PPS: Please at least TRY to read the following (if possible, not just the title) with an open mind and in a spirit of tolerance. It was written in good faith by a Linux user who will be staying on Linux.
PPPS: Among all the mean-spirited downvoting and insults and calumny (hey, this is social media) I actually learned a few useful things from this discussion. Perhaps the highlight was the tip about an obscure crowdfunded project which really fits the bill. Too late this time but I’m hopeful such projects, including Pine and Framework, might be become more available and more affordable in future.
PPPPS: I do not reply to downvoters (after all, you’re declaring you don’t care what I have to say). Or to people who obviously have not read beyond the title. Sorry. My post is very clear and I cannot express what I wrote better. In summary: There is a worsening problem with Linux compatibility on low-end hardware, due to the decline of desktop computing and in particular to the insurgency of ARM and Mediatek. It may hurt to hear it but it’s true and we should care about it. Thanks to those who offered constructive feedback.
I’m frustrated. Once again, I have had to buy a computer I didn’t want in order to stay on Linux.
Some background. Compared to most people in this forum, I am a somewhat normal computer user. That is, I have not touched a mouse in decades, I use a small lightweight low-end laptop (which is not slow on Linux), and I do not take anything to pieces. To be clear, I’m a programmer and a massive FOSS idealist. But I’ve never been interested in hardware, and in this respect I’m a complete normie. Let’s not forget that for most ordinary people, a “computer” these days is the tethered corporate toy in their pocket.
For me this slide away from free personal computing is now getting impossible to ignore.
- 20 years ago I could buy a laptop (a Fujitsu) from a major European electronics retailer which came with a Linux CD - a Linux CD! (Kanotix, a Debian variant).
- In the late 2010s, I had a nice choice of cheap Taiwanese Wintel netbooks. So there was a Windows tax to pay but at least the hardware worked fine.
- 4 years ago, the options were getting thin on the ground. For 400€ I could find only one Linux-compatible X86 laptop, made by Acer. And since I didn’t have a Linux live USB, I had to (fake-) register the thing with Microsoft in order to get access to the damn web.
- Today, there’s almost nothing left. Intel laptops have all but disappeared from the budget aisle, replaced by ARM-powered Chromebooks and, increasingly, big Android tablets with keyboards. Putting non-spyware Linux on these things is often possible, sort of, but it’s a nightmare. You’re back to the 2010 era of ROM-flashing on Android, using repos from random developers and wading through impenetrable forum discussions. It’s a massive PITA. This is not the way computing should be done, and normal users will never do it even if they were capable. It’s hardly secure either.
The geeky suggestion which I can hear coming, “buy a secondhand Thinkpad”, is not a proper solution. It’s a band-aid fix with a timeout (PS: meaning it’s on the way to EOL). Hardware from the likes of Tuxedo and Framework is nice but too heavy (PS: correction, Framework is not heavy) and way too expensive for me. The Pinebook Pro is always out of stock.
And anyway, for years I have wanted to move from a laptop to a convertible tablet (like the Surface or Lenovo’s Yoga and Duet lines) (PS: meaning the form factor pioneered by those models, the cheap options these days are invariably on ARM). It makes so much sense ergonomically and even in terms of maintenance. (Keyboards have moving parts. I have to change my Acer because it has a faulty keyboard which cannot be fixed except professionally at prohibitive cost. Crazy.) But none of these computers are easily compatible with Linux. It’s possible, yes, but hardly simple.
I considered, for a fleeting moment, throwing in the towel. After 20 years.
And then bought yet another laptop, basically the same model as last time except a Chromebook. I know I’ll get an OS I control onto it without too much stress. That’s a relief. But I’m more worried than ever about how this story is going to end.
PS: I should have predicted the bitterness and negativity and cynicism I would provoke simply by sharing my thoughts and feelings in good faith. Social media is absolutely incorrigible. In the meantime I will of course be staying on Linux, as I thought I described.
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I’m not really sure what you’re complaining about here. Laptops are too expensive? Yeah, so is everything else. That has nothing to do with Linux. And why would buying a second hand machine be a temporary solution? Laptops are always being phased out and flogged off for cheap. And you can run Linux on pretty much any x86 machine, now and in the foreseeable future.
