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Ask HN: Good used $300-$500 Linux laptop for road warrior?

5 pointsby TheMogover 8 years ago
I travel a lot for work and I already have company-issued MacBook Pro for work purposes. For various reasons (mainly to keep work stuff and personal stuff separate) I would prefer to carry a second personal laptop. The main requirements would be:<p><i>Must run Linux or FreeBSD well. Preferably Manjaro, but XUbuntu would be OK, too<p></i> Light weight. I&#x27;m lugging a ton of stuff around already and I&#x27;d prefer not having to bring a pack animal<p>* Compact enough to I can use it on the seatback tray in cattle class if I need to<p>* Decent battery life<p>* Expandable RAM and SSDs that can be replaced without using funky adapters would be really nice<p>What I don&#x27;t need:<p>* A desktop replacement - I&#x27;ve got a nice collection of powerful desktops already. It does need to be powerful enough to run Emacs + C++ compiler and compiler for various JDK-based languages, but it&#x27;s not a full-on development machine<p>Lenovo is usually my go-to when it comes to PC laptops, so I&#x27;ve been looking at 1st &amp; 2nd gen X1 Carbons (fail on the expandable RAM and the SSD with no funky adapter, great otherwise) and X220&#x2F;240&#x2F;260s. I guess I should also at older Dell XPS 13s, but are there other laptops I should also look at?

3 comments

emasteover 8 years ago
I have several Lenovo X220s running FreeBSD and am very happy with them. Inexpensive, good keyboard, sufficiently fast, good battery life, good expandability and availability of replacement parts.
rijojaover 8 years ago
Anything thinkpad really. No nonsense and a sturdy build.
TheMogover 8 years ago
Thanks - I found a very reasonably priced X240 on ebay, let&#x27;s see how well that works out for me.