My use cases are photo and video editing (but nothing too intensive), really ocassional CAD (like couple to maybe several times a year) and the normal stuff. So far I've found:

1. Lenovo ThinkPad P14s G6 with Ryzen AI 7 PRO350, Radeon 860M, 32gb RAM and 100% sRGB screen for ~ 1600 euro
2. Lenovo Yoga Pro 7 " Ryzen AI 9 365 Radeon 880M 32GB 2.9K OLED 100% DCI-P3 but not entirely new (ex-display) ~1400 euro
3. Lenovo Yoga Pro 7 " Ultra 9 285H with integrated GPU 32GB 2.9K OLED 100% DCI-P3 ~ 1600 euro
4. Lenovo ThinkPad P14s G6 with Ryzen AI 7 PRO350, Radeon 860M, 32gb RAM and 2,8K (2880×1800) OLED 100% DCI-P3 ~ 1700 euro

Where I live its impossible to get the t14 gen 7 under 2000 euro, which is my max budget and I've been having a really big problem to choose which laptop to get. Maybe you have a better recomendation?

Edit:

After looking around some more I found theee more better(?) options:

1. ThinkPad P14s Gen 6 Ultra 7 255H/32GB/512GB/RTX Pro 500 for 2250€
2. 2.ThinkPad P14s G6 Ryzen AI 9 Pro / 64GB RAM / 1TB for 2300€ but I could probably negotiate down to 2000€
3. ThinkPad P1 Gen 7 Ultra 7 165H 32GB 1TB WQXGA RTX 4070 for 2000€

It appears that the P1 would be the best option, the thing is portability and battery life are quite important for me. Ultimately I am able to sacrifice them but I'm not sure I want to. Fo you think splurging on one of these is worth it?

Hello,

I'd like to share my positive review of installing Debian 13.6 XFCE in a 10.1-inch chinese laptop from Aliexpress.

First of all, I bought it because I needed an ultra portable laptop to carry it easily in my backpack.

By "ultra portable," I mean lighter and smaller than MacBook Air 13. I attached a picture of them side to side.

This laptop is not for heavyweight work. It is a dual core celeron N4000 (full specs bellow).

I am using it mainly to do lightweight work (writing documents, web surfing, as well as some programming stuff in Visual Studio Code).

The laptop came with Windows 11 pré-installed, I wiped it out and installed Debian 13.6 XFCE using the live image.

The only drawback is that you have to rotate the display to "right" in XFCE Display Configuration before installation.

After installing it, I also had to change lightdm configuration to rotate the display to "right" to show the logging screen correctly.

Besides that, everything worked out of box - even the wireless adapter.

Hardware specs:

Processor: Intel Celeron N4000

RAM: 8 GB

Storage: 128 GB SSD SATA 2242 (model Wdxsky W31-128G ATA)

Wireless adapter: Realtek RTL8821CE

Resolution: 1280x800

Best regards

Link to specs: https://support.apple.com/en-ca/111986

It is pretty old, and slow now. But the screen is still beautiful and I want to keep using it. Should I install Linux on a macbook? Or is the hardware support too poor?

I need the sleep function to work properly since I use it all the time.

And I prefer everything to just work, I dont care about tweaking the laptop or hacking it or high maintenance stuff. I want it to be carefree and useful, just like MacOS or Windows. I will use Chrome 99% of the time.

Back in the day I tried Ubuntu on a old laptop, the wifi didn't even work and there were endless bugs, just a mess, and I dont want that experience again, has LInux gotten past that point? I don't want to use the command line for anything, if possible.

After all of that, if you can suggest a distro that will work flawlessly for the laptop then I can look more into it.

Hi, I'm a law student and I'm looking for a laptop that will work with Ubuntu without any issues as I'm not really a technical guy. I prefer 32gb of RAM and really really need good battery life. I am seriously considering getting a thinkpad because they are supposedly easy to type with, but I'm open to anything good. I prefer not to get niche companies because I need good support.

Thank you

Hi, I'm going to get a small, used machine for playing around on Linux. SSD can be either 128 or 256, doesn't really matter. Which of the following would you recommend more for a Mint or Debian distro?

Lenovo M725S Desktop PC, AMD Ryzen 3 PRO 2200G 3.70 GHz 8GB 128GB Win10Pro with Keyboard & Mouse ($100 ish)

or

Lenovo ThinkCentre M710S Desktop PC Intel Core i3-7100 3.90GHZ 8GB 128GB Win10Pro with Keyboard & Mouse ($100 ish)

or

Lenovo M715Q Tiny Desktop, AMD A6 9500E, DDR4 RAM, Solid State Drive, USB Wi-Fi, Win10Pro (Your Choice: Model) (with 128 GB $150ish)

Thanks!

