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If You Can Afford It


raymac46

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Tapping away on my Thinkpad right now - all Debian, all the time. It occurred to me how good it is to have an exclusively Linux machine - especially if you want to learn about Linux before migrating from Windows. If you can afford an used laptop or you have access to an old desktop I would really recommend it as the way to go when you are starting out.

I've never really been a fan of dual booting Windows and Linux especially if I still needed to use the Windows system. As a new user I was always afraid of borking the bootloader and not being able to get into anything. I'm less afraid now but I still don't like all the safe boot UEFI stuff. Again an experienced user might be OK - but you ain't experienced as a new Linux user.

Nor do I think that running a live USB stick or a virtual machine can give you the same experience as a real Linux install on the rails.

I started out installing Linux as a separate and distinct O/S on its own machine and I think I learned a lot more when I could bork, nuke and pave without fear of messing up a "production" Windows system.

After some time I did dual boot on both Linux and Windows. However I'm back to basically one machine one O/S again and that suits me just fine. YMMV and probably does of course.

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When I dual-booted linux and windows I used a 3rd-party bootloader called BootIt NG from Terabyte Unlimited (obsolete now, but they have a newer version). It was really great software, well worth the modest price I paid for it after a 30-day free trial. This was also before safe boot and UEFI. BootIt let you create your own boot menu and point to the partition you wanted to boot--all I had to do was remember to load grub to the / partition instead of the MBR when I installed linux and I was fine. I ran that way for about 10 years, but when I stopped working and didn't need to stay current with windows any more, I just deleted the win partitions from my systems and dispensed with BootIt.

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securitybreach
Tapping away on my Thinkpad right now - all Debian, all the time.

 

Thinkpads are great machines. You can usually find the business class ones with nice specs for a couple of hundred bucks. They may not be as thin as some of the models then but they are beasts with plenty of ports and great hardware that is perfectly supported by Linux usually out of the box.

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I got my mother a Thinkpad from NewEgg on sale a couple of years ago. It runs win7 and its a great machine. I'm looking forward to putting linux on it when she no longer needs it! The Lenovo laptop I'm using now is also one of her discards, bought in 2009, and while it's not quite up to Thinkpad standards, it's been a pretty solid machine. I did need to have the hdd replaced in 2013 but it's still going (*knock wood*).

Edited by ebrke
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I don't think there is a better laptop for Linux than Thinkpad. Because so many businesses lease them there is always a good supply available of used ones at decent prices. They are all Intel generally so you know the video and the wifi will work without much problem.

My T430 is ideal. It has strictly Intel graphics - no Nvidia dual option - and it even came equipped with a 128 GB SSD. Condition was pristine. It looks like some exec had it and never took it out of the office. I figure I got it for 25% of the list price back in 2014.

That said the state of Linux wifi has improved a lot since 2009. Back then you could get a laptop that was a total brick when it came to wifi Linux. I haven't seen anything like that lately. And even if the internal wifi is tricky there are lots of USB adapters you can plug in now. A used HP Elitebook or Dell Latitude should also be a good buy.

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I was thinking about the first laptop I ever installed Linux on.

 

https://www.cnet.com/products/compaq-armada-1750-14-1-pii-win95-64-mb-ram-6-4-gb-series/specs/

 

Got it cheap at a thrift store in 2007. Maxed out the memory to 192 MB. It was so old it din't even have an Ethernet port. It featured a corrupt version of Windows 95. It did have a PC-Card slot so I plugged in an Atheros based wifi adapter. After a lot of fiddling with wpa-supplicant I got online.

The only distro that ran well on it was an obsolete version of Vector Linux. Anything newer wouldn't run the old APM power firmware and the cooling fan wouldn't start. VL 4.8 got the fan going full blast but at least the laptop stayed cool.

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securitybreach
A used HP Elitebook or Dell Latitude should also be a good buy.

 

We use various Elitebook models at work and they are very nice machines.

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securitybreach

At work, we use the 840 G4s (i7 with 8gb ram and a 200gb ssd) mostly for the standard laptops and we were using the 9470s previously. I was able to get one the 9470s for myself and they are very nice laptops. A few years old but they have an i5 in them and I maxed mine out to 16gb ram and put in a 250gb ssd. Nice and thin laptop that flies on linux.

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V.T. Eric Layton

I still remember my first experience with installing Linux on a laptop. Actually, it was my first experience with a laptop period. A few years back, Josh had a Dell Inspiron 1521 that he had gotten somewhere. The BIOS and hard drive were encrypted, though. So, basically, the thing was a brick... unless one could find a way to break the encryption. He shipped it to me. Another good friend, Frank Golden, sent me RAM, a cool little wireless mouse, and a hard drive for it. Our friend Aryeh later sent me a much larger hard drive for it.

 

Well, you know... I have ways of getting past encrypted BIOS's, so... :ph34r: ARRRRRRRRRRGH! I got that lappy up and running with Slackware in no time. I loved the darn thing. It dropped a display on my sometime back and I had to retire it. It still runs fine with an external monitor, but that kinda' defeats the purpose of a laptop, if you know what I mean. I've since installed Slackware (and other Linuxes) on many lappies. The only issue I ever have with laptops and Slackware is that D*MN Broadcom WIFI. These days, though, I'm a giant killer when it comes to Broadcom. There are some useful slingshots out there on the Internet to slay that one nowadays.

 

Ah... fun memories... :clap2:

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securitybreach

That was your first laptop??? I thought you had already had one when I sent that one to you. Must be my memory... lol

 

Cool that I provided your first one. :)

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V.T. Eric Layton

That ol' Dell when I first got it up and running with Slackware.

 

akX31jx.jpg

 

Later, I bought a black keyboard for it on eBay which really went well with that silver. :yes:

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V.T. Eric Layton

I repaid you by sending you my Zippo collection and then you went and quit smoking. ;)

 

Seriously, it's a good thing that you quit smoking. Speaking of smoking, I'm headed out to the porch to have one right now. animated-smileys-smoking-007.gif

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securitybreach

I repaid you by sending you my Zippo collection and then you went and quit smoking. ;)

 

Seriously, it's a good thing that you quit smoking. Speaking of smoking, I'm headed out to the porch to have one right now. animated-smileys-smoking-007.gif

 

Well I quit smoking tobacco anyway...

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