Cause thinkpads are cheap and easy to come by

Source: i work in ewaste

Refurbished ThinkPads are awesome!

• Availability - ThinkPads are very popular in corporate environments and are generally replaced every 2-3 years. Although mostly Intel CPUs, there is a wide variety CPU+GPU available from lightweight to high performance.
• Tough + well built + last forever
• Easy to upgrade/repair. They’re very user-accessible and its simple to upgrade RAM or SSD/M.2 drives. Plus, because they are so popular in the corporate environment, replacement parts (from batteries to WiFi+Bluetooth chipsets to trckpads) are very available and cheap.
• Well supported in most (if not all) linux distros. Graphics just work, trackpads just work, WiFi just works.
• Cheap.

Sent from my ThinkPad T580 (with both an internal and removable battery, I get 10+ hours of battery life)

I hope nobody recommends Thinkpads manufactured after 2020. They’re pure garbage in so many ways, that there’s no point to list them all.

I bought a Framework once. The build quality was better than System76, but not great. However, Framework is not a Linux laptop. They designed it for Windows and only afterwards they were surprised to find that people wanted it for Linux.

A lot of Linux laptops don’t have HiDPI displays because they’re not really compatible.

Example Framework: https://community.frame.work/t/tracking-state-of-hidpi-on-linux/8301

For years people have been trying to work around Framework’s poor display choice. And they’re still trying.

If you have a regular DPI display, you get to avoid a whole class of bugs and issues.

If you wanna have a good time with Linux, you need some mechanical sympathy.

Btw, tbh, brb, I’ve had good success with the Dell XPS 13 and the Lenovo X1 Carbon. System76 build quality was meh.

Because these are small shops that have limited availability outside North America, and are fairly expensive compared to Thinkpads which are widely used by corporations, and can be found pretty cheaply.

It comes down to price. You can buy used ThinkPads and replacement parts for them quite cheap a lot of the time.

It’s been a while since I’ve looked at devices from places like System 76 but if I recall correctly they are still over a thousand dollars when a used ThinkPad T440P for example can be found for around two hundred dollars.

Thinkpads tend to have excellent build quality, solid firmware and well thought out design. Price to performance on second-hand models is always outstanding and their popularity ensures hardware compatibility with Linux.

Of the brands you named, I just don’t trust the hardware. Tuxedo computers for example uses Tongfang white-label computers that they just slap their logo on. Quality control isn’t as thorough as Lenovo’s, firmware is sketchy, TDP tends to be all over the place and keyboard quality doesn’t come close.

Thinkpads also have-- and I can’t stress the importance of this enough-- a nipple. I don’t really use it, but if you try to take it away from me I’ll bite you.

Lenovo makes great computers. They have amazing price-to-performance ratios.

for a lot of people (me included), a cheap second hand thinkpad (or dell pro) with a light distro would be more than enough to cover their computing needs for years.

Because of better accessibility. How so?

Because not everyone has the money to afford these new and expensive laptops designed for a niche market. They are still enthusiast-grade products, the prices speak for themselves.

Because not everyone comes from Europe / the US, so it’s not easy to find these with affordable shipping.

Because these laptops are only normally offered new, which, for responsible and personal ownership, is excessive. There are thousands of used hardware lying around, why not put some life back into them instead?

It comes down to price, availability and ethical concerns. Unless money doesn’t mean anything to you, why do you need a $1000 laptop when someone wants a device for higher education or personal casual use? The world doesn’t need more rampant marketing of niche, hyped-up tech. While a fully-FOSS system may be the ideal machine for every Linux enthusiast, we live in a material world with finite resources and chasing after some unicorn laptop is unsustainable.

Thinkpads are cheap and accessible basically everywhere. They are business-grade devices and you can get one when folks retire their machines. A lot of places practically give them away. They were just gonna get thrown out anyways.

Framework is dumb expensive - a 16 even skimping out on RAM/HDDs comes out to over 3k CAD, and that’s for a disassembled kit – pre-built with full components comes out to easily over 3.5k, which is like a MacBook price for the promise of upgradability down the line.

System76 are rebranded shitty components from Chinese manufacturers. They’re not better for Linux than any general consumer laptop, and their entire position is basically branding regarding freedom and 1776. Ironic that a company so deeply American in nature basically just resells garbage from China.

I’ve never met a Thinkpad that didn’t like Linux :)

Those linux laptops are too expensive and they are not available in some countries

Used thinkpad is much cheaper

purism is a scam

For me it is mostly the price. I don’t need much and a Seconds Hand ThinkPad ist enough for my needs and much less expensive than buying a New Laptop.