the Distro I was thinking going with Ubuntu or Mint. I don't know about the others mentioned but I will look into them.
Installing myself would be educational. I could try several Distros that way.
I will read the links.

I am looking forward to starting a new adventure. I "Must" get away from Win Copilot !! It's too swished cheesed.

 

[Buckets]

You have all given me some ideas to run with and I will take my time.
So I have:
Latitude or Thinkpad.
16gb + ram
Check out other distros
Use SSD HD
Refurbished and install myself...
Read links
Do more High Altitude jumps

Any thoughts on CPU type or what not to use?

 

[deb_user]

I've used both AMD and Intel CPUs. I have no real preference, they've both worked for me. Get the latest model you can, considering economics and availability.

 

[Condobloke]

Installing myself would be educational. I could try several Distros that way.

Have a look at Ventoy...HERE

With ventoy, you are 'burning' an app to the usb stick .....after that is done you can drag and drop a number of distros to the usb (without the usual rigmarole of 'burning" each one to the usb using rufus/balena etcher etc etc

So, you could put an .iso on that usb for ubuntu, mint mx3, etc etc.... to open one, you would boot your pc to that ventoy usb stick , select the .iso you wish to try out, and click enter...away you go.

Thread 'How to Install and Use Ventoy (1.1.04) for Bootable USBs on Linux'

Mar 23, 2025

Ventoy turns a USB stick into a multi-boot drive. You install Ventoy once, then just copy ISO/WIM/IMG/VHD(X)/EFI files onto the USB and boot them from Ventoy’s menu—no re-imaging each time. It works with BIOS and UEFI, supports optional Secure Boot, and can use persistence via plugins.

I've done an article before on using Ventoy, but I didn't get into it too deeply. So, we should try it.

There are many additions you can use for Ventoy, so we can cover these.

Downloading Ventoy

To get Ventoy, you can go to the main website download page at...

• Jarret B
• Replies: 7
• Forum: Installation

• 

https://itsfoss.com/use-ventoy/ ... This guide works beautifully.....it must be followed CAREFULLY.