Looking to upgrade from an old Latitude, curious as to what mobile hardware you folks use for writing your open source projects?

      • pingveno@lemmy.mlEnglish
        0·
        6 months ago

        I have one from 2015 that is literally falling apart, but it still works okay. I’m going to be sad when I have to finally give up on it. Unfortunately, it’s not great for repair. I was going to replace the keyboard because some keys are malfunctioning, but it requires basically pulling apart the whole computer including some parts that are taped on.

      • mortalic@lemmy.world
        0·
        6 months ago

        So far I love it. I bought it brand new from Lenovo and you could pick from I think 3 or 4 distros. I picked fedora, which it came with 38. When I first booted up it had a bios update which honestly surprised me that they would bother. Then upgraded to 40 through the fedora upgrade path. All painless.

        I was fully prepared to make a windows live USB just to flash the bios/firmware.

  • Lettuce eat lettuce@lemmy.mlM
    0·
    6 months ago

    Thinkpad A485. If you’re going used, I would grab a T460, T470, or T480. Really reliable models, all those can be had for $300 or less online, work great with Linux, and last forever. Plus they are decently repairable.

    If new, I would also go with Framework laptops. Super repairable and sustainable. And very high quality laptops. My friend got one and it is super nice. Runs Fedora on it flawlessly.

    • jrgd@lemm.ee
      0·
      6 months ago

      The A485 is actually such a terrible laptop. I would never reccomend such garbage to anyone considering mine almost never worked properly. I had in three years have six main board replacements for various hardware faults. Not a single of the boards has been free from severe hardware faults.

    • gomp@lemmy.ml
      0·
      6 months ago

      Thinkpad A485

      I had one of those, but the trackpad occasionally wouldn’t work until I rebooted several times (I was using fedora). Did you run into any similar issue?

      • MadEarl@lemmy.ml
        0·
        6 months ago

        Had that happen after BIOS updates. Sending it to sleep and waking it up once always fixed it for me.

    • cmnybo@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
      0·
      6 months ago

      I’ve got a T480 and it gets really good battery life. Having a hot swapable battery is nice too. I would suggest avoiding the ones with a dedicated GPU though. They are power hungry and don’t have enough performance to be worth it.

    • dingdongitsabear@lemmy.ml
      0·
      6 months ago

      what they said but don’t go below T480; the performance jump is huge (quad vs dual-core) and the price difference is negligible while almost everything is interchangeable (screens, keyboards, cards, plastic parts, dock stations, etc.).

      T480 should be attainable around the $/€ 200 mark nowadays as they’re 5-6 gens behind and upgrading 'em to like 16 or 32 GB and 1TB NVMe or more is stupid cheap.

  • Engywuck@lemm.ee
    0·
    6 months ago

    I have a cheap Thinkpad from 2018 (E580). A couple of years ago I expanded its ram to 16 GB, added a NVME disk and an second-hand AX wifi card and it still serves me very very well.

  • d3Xt3r@lemmy.nz
    0·
    6 months ago

    I personally use a ThinkPad Z13 (all AMD; it’s nice but pricey), but I’d recommend getting a Framework (which wasn’t an option for me back then). I think modular and repairable laptops are cool, plus they seem to be well supported by the Linux community.

    • Lumilias@pawb.socialEnglish
      0·
      6 months ago

      The only caution I would provide on Framework is their relative lack of BIOS updates: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/04/frameworks-software-and-firmware-have-been-a-mess-but-its-working-on-them/

      They don’t have a BIOS updater for Linux (yet) and they have a history of overpromising stable updates. I get they’re hamstrung by upstream providers, but it’s a bad look on them to basically deliver a promised Thunderbolt update 1.5 years after announcing it. The CEO did say at least that they’ve hired on a new development team to get things moving, so hopefully they’ll be able to catch up.

      Everything else I’ve heard about Framework is stellar.

      • kelvie@lemmy.ca
        0·
        6 months ago

        I updated my AMD framework BIOS using fwupd last weekend with no problem on arch.

      • www-gem@lemmy.ml
        0·
        6 months ago

        I’ve been watching on the framework machines for my next one. It looks like fwupd support them for BIOS updates. Framework owners will know more for sure.

  • Corroded@leminal.spaceEnglish
    0·
    6 months ago

    ThinkPad x200s. I recently did the USB C charging mod and upgraded to WiFi 6E. I’ve had Libreboot installed for a while now.

    I do wish I could have more than 8GB of RAM though.

  • Imprint9816@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    0·
    6 months ago

    I typically use a desktop but I’ve worked office jobs all my life, so I have a bunch of spare “retired” thinkpads I use if I need a laptop.

    If I was going to buy a new laptop Framework really appeals to me although the continuing issue of slow firmware updates might keep me away.

    Probably would just go with a secure core PC instead, especially if I was going to keep personal data on it.

  • some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org
    0·
    6 months ago

    Framework is making machines that I find really interesting. I’m a Mac person, so I don’t have one and can’t speak to the experience.

    • egonallanon@lemm.ee
      0·
      6 months ago

      As an owner of a 13 I really like it. I only use it mostly as a YouTube and email machine while most ofy heavy duty work is on a desktop but it does well enough running popos. They are a bit pricey to buy new thiugh so either get one of the older one used or go the used think pad route for a similarly repairable experience.

      • sunstoned@lemmus.orgEnglish
        0·
        6 months ago

        I use my Framework 13 (Intel 12th gen) for some heavy CPU workloads and it’s been a champ! For the balance of quality, performance, cost, and repairability I really don’t think it can be beat.

  • jokeyrhyme@lemmy.mlEnglish
    0·
    6 months ago

    Without being specific, I’d try to get something with firmware updates available on LVFS: https://fwupd.org/

    And you might want to check for distribution specific notes on that model e.g.

    If Wayland is more important to you than AI/ML/LLMs then you probably don’t want anything with an nVidia GPU

  • cosmic_cowboy@reddthat.comEnglish
    0·
    6 months ago

    System76 has some good options. A little overpriced, but your money goes towards an open-source friendly company.