Hey all - what’s your experience with refurb Lenovo laptops for Linux from companies/shops that specialize in this as a service? I’m looking at LinuxPusher.dk but am also curious about other EU-based shops. It seems like a good, affordable way to get a Linux machine if you’re a novice, like me (some experience with Ubuntu and Kubuntu about 10 years ago).
I bought a T5xx-Thinkpad from nbwn.de (=notebookswieneu.eu) many years ago. It was an extremely good purchase. They ship to the entire EU for free if your order is above 200€. They specialize in selling demonstration laptops, i.e. devices that companies tried out and then returned, so they are essentially new.
However, I highly recommend to wait for the Windows 10 EOL to really hit around winter time, because then thousands if not millions of used and unused laptops that are sorted out for not supporting Windows 11 will flood the market. (Even if you’re aiming to buy a laptop so new that it will probably also support Windows 11, the flood of older devices could well bring down the prices for such newer devices also.)
first off, “lenovo” is not the thing to get, it’s just a subset of those - thinkpads. and even then, not all of those - just the T and P series. those are the “pro” lines, durable, dependable, expandable, serviceable, and widely used. so when corporations swap out their fleet for new models, they flood the market and hence can be had for cheap. multiple generations of the same model are cross-generation compatible, so they share the same peripherals, like docks, have interchangeable parts, like keyboards, displays, etc.
don’t get used ideapads, thinkbooks, thinkpad E/L series, etc. those are either consumer-class models, have substandard features, are incompatible with each other, etc. don’t get the yogas and S-suffix models, as you’ll have a removed time servicing and/or upgrading those.
the whole point of getting something used, i.e. something that was touched and rubbed and spat all over, is if it’s a) in good enough shape and b) you get it for cheap. you took care of of item A when going for thinkpad T-series and you’re compromising on item B if you’re going through an intermediary.
them dudes you mention are skinning you alive - 500 EUR for a T14 G1 is insane, it should be less than half of that. I also like how they’re including none of the tech specs which just ups the ick factor.
what about the X line? particularly the x250 and x260? been thinking on getting one of those for a while because of their compact size
I’m referring to semi-modern laptops you’re most likely to get out of some corporation’s dump of obsolete tech, but that’s still usable - let’s say T480 and onward. you can retrofit those with tons of RAM, cheap storage, they have capable quad-cores, etc. you can get something like a T14 Ryzen 6-core with 32 GB RAM and a 1 TB SSD in the $200 region, if you do everything yourself.
everything before that is proper old tech, with predominantly anemic dual-cores (the ones you mention have single-channel RAM) and as such are a fun tinkering project, similar to the cyber deck projects - costs a lot of money, doesn’t do much. on the other side of that fence are power-hungry haswells and friends that can’t be wrangled into single-digit Watt/Hour territory however hard you tried.
so if you get one of those for free, or close to it, and you have parts laying around, by all means - this is as close you can get to the bespoke PC build in the laptop world. but ixnay on bying a decade old laptop for work and/or education.
edit:
negligible size difference
What’s a model you could stuff the most RAM into? I’d like a 4th Proxmox node I could replicate to and take offsite, but I don’t need a pile of redundant storage on it. Something I could get 128Gb into would be awesome.
Around a year ago I bought a refurbished thinkcentre from esm-computer.de and installed Linux Mint on it. I didn’t have any problems with it so far.
I bought my P14s Gen 4 refurbished on eBay and have had no trouble. The nice thing about Lenovo is that they have really good documentation and the ThinkPad series are highly serviceable.
I don’t know about Lenovo in general, but the two things I like about Thinkpads in particular and why I generally stick to them are their keyboards and the mouse nub / joystick thingy (trackpoint).
Their keyboards are still curved to give you proper tactile feedback of where your fingers are relative to the keys (unlike the abominable flat square keyboards on many/most other manufacturers), and the trackpoint is a great way to use a mouse-like pointer without moving your hands from home position on the keyboard. It looks like some current models are doing away with the trackpoint, which I think is a terrible mistake.
I’m not sure if any manufacturers still have either of these features or both on their current laptops, but they’re absolutely must have features for me.
Also, I usually buy used/refurbished Thinkpads cheap from ebay.
I checked LinuxPusher and I wouldn’t say they’re affordable. Their laptops are 2-3x the price of the same laptop running no OS on sites like eBay.de. For example, their cheapest T470 is 3000 krone, while the equivalent laptop on ebay is like 150 euro or 1120 krone.