At this rate there won’t be any left. Did you read what I wrote closely, or just the vibes part?
PS: to be clear, literally all your questions are answered in my post.
So long as there are businesses needing laptops and on regular upgrade cycles, I would believe there will still be surplus for us. Let someone else pay the new car tax. I’m buying used until prices improve.
I have used ThinkCentres for a router and Nextcloud setup, a year behind refurb ThinkPad for mobile work, and server parts deal hard drives in my NAS.
As hinted, what I’m looking for is smaller, lighter, fanless, basically a glorified tablet. What lives in the niche occupied by netbooks a decade ago. There are more and more options. But this time the hardware is all but incompatible with Linux.
For slightly more serious hardware your plan is decent. Pretty green too.
Yeah, I’m waiting to see what the ARM based laptops can do in the role as a couch computer. If I were to bet on which laptop now would fit your needs, check out a Pinebook.
Absolutely. Was ready to buy the Pinebook. “Out of stock”. It seems they produce them in unpredictable and insufficient batches which get snapped up before anyone notices they’re on sale. Sigh.
Looks like you can buy all the parts from Pine and assemble one yourself except for the battery and speakers. Sourcing a battery and speakers shouldn’t be too much trouble compared to a mainboard.
https://pine64.com/product-category/pinebook-pro-spare-parts/
assemble one yourself
I am challenged by wiring a plug. But thanks for the tip!
I’m committed to the Chromebook this time but in a few years it’s gonna have to be a solution like the Pinebook. Or something like this, which someone else suggested and is basically exactly what I was dreaming of (possibly excepting price): https://www.braxtech.net/open-slate
Have you considered the macbook neo, it’s not a Linux machine, but it is probably the cheapest machine that fits the glorified tablet footprint. I don’t understand the draw to something that basic and lightweight, but if it mattered to me I would probably go with that. Otherwise, as others have pointed out, some flavor of Linux will run on just about anything that isn’t ARM at this point, and I wouldn’t be surprised if an old netbook would just work for your use case with a lightweight distro.
I would sooner gnaw off my leg than use a black box of closed-source software made by a company as opaque and rich and powerful as Apple. I don’t doubt that the hardware is very good.
No, not all questions were answered in the post. He asked why secondhand laptops were a bandaid solution, and the post only made the claim that it was a bandaid fix, without explanation. They said that businesses will basically always be buying new fleet laptops, and thus there will basically always be secondhand laptops. Why wouldn’t that work?
Secondhand is a band-aid because (1) some people will never buy secondhand and (2), a piece of hardware inevitably has a life expectancy. Seems self-evident to me that these things are a problem if we care about still having FOSS computing in a decade or two.
After 20 years. [Of using Linux] But none of these computers are easily compatible with Linux. It’s possible, yes, but hardly simple.
What Linux distro are you using in 2026 that still struggles with hardware driver support for mainline systems from a manufacturer you’ve heard of? Most driver hardship these days stems from putting Linux on locked down or uncommon/ niche hardware. Basically any system you’ve listed will do fine without tinkering, pick the system you want with the features you need, buy it, then install Linux. I bet most things just work out of the box.
Please re-read the paragraph where I describe what is available, on the shelf, in an the same affordable price bracket, now compared to 20 years ago.
PS: inane toxic downvoting does not make facts disappear. My observation was pretty watertight: in the low-end hardware niche, Linux is now significantly less well supported than a decade ago. That should be a problem for everyone here.
400€ in 2006-money is 600€ today. Starlabs used to have a cheap model, but I guess it’s hard for anyone to be in the budget segment with RAM prices these days. I bought a huawei matebook a few years back for about 600€ - they’re sold with Linux pre-installed in China, but not here. But that means that stuff is well-supported.
In my mind the landscape is quite a bit better than 20 years ago. You’d have to pick and choose a model that worked well then. Chipsets are usually well supported by the time they are in laptops today.
The Microsoft tax has been under pretty heavy NDAs lately, but it wouldn’t surprise me if M$ were paying to be pre-installed. They’re in the data mining business, not operating systems in 2026.
But yes, we’re all still waiting for the year of the Linux desktop.
Chipsets are usually well supported by the time they are in laptops today.