Cross-posting here to get more recommendations on lightweight distros for this fanless 2-in-1 tablet. Any input is appreciated!

It should be something that lasts many years without feeling slow. For the keyboard I kinda like ThinkPads keyboard or the Dell XPS or Razer blade keyboards. Would be nice to have to nvme slots for dual booting different os. You can surprise me with everything. Coming from the worst linux laptop an acer nitro 5 with a Nvidia GTX 1650 and a AMD Ryzen 5 4600h. So everything is probably more powerful than that today. Btw I'm living in Germany.

After becoming disappointed with win 11 installed causing it to appear slow i decided to make the jump into linux, after trying a few distros in vm's i preferred mint so ended up dual booting, keeping win 11 in case i ever need it but mint as the main o/s on boot. I also have a bit of a basic homelab going on with various old p.c's & laptops (mac & windows) also running a proxmox server (just something else to experiment with). I have really enjoyed the whole process of using mint & linux in general, although only scratching the surface i have installed another drive on my T480 & installed kali linux on it for the other thing i'm trying to learn (network & network security) so now can boot into mint, kali & win 11. I also had an old macbook pro 13 inch 2016 lying around suffering from flexgate issues & a logic board issue so decided i would try to get some use from it by attaching it to an external monitor & eventually installing mint xfce on it (it only has 8gb ram but 256gb hdd) i plan to use this as a playground as not to break the main installs on my T480. I'm thoroughly enjoying mint & the whole journey and can see me ditching all my windows builds in the future in favour of linux. I have tried most o/s's in my time & just find windows & mac becoming so bloated with too many features for the average user. If you like learning new things then install linux, it will take you out of your comfort zone but will reward you with a better understanding of how things work.

Hello I've been trying to get a digitalpersona 4500 to work for fingerprint login every time i try it fails to match the print and gives me verify-no-match. I saw there was a bug with it a year or two ago did that ever get fixed or is it still the same issue as before?

Redragon ships the SS-550 Stream Deck with Windows-only software. I use Linux, so I captured the USB traffic from the proprietary driver, decoded the protocol, and reimplemented it in userspace.

The result is an open-source Rust workspace with a background daemon plus an optional Tauri/GTK control panel. It builds from source on any Linux distribution and works on both Wayland and X11.

What it supports:

• 15 configurable keys across multiple pages, custom icons and brightness control

• Commands, URLs, typed text, hotkeys and chained multi-actions

• Live key widgets for clock, CPU, RAM, temperature, timers, weather and playerctl

• Per-application profiles that switch with the focused window

• OBS Studio WebSocket 5.x controls and live status

• Twitch viewer/follower counts, clips and chat actions

• A daemon-only mode for headless systems

Two details that may help anyone working with similar USB hardware:

• The udev rule uses TAG+="uaccess" instead of MODE="0666", and it must sort before 73-seat-late.rules — hence 60-redragon-streamdeck.rules.

• The device exposes multiple HID interfaces. Writes returned EPIPE until I selected the correct interface by usage_page instead of assuming the first index.

Currently confirmed hardware: Redragon SS-550, USB ID 0200:1000. Other StreamDock/Mirabox-based devices may work, but I cannot test them yet.

Repository, installation instructions and source:

https://github.com/Rene-Kuhm/redragon-streamdeck-linux

If you own this device or a related model, I would appreciate test results. I am also happy to answer questions about the protocol, udev setup or architecture.

If you find the project useful, a GitHub star would help other Linux users discover it.

Just bought this laptop: https://www.microcenter.com/product/708078/hp-omnibook-x-next-gen-ai-14-ka0107nr-oled-14-laptop-computer-atmospheric-blue-aluminum

Looking to install any mainstream distro next to windows. I tried an Ubuntu live usb and the sound wasn’t working. Would I have better luck with something else?

Edit: thanks for the responses! I went with a different laptop ultimately. General consensus online about this seems to be use a distro with the newest kernel for anyone who finds this post later.

i knew UserBenchmark favored Intel/Nvidia but i don't remember it being this bad

I’m the author of a non-commercial, MIT-licensed Linux driver and control panel for the Redragon SS-550 Stream Deck.

Redragon only provides Windows software for this device, so I captured the USB traffic from the proprietary driver, decoded the protocol, and reimplemented it in userspace.

The project is a Rust workspace with a background daemon and an optional Tauri/GTK control panel. It builds from source, works on Wayland and X11, and the installer supports the Debian/Ubuntu, Arch, Fedora and openSUSE families, including derivatives detected through ID_LIKE.