I looked at a Thinkpad L14 G1, an elitebook 840 G5, and the dell 3060 Micro and it’s the same. Consistently 2x and higher markup.
Is that markup worth a 2 year warranty?
You could literally buy a second device if the first one kicks the bucket and still be out ahead monetarily.
If you want to slowly start using linux and already have a pc, make a portable install on any flash drive (I like external ssds for this exact reason) you want, and boot it. (ideally set the RealTimeIsUniversal registry entry in windows so Linux and windows don’t fuck up the bios time).
I don’t think it’s necessarily worth it for anyone currently on Linux, but if they provide support and a warranty, it might be helpful for some folks who aren’t that computer savvy, but still sick of Windows.
I have nothing to add here. I just want to change express how happy I am to be in a platform where we talk about Euros/Krona/whatever by default, and not USD.
The Earth is healing.
Why would I talk about US prices/currency for a danish tech site?
If someone is looking for tech in Europe, it doesn’t make sense for me to use a US reference.
I guess because I never even came across people talking about European websites on a general community page such as this one.
I’m positively shocked, is all.
That’s helpful, thanks. I’m guessing they charge a premium because they provide a service. I’m not afraid to tinker a bit, but my interest in Linux is not tinkering - it’s to switch to a freer, more sustainable OS. So I’m curious about services that offer support.
For that reason I’ve also looked at Tuxedo computers, but I’m worried that I’m locking myself into another company’s OS again (from Microsoft/Apple to Tuxedo) rather than having the freedom to choose my own distro. But I guess with support comes a price: less freedom.
Right now I’m deeply locked into the Apple ecosystem. Apple makes wonderful hardware and apps, but it’s still a straitjacket, even if it’s a designer straitjacket. 😀
Well I think Tuxedo computers would work easily with any other distribution. It’s not based on anything factual but I guess we would have heard a lot of bad things about Tuxedo if they were acting like this.
From the little I know, they have some aditional stuff with Tuxedo OS, but they are also trying to get it added to the Linux kernel.
If course I would want to be corrected if I’m wrong as my knowledge is kind of limited.
The hardest part about getting Linux installed on a Lenovo was getting rid of Windows and its death-grip on the bootloader and the TPM.
Also, a few things, like drivers for keyboard backlight and fingerprint scanner never got working. If you just want to experiment and play, could always try Linux under VMWare Workstation (free for personal use) or boot off a thumbdrive.
Interesting - and yet I read about many folks installing Linux on thinkpads, and those laptops even being recommended for Linux. Is it just cause so many have worked on making Lenovo be able to handle Linux?
Yeah from the little research I’ve done ThinkPads are it
Thinkpads have long had first tier linux support, in fact many models have shipped with linux for at least a decade (?), checking that is a really good way to be sure, but you’re going to be fine with W, P, T, X lines, many enthusiasts make light work. They were deployed (might still be) to Red Hat kernel devs for a long time, which helps things along. Fingerprint drivers tend to be proprietary and hit or miss, but passwords work.
Honestly learning to install linux yourself, and configure it to your liking, is actually, imo, a really important path to learning and you’re likely doing yourself a disservice avoiding it. It’s part of the avoidance of vendor lock in you want. Installation is surprisingly easy now, start with something simple, Mint is often recommended these days, find a decent, recent, youtube and you’ll probably be up and running in an hour. Find the apps you need for your workflow (which will take considerably longer). Get familiar with the terminal. Best thing you can do after that is burn it down and install a new distro, leaving any mistakes behind, keeping your list of apps. Arch if you want to get really deep into it, or Fedora / Bazzite are good choices and very stable. Best of luck.
Thinkpads have always had the reputation for being solid machines, even after IBM spun them out to Lenovo. But there are so many variations of components I imagine it’s hard to keep drivers uptodate for the odd peripherals, especially the entry and mid-range ones.
FWIW, Dell also sells laptops with Linux pre-installed, so likely to have working drivers for all peripherals. HP used to have a “HP DevOne” which got good reviews, but they’re discontinued. If looking for a refurb, that might not be a bad option. System76 and Framework also get decent reviews.
I’ve had good luck with an X201, W520, and T480 - all thinkpads. Haven’t tried any of the lower end lenovo models. I got my W520 new and my other ones off craigslist.
If you’re looking to get a preinstalled OS and from a refurb vendor, an interesting option would be buying from libreboot. Debian/KDE by default or you can choose your own distro. Libreboot is a good cause, and sales funds the project. You’ll have the most secure bios on the block.
I’d be very careful with setups that promise libre everything.
