this post was submitted on 05 Apr 2025
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I would like to buy myself a second hand and install Linux on it. I was looking into ThinkPad T14 gen1 or gen2 devices because of their maintainability and repairability. I found one where I live with a Ryzen processor but it has the wrong keyboard. How easy and expensive would it be to swap this with US English? Are there any good alternatives to the ThinkPads? I fancy the X1 but don't like the fact that I cannot change or swap anything on it. The T14 looks very bulky and unattractive but at least can have the RAM upgraded and the battery changed.

I fancy the Framework laptops, but don't want to spend so much on a laptop. Especially the latest 16 inch with Ryzen AI CPUs.

The T14 G1 is at least cheap, like 350€ with the 400 nits low power display and the battery is at 99%. I guess with tlp installed and autocpugfreq I can get 5-6 hours out of it.

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[–] LeFantome@programming.dev 6 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Older MacBooks and MacBook Airs (pre-2018 or so) make awesome Linux machines and have really come down in price. If you can find one cheap, I highly recommend them.

Intel machines later than that have T2 chips and are still good but take a bit more research.

M1 Macs are pretty well supported now but that is a different universe.

[–] marauding_gibberish142@lemmy.dbzer0.com 11 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Older MacBooks still have that darned WiFi card which you need special proprietary drivers for. And basically nothing in that chassis is standard; everything is Apple-specific if you want to repair it. I don't recommend MacBooks

[–] filister@lemmy.world 5 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Yes, exactly, what attracts me to Framework and ThinkPad is the repairability

Personally, Framework has become a bit too expensive for me. If you're in the US I'd look at the older Dell precision and HP ZBook workstations from 2020 or earlier, they have amazing specs and go for $400 or so. Fairly repairable because enterprises demanded that they be and gobs of power for anything you want.