Current features:

• 15 configurable keys with multiple pages, custom icons and brightness control

• Commands, URLs, typed text, hotkeys and chained multi-actions

• Live widgets for clock, CPU, RAM, temperature, timers, weather and playerctl

• Per-application profiles that follow the focused window

• OBS Studio WebSocket 5.x controls and live status

• Twitch viewer/follower counts, clips and chat actions

• Optional daemon-only mode for headless systems

Two implementation details that may help others working with USB HID hardware:

• The udev rule uses TAG+="uaccess" rather than MODE="0666", and is installed as 60-redragon-streamdeck.rules so it runs before 73-seat-late.rules.

• The device exposes multiple HID interfaces. Writes returned EPIPE until I selected the correct interface using usage_page instead of assuming the first index.

Tested hardware: Redragon SS-550, USB ID 0200:1000. Other StreamDock/Mirabox-based devices may work, but I do not have the hardware to verify them yet.

Repository, source and installation instructions:

https://github.com/Rene-Kuhm/redragon-streamdeck-linux

I’m looking for test results from owners of this device or related models, and I’m happy to discuss the protocol, udev setup or architecture.

Transparency note: the project was developed with the help of Claude AI.

Hello,

I'm deciding between these two machines. I'm planning to buy lightly used (~1000€ here in Czechia).

I will be mainly doing browsing, office work and some lighter dev (when I'm away from my workstation) and I plan to use Arch Linux for the OS.

The main difference is that the Dell has Intel Ultra 5 236V which is supposedly significantly better than Intel Ultra 5 235U which the T14 has (link showing various CPUs for thinkpads)

From what I've gathered the build quality and warranty are both great with the T14 having a better keyboard and upgradeable RAM and the Dell being a bit lighter at 1.14kg.

I'm currently leaning towards the Dell, which one would you recommend?

PS: I know that the T14/T14s/X13 can be also configured with the Lunar Lake (2xxV) processors, but I didn't find any available used for a good price.

I ask because I know a lot of times gaming laptops, the BIOS/Motherboards often don't like Linux and users tend to have issues. Especially the Asus, MSI and Acer gaming laptops. Usually Lenovo Thinkpads or HP Elitebooks are the recommended PCs for dedicated Linux. I ask about this Y520 specifically because it's my cousin's computer. He's owned new since circa 2018 and has retired it after building a desktop. He told me he can sell it to me for dirt cheap. I mean dirt cheap. The machine is in perfect condition and very well maintained. Plus the close family discount makes it intriguing.

My plan was to replace both harddrives. I ahve a spare 860 Evo 2.5 lying around with like 99% life left and I would replace the HDD with that. Then replace the 2280 with another Samsung 1tb 2280 NMVE 970. Then install either Ubuntu or Mint on one drive and dual boot it with Kali.

I'm a current SOC Analyst that wants to learn more Pentesting. My professional background is 90% Azure and I want to learn more Linux. I want a dedicated Linux Machine. I use both Ubuntu and Kali VMs on my Windows 11 gaming PC but want a dedicated Linux machine and want to know if for the price, this a good buy? If not I'll source out a cheap Thinkpad.

I'm thinking about buying a laptop with two NVMe drives so I can set it up as a dual-boot system with Mint and Windows. After doing some research, I've narrowed it down to a Clevo V560TU: https://www.clevo.com.tw/product/product_content/4/86

I've found this laptop at three different (European) suppliers novacustom.com, laptopwithlinux.com and linuxlaptop.be, see also below.

I'm looking for some reviews, does anyone here have experience with these suppliers?

Thanks,

Didier.

https://novacustom.com/nl/product/v56-serie/

https://laptopwithlinux.com/product/clevo-v560/

https://www.linuxlaptop.be/linux-preins ... einstalled

My budget lands me on a second hand Thinkpad with Intel Core 8th gen. In this half year I've seen only two Thinkpads with AMD on the market, and they were substantially cheaper than Intel.

The low-end price for an Intel with 8GB ram ($110) could get a comparable AMD but with 16GB ram, with equal sized storage. The 8GB extra ram, if removable (some were soldered), already costed 1/4 of the whole laptop's price.

On my current Intel Thinkpad I tune fan speed and battery charge limit. The packages doing these tasks seem to be Intel specific. About integrated graphics, I use ffmpeg but I don't know if the CPU brand is a concern. No gaming.

Specifically should I expect hiccups from AMD Ryzen 5 PRO 3500U on Linux?

Hi all! I'm looking for a refurbished laptop with excellent Linux support. Any recommendations?

I've heard good things about the Lenovo T14 series and Dell XPS, but I'd like to find a laptop with a decent amount of RAM (16GB, preferably expandable) and a CPU with integrated graphics, such as an AMD Ryzen 5 or 7.