this post was submitted on 04 Aug 2023
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Old Thinkpads make great Linux laptops with almost all models having all drivers working out of the box. Any model sufficiently new will work much better than any new laptop in the same price category. They also have great ports, replaceble batteries, screen, keyboards, ram, ssd and so on. I have a X250 and my wife have an T440s.
Buy anything newer then this (40 is my recommended minimum) if u want to use them as daily driver:
X440 (the smaller 13 inch laptops start with X)
T440 (14 inch, top of the class performance vs sleekness)
L440 (14 inch, don't know what's special here)
W540 (15 inch, workstation)
Some models can end with an S or P, example T440S. S models are thinner, P models are more powerful.
Just search your local marketplaces for "ThinkPad" then look for a picture of the screen and you will see the model number in the bottom left corner. ThinkPads have a red nob on the keyboard, so if the picture don't have a nob, you can flick past it quicker ๐
You can even get one with the wrong keyboard layout and just replace it, they have so many replacement parts on ebay you can build one from scratch if you wanted. I replaced my keyboard to get backlighting and my screen to get 1920*1080 on a x250 I got for about 125 Dollar.
PS: don't get a E variant, they are the budget variants with way worse build quality.
Edit: formatting