I can't help you directly, but I can offer some encouagemnet on the Linux front. I just installed Pop!Os on a 15 year old laptop. The only technical things I had to do were download the software that let me put the installer on a flash drive, and dig up one console command to enable the very old touchscreen. Everything else in the experience has been as easy as Windows. In some cases, easier - for example, software updates don't force the computer to restart
this post was submitted on 16 Mar 2025
7 points (100.0% liked)
Laptops Community
167 readers
173 users here now
Welcome to /c/Laptops!
/c/Laptops is the hub for laptops on Lemmy. Talk about the newest laptop launches, innovations in laptop tech, seek purchase recommendations, receive assistance for issues, provide insightful reviews, and more!
To talk about gaming laptops, please head over to /c/GamingLaptops. This community is only appropriate for non-gaming laptops.
Rules (Click to Expand):
-
Follow the Lemmy.world Rules - https://mastodon.world/about
-
Be kind. No bullying, harassment, racism, sexism etc. against other users.
-
No Spam, illegal content, or NSFW content.
-
Please stay on topic, adjacent topics (e.g. software) are fine if they are strongly relevant to laptop hardware.
-
Please try and post original sources when possible (as opposed to summaries).
-
If posting an archived version of the article, please include a URL link to the original article in the body of the post.
Some other hardware communities across Lemmy:
- Augmented Reality - [email protected]
- Gaming Laptops - [email protected]
- Hardware - [email protected]
- Linux Hardware - [email protected]
- Mechanical Keyboards - [email protected]
- Microcontrollers - [email protected]
- Monitors - [email protected]
- Raspberry Pi - [email protected]
- Retro Computing - [email protected]
- Single Board Computers - [email protected]
- Virtual Reality - [email protected]
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
Sounds good, I'll keep that in mind.
Used Thinkpads get a lot of positive press. You're right to look into that.
Might be hard at that price point but try to avoid anything with a hard drive. You definitely want an SSD.
If you feel adventurous it’s really not difficult to swap a hard drive for SSD, if you are ok doing that it will open up a lot more options.
Sorry, what's an SSD and why is it better than a hard drive?
SSD stands for Solid State Drive. Hard drives have spinning disks, they wear out much faster, especially in portable devices like a laptop. They are also MUCH slower than SSD’s. System responsiveness is going to be way better with an SSD. Just changing HDD to SSD, a super slow, nearly unusable system, can become completely usable for day to day activities.
One thing to consider is the availability of batteries (and their cost) when buying a second hand laptop. If you want to use the laptop for a while, if is probably worth investing in a battery replacement. Laptops with DVD drive will be 7-8 years old, so the batteries are almost certainly likely to busted.
As other have mentioned, you want an SSD with at least 256 GB of space.
I would also say 8GB RAM is minimum these days.
You also want a screen with at least 1920 x 1080 resolution.
You should be able to get something like that for €200-€250 euro, but the battery replacement might end up being another €75 on top, maybe more.