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.

  • filister@lemmy.worldOP
    41·
    24 hours ago

    For personal use, I will use it just when traveling, as I have a more powerful desktop. Nothing too fancy, a bit of programming, tinkering. Will run probably Hyprland. What’s important is to have 5-6 hours of battery life. I will probably run some containers, YouTube watching, browsing, should be portable and support charging over USB-C.

    • mbirth@lemmy.ml
      2·
      23 hours ago

      About the last bit: There are these now. Available for all usual laptop plugs and voltages. Much easier to carry with you than a separate AC brick.

        • mbirth@lemmy.ml
          2·
          23 hours ago

          Yeah, but if your dream second hand laptop has everything but USB-C charging, you can easily get such adapter and basically make it USB-C charging capable. 😉

          • filister@lemmy.worldOP
            2·
            23 hours ago

            I tend to lose adapters to be honest. And right now I am trying to get everything possible to support USB-C as it is super convenient and the chargers are also really small.

    • CameronDev@programming.dev
      1·
      22 hours ago

      This is basically the opposite of a thinkpad/framework, but m1 macbook airs are cheapish second hand, plenty of battery life, USBC, lightweight and durable. Definitely not repairable or upgradable though, so if thats important forget it.

      Can install Linux (asahi project), but macos is Unix like enough that I found it good enough.