You looked at starlabs or purism?

T or P series refurb from eBay.

It doesn’t matter, every one of them will spy on you

T440p if you’re comfortable upgrading it yourself. It’s very easy to customize, parts are cheap, and it has a socketed CPU slot. You can buy upgrades for it like a i7 4900MQ, 2x8GB RAM, and a nice 1080p IPS display. It can also be Librebooted (you have to take it apart), and it has a SD card slot, CD tray, and a option to upgrade the standard keyboard to a backlit keyboard.

I’ve been using it everyday and could honestly use it for another 5-6 years and I’d be fine with it. I just do browsing, coding, etc.

I don’t recommend thinkpads. As I mentioned elsewhere in this thread, they don’t allow you to replace your own wifi card. Latitudes have great Linux support, and as a business class machine they’re as reliable and easy to work on as thinkpads

I picked up a yoga 6 on sale from Lenovo three years ago for about $800. SSD + ryzen. Works perfect on linux, the only problem was a faulty fan replaced under warranty, since then been great, could probably find a used one for pretty cheap

I’m a fan of the t14. However, the keyboard has increasingly gotten shit

I bought a t460s i5 model with 20gb of RAM and replaced the second internal battery for a total of $180 in the US. Other than the screen not being the best (but I mostly work in terminal so it wasn’t a big deal for me), it has been a great laptop with great battery life.

I went away for a few hours, wow, all the replies! Thanks all!

I ended up going with a refurbished T480s. Wanted something I could upgrade memory/storage on. The form factor and the metal case also sounded appealing. Should have it in a week.

My current personal laptop is a ThinkPad 13 2nd Gen. I believe it was released in 2017. It was my work laptop for 4 years and was gifted to me by the employer. During those 4 years as a work laptop it proved its worth—9 hours of teaching per day plugged into a projector. Once it was mine I slapped Linux on it. Today, the battery still lasts 10 hours.

So, definitely look into getting something used. You probably don’t need the best of the best. If I had to choose right now I would rank my needs and try to get something close enough.

An i3 or equivalent might be fine, and i7 might be overkill. Something with an i5, perhaps? Lots of people say 8GB is the minimum for RAM, my computer has 6GB and works. But, if I were going to buy today I might take 16GB just as future-proofing. I would also need that USB-C.

Browse around sites like https://linux-hardware.org/ before purchasing to make sure you don’t get any surprises.

Speaking of surprises, I would take anything with Nvidia just in case, and whatever model I take would need to be reparable or upgradable.

If you decide on buying new, you might as well take a look at the vendors mentioned by other users. System76, Slimbook, Framework, StarBook, and so on will hurt your wallet a bit, but at least you know the hardware won’t result in time lost troubleshooting.

X1 Carbon is king

i’ve had a t420 for years and it’s still going strong

I’ve been on this hunt lately as well, but because I want to believe there could be a suitable option for a Linux tablet …

Regardless, for just a new thinkpad the X1 carbon has remained a solid choice for all around work-flows (research, student, development, business, etc.)

T480 is the last good Thinkpad. Even T490 is a huge downgrade.

T430 or X230 if you’re into modding. The opportunities for modding them are endless. Keyboard from xx20-series (best ever made for laptops), FHD IPS panel, re-celling the battery with 18650-cells, second storage drive with mstata mod… If I remember right, T430 cd bay can be replaced with secondary battery too.

The old models are compatible with FreeBSD too.

https://youtu.be/3wCexOqw-h4