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i'm at roughly 7 years on this very-well-traveled thinkpad, and it gets to be that time again. i am looking for a *small, light* laptop.
i travel soon, so memories of ~2008 netbooks trickle through my mind, though i know we aren't allowed nice things any more.
needs to run:
- debian stable, cleanly
- firefox with some middling-heavy tabs like slack (i know, i know, ugh)
- some containers w/php web apps inside
tell me what laptop you would get? (fiddly details inside)
@brennen
Any suitable Lenovo or Dell which is available with Ubuntu (or Fedora) preinstalled in your region. That guarantees the components are exactly Linux certified with drivers available/upstreamed, buying the "same" model with no OS (or proprietary OS) does not.
So, Lenovo X1 Carbon 13th gen, Z13 Gen 2 if available, maybe T14s gen 6 (AMD or Intel), or Dell XPS 13.
@brennen Another thinkpad or maybe HP. For debian-ness, I might check what the camera setup is on the laptop, since I know some more recent laptops have IPUs that need odd support for the camera.
tell me what laptop you would get? (fiddly details inside)
@brennen what qualifies as "light" to you?
work forced me to get a recent thinkpad t14 and the form factor feels nice and light (way lighter than what I think of as "t series" weight) but maybe not netbook-light? how many kg you lookin' at?
suggestions from recent experience most appreciated.
please do not:
- recommend a device which will not run debian without many hoops jumped
- tell me about an apple device
- recommend a tablet, phablet, phone, or other thing that does not have a keyboard baked in
- remind me that i am destroying the earth by being the kind of person who goes places with a laptop for a living, believe me i am already trailed by a cloud of shame
tell me what laptop you would get? (maloney clauses)
(footnote to point the first - if you have a tiny lil laptop you like and have no idea wtf i'm talking about re: debian, i'd love to hear about it, i'm just doing some pre-emptive weeding of a certain class of nerd reply.)
@brennen I have a ThinkPad X1 Carbon (G6, but ThinkPads all work well with Debian), which is capable and lightweight, and runs very well with Debian stable, but is constrained to 16 GiB RAM, which is why I switched to the Framework.
@brennen one of the current crop of slim folding phones paired with a cheap folding Bluetooth keyboard gets you laptop power in your pocket(s).
But of course that would be Android unless you are very brave 😁
@essjax in terms of raw compute it's wild how much is jammed into a phone these days, but in terms of what software i'm actually going to run and how i'm gonna talk to it, it's wild how unsuited such capable devices are to the task.
@brennen The latest time I was buying a laptop was last year, and I got a Framework, but due to their big tent nazi bar stance, I'm not getting another and don't recommend it to others, either. I've started collecting links for when I need a laptop again, hopefully not in several years.
https://www.tuxedocomputers.com/index.php
https://system76.com/
https://novacustom.com/
https://gpdstore.net/
Also, a refurbished ThinkPad is always an option for me.
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