I'm looking at getting a cheap, small, light laptop (real laptop, not ChromeBook) for travelling, and I'll probably just hose any Windows and put on Linux. In the $300-$800 space there are lots of laptops with "Windows For Education" and "Windows <whatever> In S Mode". Is there any impediment to me buying those and hosing the Windows and installing Linux?
Have they done any more with locking down the secureboot thing and making it so I absolutely cannot install Linux? If I can't turn it into a Linux box, it's useless to me.
And a second question: is it still pretty normal to install Linux on more "normal" laptops, like HP or Asus ones that are 1-2 years old with normal i5's or Ryzen 5's? I know the old adage is "avoid Acer", but beyond that will most of the core components/drivers work: Intel o/b video, wifi, sound card. I don't really care about webcam or lid-sleeping, though of course wouldn't turn my nose up at them.
The key is budget... mostly looking at super cheap corporate refurbs. Just want to have a couple of nice newer-ish Linux laptops, one for travel, and one for wife stuff, that also can do Win7 virtualized (don't ask! seriously!).
Overall, the (former) netbooks would be your thing. However, I don't think the netbooks existed near enough to the present to still be useful (if a used one were available).
But, a person I know in the large apartment building I live in, has asked me in the last 2 weeks whether I'd be interested in her mint-looking "sort of netbook". I declined it because it is not upgradeable beyond its Windows 8 (8.0 or 8.1, possibly Win-S). It is:
Asus model # T200TA-B1-BL
I think the screen can be detached and become a tablet of its own.
Hartmut
On Wed 20 Dec 2023 at 22:34:14 -06:00, Trevor Cordes trevor@tecnopolis.ca wrote:
I'm looking at getting a cheap, small, light laptop (real laptop, not ChromeBook) for travelling, and I'll probably just hose any Windows and put on Linux. In the $300-$800 space there are lots of laptops with "Windows For Education" and "Windows <whatever> In S Mode". Is there any impediment to me buying those and hosing the Windows and installing Linux?
Have they done any more with locking down the secureboot thing and making it so I absolutely cannot install Linux? If I can't turn it into a Linux box, it's useless to me.
And a second question: is it still pretty normal to install Linux on more "normal" laptops, like HP or Asus ones that are 1-2 years old with normal i5's or Ryzen 5's? I know the old adage is "avoid Acer", but beyond that will most of the core components/drivers work: Intel o/b video, wifi, sound card. I don't really care about webcam or lid-sleeping, though of course wouldn't turn my nose up at them.
The key is budget... mostly looking at super cheap corporate refurbs. Just want to have a couple of nice newer-ish Linux laptops, one for travel, and one for wife stuff, that also can do Win7 virtualized (don't ask! seriously!). _______________________________________________ Roundtable mailing list Roundtable@muug.ca https://muug.ca/mailman/listinfo/roundtable
On 2023-12-20 Hartmut W Sager wrote:
Overall, the (former) netbooks would be your thing. However, I don't think the netbooks existed near enough to the present to still be useful (if a used one were available).
Ya, netbook-y-ish form factor would be ok, except I don't want the useless KB and joke of a battery and performance. A lot of these "educational" laptops are 11", and that would be the lower limit. However, I'd need a real CPU, and decent rez (1400 is ok). The edu laptops are all celeron N-something, which is fine for me in XFCE. And they can still do VT stuff.
The big question is how far others have gotten with putting Linux on these things... so many MUUG members just stick with Windows! (grrr people!)
I'm also very curious about ARM "always on" Windows laptops that were appearing a few years back, but seem to have never taken off. And they never seemed to be cheap even though they should be as the CPU is a tiny fraction of the price of an Intel CPU. I don't mean the "Chromebook" or "*Pad" class: I mean fully-fledged laptops that just happen to run an ARM CPU. With many distros having ARM support, it would be a fun thing to try. But the performance would have to be up there with a few-year-old celeron. (The newest Macs would qualify except they are probably 4X what I want to spend and heavily locked down and AFAIK the Linux support is still WIP.)
They don't have much selection this week in the "tiny" space; whereas two months ago they had almost nothing *but* ultra-portables...
As of today, however, this meets your needs (AFAIK, I haven't tested Linux on this _exact_ model, but I don't foresee any major issues) :
https://www.dellrefurbished.ca/item/dell-latitude-3310-no-os-000004/dell-lat...