I don’t get where you’re coming from, unless you’re talking exclusively about expensive, heavy, Intel-powered laptops. The cheaper ones are now moving en-masse to ARM and Mediatek, along with the convertible tablets that are replacing them. All this stuff (and there’s lots of it) is all but incompatible with Linux.
I’m coming from the past, back when the distribution came on two HD diskettes named Linux 0.99b. It was a gradual change to come to the point where you could just assume that you’d have a good time on Linux. I guess static kernel modules was the starting point, and even then it took years. Remember, We’ve only had loadable kernel modules since 2011.
linux-on-laptops.com was invaluable before making a purchase.
ARM is a different story, mostly hindered by not having any universal way of booting and detecting hardware.
Lots of companies sell laptops with Linux on them. One is in the Netherlands.
Yes, for 1000€-plus. A decade ago you could go to a big-box store and get a Linux-compatible computer for a fraction of that. Today you cannot.
Starts at about 40% higher than my budget with nothing in the convertible category, or fanless, or just small. All of which is available today from any electronics retailer, but basically incompatible with Linux.
Hopefully specialist sellers like this will begin to move downmarket into these new niches.
Sorry.
Picking hardware these days is like trying to find the best drop of water in a bag of dirt.
https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/configurator/cto/index.html?bundleId=21R3CTO1WWUS1
New Lenovo ThinkPad T14s 2-in-1 Intel (14″). You get a $94 Windows tax deduction when you configure it with Ubuntu.
It’s rather deliberate at this point. They are at war with general purpose computers, because we depend on those in order to have GNU/Linux, just as we depend on a free and open Internet to have this platform. If they can get the herd to fully embrace these locked-down infernal machines, that will be it, on a certain level. We will have RISC-V and the ability to deploy to FPGAs, but the voice of Little Brother will be heard only on their whim.
Yeah, after reading your whole post, I don’t understand why you are so frustrated.
You mention finding a Linux compatible laptop, but it doesn’t seem hard. I didn’t even go the thinkpad route, I got an IdeaPad. And even afterwards, I swapped it for a OneXPlayer. On top of that I have two XPS’s running Arch. And that’s just laptops, I also built a gaming PC for it. And I have a docker host plus a dual socket hypervisor both running Linux.
I just don’t feel like it is particularly hard to find a Linux compatible laptop, sure I had to update a wireless card to use my Bluetooth 5.3 headset, but beyond that I simply haven’t had an issue. In terms of a convertible laptop, check out the company I linked the product I got may suit you, or if it is too small look at the Super. Even way it is literally an x86_64 tablet with a magnetic keyboard.
Edit: fair warning, the display is top right (1600x2560) and I had to rotate it via limine Linux kernel parameters and hyprland. Also, it doesn’t like cachyos for the same reason. Arch with linux-cachyos via chaotic aur? That works fine. No idea what breaks it, but I rather like omarchy anyways and didn’t wanna change back.
From what i understand, the yogas work well on linux. it’s surprising to hear they’re not compatible
I know you may be feeling disappointment and exhaustion from the negative replies, but please dont stop talking about this issue. Im a technical guy. Ive got no problem with - and in fact find it fun to - flash and deal with the problems you describe, but I also desire linux to become at the very least one of the main OSs people use. To do that, I realise it needs to be a simple enough process, which it is installer wise if you have a flashed USB (also not a complicated process nowadays to do). However as you describe, its the hardware compatibility and support from HW vendors that is the main hurdle now.
Make noise. Just like your post. Weve been making noise on the software compatibility enough to the point its now no longer impossible to have a linux system runnung with the software we need for daily life/work/school, but the next step is getting the HW manufacturers on board. I do feel like its a cycle though, of not enough number of users to convince HW manufacturers to officially support linux, and not enough HW support to get the users we need to migrate to linux. Who knows how it will turn out or how long it will take, but for sure we need to be making noise to get the support we want.
Thanks for the solidarity and encouragement. Honestly, this not the first time this happened - i.e. carefully writing a post that I naively assumed might start a fruitful conversation but instead got mocked and downvoted to oblivion because… human nature, it seems. Each time I tell myself: not trying that again, maybe it’s time to leave social media. And each time there’s a friendly person like you who pops up with some nice words and I feel better straight away! Thanks.