I don’t know this particular brand, but it is quite common for projects like this to not include security and stability updates with the sole justification that “it’s proprietary”.
Your laptop’s motherboard came with a fatal security issue, or is a time bomb waiting to implode on itself? Too bad, can’t receive updates from HP, Lenovo, Dell or whatever because they are proprietary…
Just something to keep in mind.
they only offer the one laptop, a T480. Not an HP, Dell, etc. Ongoing fixes to the UEFI and BIOS code are irrelevant as this has libreboot instead. That’s like saying you’re missing out on windows updates if you run linux.
And anyway the T480 is at end of life:
This product is no longer being actively supported by development (End of Development Support) and no further software updates will be provided.
Fair enough, I just wanted to point that out because i see a lot of people falling for the “it has nothing proprietary” mindset.
But there’s nothing wrong with that device that I can point to, other than it being older hardware with all the limitations that might entail.
Libreboot looks very, very interesting - thanks for the tip!
Lenovo has become utter crap. At work, I’m replacing our Lenovo’s with the Framework 13
I would be concerned that linuxpusher.dk is advertising for a social media site called socii. The guy behind that showed up in a thread once, and was not pleasant.
Weird to have a connection between those two sites.
I’m also in the Nordics (so accustomed to the overall electronics prices by now), and going to echo that their prices are looking kinda steep for what you’re getting. Unless you’re somehow extremely uncomfortable with picking up a refurb machine somewhere else, and installing whichever distro(s) you want on it yourself. That should be a simple enough process, maybe especially dealing with a Lenovo–and really on just about any laptop you can find, as compared to 20 years ago. Or probably even the 10 since you were last using it.
Just getting a refurb elsewhere and making an install USB is the way I would suggest going. If you use Ventoy to write it, you should be able to try several different live system options off the same stick before deciding which to go with for now.
That site did not seem to be actually specifying what distro they’re installing for you, but their “Linux installation” service page (for the equivalent of $150US or €130+!) shows Mint and offers the option of several desktop flavors of Mint, Ubuntu, or Fedora. If you’re happy to pay that kind of premium for someone else to spend maybe 15 minutes on likely a Mint install set up however they decided was best? Sure, it might be a decent way to go. Doesn’t really seem necessary even for a complete beginner, however.
Good points all round, thanks - and I did think the Linux installation cost seemed high. I might be willing to pay a premium for good support. I’ve heard good things about System76’s customer service (but they’re US-based). Installing a distro on an old laptop doesn’t scare me - I’ve done it before. It’s more the hardware/driver issues that might arise. And then I’d love to discover an “out of the box” solution that I could recommend to my friends and family, who have little appetite for tech tinkering. Maybe that’s where Tuxedo comes into the picture…
I’ve been using refurbished thinkpads for at least a decade and in my experience they have pretty decent value for money. I’m using local shop (taitonetti.fi, I don’t think they currently ship outside Finland) which ships their machines mostly with OEM windows, but that’s not a big deal for me.
Looks like a nice selection. A sensible approach, and one I may end up taking: getting a Windows laptop for good value and then installing Linux myself.
Lenovo brand new is bad, refurbished, well, you just want to have a bad time. This only applies to the new Chinese owned Lenovo, the IBM ones are fine in all possible states.
Well, I don’t want to have a bad time, that’s for sure…thanks for the warning. I’ll be cautious about Lenovo.
I’ve had very disappointing experiences with Lenovo laptops in general and they’re not cheap, even when bought second hand. My recommendation? Go for an AMD Acer laptop, they’re very good machines and Linux Mint works out of the box in all laptops I’ve tested it so far. And I’m sure there are other affordable / good OEMs out there.
they’re not cheap, even when bought second hand
I mean, I bought my T480 for $170 second hand (not from a refurbisher) a few years ago.
Thanks for the tip - I’ll check out the AMD Acer laptops. You thinking of Nitros, in particular?
I’m really fond of the Aspire 15 at the moment. You can get them without any preinstalled OS, which is perfect if your goal is to run Linux on them, since you won’t be paying any hidden costs for a Windows license you never intended to use anyway.
Aspire 15
Looks nice - and nice price too!
Unless they are literally $150, still nothing to beat a Refurb Framework from their Refurb store for $350-450 that comes with a warranty.
Franework isn’t even available in my country (switzerland) so I guess it’ll be difficult to find refurbished ones in the EU.
Can’t seem to find refurbs on their website - and judging from the original announcement, they may only be available in the US and Canada (I’m in the EU).
It looks like they renamed it to “Outlet” now: here’s a link
Thanks - I’ll check it out!