It's pretty bare-bones but so is the price. -Adam
Get Outlook for Androidhttps://aka.ms/AAb9ysg ________________________________ From: Roundtable roundtable-bounces@muug.ca on behalf of Trevor Cordes trevor@tecnopolis.ca Sent: Wednesday, December 20, 2023 10:34:14 PM To: MUUG RndTbl roundtable@muug.ca Subject: [RndTbl] small laptop for linux
I'm looking at getting a cheap, small, light laptop (real laptop, not ChromeBook) for travelling, and I'll probably just hose any Windows and put on Linux. In the $300-$800 space there are lots of laptops with "Windows For Education" and "Windows <whatever> In S Mode". Is there any impediment to me buying those and hosing the Windows and installing Linux?
Have they done any more with locking down the secureboot thing and making it so I absolutely cannot install Linux? If I can't turn it into a Linux box, it's useless to me.
And a second question: is it still pretty normal to install Linux on more "normal" laptops, like HP or Asus ones that are 1-2 years old with normal i5's or Ryzen 5's? I know the old adage is "avoid Acer", but beyond that will most of the core components/drivers work: Intel o/b video, wifi, sound card. I don't really care about webcam or lid-sleeping, though of course wouldn't turn my nose up at them.
The key is budget... mostly looking at super cheap corporate refurbs. Just want to have a couple of nice newer-ish Linux laptops, one for travel, and one for wife stuff, that also can do Win7 virtualized (don't ask! seriously!). _______________________________________________ Roundtable mailing list Roundtable@muug.ca https://muug.ca/mailman/listinfo/roundtable
On 2023-12-21 Adam Thompson wrote:
They don't have much selection this week in the "tiny" space; whereas two months ago they had almost nothing *but* ultra-portables...
As of today, however, this meets your needs (AFAIK, I haven't tested Linux on this _exact_ model, but I don't foresee any major issues) :
https://www.dellrefurbished.ca/item/dell-latitude-3310-no-os-000004/dell-lat...
It's pretty bare-bones but so is the price.
Thanks! I snapped up the last one. The box is even better than what I needed, and ticks all the boxes.
I *really* love the "no OS" *feature*, as every other refurb place puts on a Win refurb license at $X additional cost hidden in the price. Good site to keep an eye on, and not the first time you've mentioned it, but it seems to always fall off my radar.
Chris, I'll check out Bauer too, as I'll probably need a beefier one too. I'm ok with Linux "issues" on the "gravy" stuff of a laptop... but it's nice if the core stuff can work fairly easily. I don't mind rolling up my sleeves to get the "hard" stuff working.
Luckily, Dell is often one of the easier brands to use Linux with.
I'm also looking hard at the Pinebook Pro just for the heck of it. I really want to do some ARM with Fedora. I have a funny feeling a new version will come out in a while, and the old version should drop in price, or it'll just be the newer/better one at the same price.
I've always had mixed results installing Linux on laptops that shipped with Windows. It mostly works, but there's always been issues of varying severity.
The key is budget... mostly looking at super cheap corporate refurbs.
Gonna take a moment to shill for Bauer, they have a good selection of refurb corpo laptops. I've bought from them many times, they ship from Ontario: https://www.bauersystems.com/price-list/
On Wed, Dec 20, 2023 at 10:35 PM Trevor Cordes trevor@tecnopolis.ca wrote:
I'm looking at getting a cheap, small, light laptop (real laptop, not ChromeBook) for travelling, and I'll probably just hose any Windows and put on Linux. In the $300-$800 space there are lots of laptops with "Windows For Education" and "Windows <whatever> In S Mode". Is there any impediment to me buying those and hosing the Windows and installing Linux?
Have they done any more with locking down the secureboot thing and making it so I absolutely cannot install Linux? If I can't turn it into a Linux box, it's useless to me.
And a second question: is it still pretty normal to install Linux on more "normal" laptops, like HP or Asus ones that are 1-2 years old with normal i5's or Ryzen 5's? I know the old adage is "avoid Acer", but beyond that will most of the core components/drivers work: Intel o/b video, wifi, sound card. I don't really care about webcam or lid-sleeping, though of course wouldn't turn my nose up at them.
The key is budget... mostly looking at super cheap corporate refurbs. Just want to have a couple of nice newer-ish Linux laptops, one for travel, and one for wife stuff, that also can do Win7 virtualized (don't ask! seriously!). _______________________________________________ Roundtable mailing list Roundtable@muug.ca https://muug.ca/mailman/listinfo/roundtable
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Adam Thompson -
Chris Audet -
Hartmut W Sager -
Trevor Cordes