Specter

I… literally thought you were OP. But anyways I respect your decision. Have a nice day.

Not gonna lie I’m really struggling to sympathize with OP right now. People are trying to drag him out of the doom and gloom and OP just keeps moving the goal posts into a position that nobody can defend.

Frankly, this could be a post complaining about how Macbooks don’t support Windows. Yeah, they don’t, there are multiple options out there though that do, but OP is not interested in them. They want to go back to a time when stores sold hardware that they can no longer sell, and think this post can do it vengeance. Seriously it sounds like a Reddit post. I thought I ran away from there to avoid these types of posts but alas.

The average person. I’m going to repeat that because apparently you missed it. The average person isn’t buying used computers from enterprise resellers.

The average person is most definitely buying second-hand laptops they can afford from Facebook Marketplace or similar, enterprise-grade or not.

It’s not about Linux not being supported. It’s about barrier to entry.

Linux inherently has a barrier of entry by virtue of having essentially zero manufacturers selling hardware that ships with Linux installed. However I don’t understand why you think price is a barrier of entry. If the majority of laptops are priced from 300 euros up to 4000 in some shops, then that’s what customers are willing to pay. I don’t mean now with the AI boom making everything more expensive either, I mean for the past few years this has been the market. Common people buy new from stores, or buy second-hand.

My mother is not buying and installing RAM. My mother would not know what to do if she had driver issues on Linux.

This issue is not specific to Linux. The used market is flooded with Windows laptops that no longer support windows 11 well due to only having 4-8 GB ram. Same with 8GB Macbooks.

I don’t know why you’re pretending that shopping for an older laptop model is only a problem for the average person if you want it to be Linux compatible. Also your grandmother doesn’t have to do anything. She, like the average person, can take her laptop to a repair shop for servicing and upgrading.

This said, you’re not the average person. You already went the extra mile by installing Linux on devices that don’t ship with from factory. Further, you’re specifically interested in small devices when the average person wants bigger screens, you want your device to be underpowered when the average person wants them as powerful as possible in a slim form factor without compromising on battery. Your rant has nothing to do with what the average person wants, your rant is, sorry to say, a completely self-absorved rant that just shows you’re mad your niche preferences aren’t supported by the Linux community, or the world consumer preferences as a whole.

“The sacrifice of staying on Linux after 20 years”

I mean honestly could this title be any more self-absorbed?

I would ask if you’re a Debian user (or use a Debian-derivative), but what even is the point when I already know the answer.

Everything you just said can be fixed by buying Thinkpads. All of them are supported because some companies use Linux at an enterprise level. Until those corporations disappear, Linux will never stop being supported on them. I see a lot of doom and gooom that is frankly unhelpful especially now that the Microslop monopoly is clearly breaking down and there is more potential for Linux than ever before.

Yogas are supported by Linux AFAIK but touchscreens might be a problem.

You post is long but is not very clear, the commenter above is correct. What exactly is your grievance? That Linux does not support your ancient laptop? Or it does not support the laptops (let’s face it, tablets) that YOU want?

Unfortunately resources are scarce in the Linux community, so labor needs to be allocated where most people are (AKA using hardware from the last ~5-10 years, not 30). And Windows surface tablets are extremely locked down.

I’m sorry that you can’t find people who want to continue supporting hardware so old people get nostalgia when they hear its name (eg. Pentium i586). It seems to me you’re not willing to do it either.

Ultimately you’re reducing to hardware a phenomenon that also involves software. Realistically who can run modern computing operations (such as web browsering) on a laptop with 3-4 GB RAM? The answer is nobody. Not comfortably, at least. Browsers take easily 3GB of RAM with just a few tabs open.

As for all laptops being bulky… this is the consumer preference. I don’t like it either but we can barely fault manufacturers for producing what consumers want to buy. I see this trend on phones as well, for me smaller phones are the best thing but the market moved towards bigger screens, heavier phones. And you want underpowered devices? If you could have a slim and lightweight laptop/tablet, wouldn’t you want it to be as powerful as possible? This doesn’t make any sense from a consumer perspective.

Lastly, if you want whatever machine you buy to last longer, then ironically you should learn a thing or two about hardware so that you can replace parts yourself. You don’t have to become a genius, just follow some steps on YouTube on how to change RAM, add SSDs… and yes, Thinkpads especially older ones are great for this since many parts are non-soldered. Apparently this year they are also launching a new one that is way easier to open up and replace parts with their removable keyboard.

Meanwhile the US just bullied our governments into handing out all of our medical data and were obliged. Different approaches.

Proton and Tita aren’t entirely free either, 500MB is just 1-2 years of emails and after that you’ll start paying if you want to keep your mailbox.