1y ago

Why do people still recommend Thinkpads for Linux when there are Linux-oriented manufacturers now?

I've noticed in the Linux community whenever someone asks for a recommendation on a laptop that runs Linux the answer is always "Get a Thinkpad" yet Lenovo doesn't seem to be a big Linux contributor or ally. There's also at least six Linux/FOSS-oriented computer manufacturers now:

So what gives? Why the love for a primarily Windows-oriented laptop when there are better alternatives?

299 comments

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.
- Framework laptops are interesting and I hope eventually the modularity allows the components to go down in price. Right now I was looking at a 16 (which all sold out within 3 hours of pre-order launch) but it comes out to easily over 3k CAD for a disassembled kit, skimping on RAM and an SSD.
- yoo I didn't know about used/refurbished Thinkpads being that cheap, I just checked and indeed you can find a T480 with 16GB of RAM for $248 on Amazon!
  
  T480 is solid as hell, had one as new in my last job, a bit heavier but very serviceable, would recommend.
  
  You can find them for much cheaper than that on eBay. I just got my wife a T490 for $125 on eBay. No SSD, but I had one sitting around.
  
  Would also recommend the T480. Got mine for around €280 total (including shipping from ebay).
  If youre looking definitely try them out
- I can confirm this with personal experience. Wife has T470 (if memory serves, something around that) for 100€. That was from previous work and they offered my old laptop for cheap, so it doesn't really count as average, but not uncommon either at least around here. I got myself T495 a while ago for 299€ from "public" market and have been purchasing couple years old thinkpads for decades now. There's plenty of those available, they work just fine for the workload we have for laptops (I got a separate desktop for more power hungry applications) and they've proven to be pretty reliable workhorses since the brand was owned by IBM.
  Framework specially is really interesting approach and I'd love to test to their hardware, but they don't have Finnish keyboard available just yet and I can get several used thinkpads for the price of one framework, so as long as I'm using my own hard earned money I rather spend it on a known brand where I already know what I'm getting into and spend considerably less money while doing so.
  Also with linux thinkpads tend to work just fine or at least there's documentation and howtos to get everything working.
  
  Where did you find a t495 for that price of you don't mind me asking?
- I also agree with this sentiment. I got a used t440p which I used for years in school before upgrading to the framework 13. I still love my old thinkpad, but its now my cheap in home media server. I would agree that old thinkpad are easy to find and a cheap (but still very useable and still to some extent repairable) option for work and school.
- T440P is cheap for a reason. Personally I don't want a 6 pound laptop with a decade old CPU and a crappy TN screen. Something like a used T480 is reasonable though I guess
  
  I use an early 2010s Thinkpad, with Ubuntu, and I can play Minecraft pretty well on it. It's great. I don't often carry it places, it's a desk laptop, but I don't know of any other affordable laptop that would have such a long useful lifespan. If you know of any, please tell me, but my experiences has made me quite the Lenovo loyalist.
- Replacement parts are a removed though. At least when it comes to batteries. The only battery I’ve seen with any positive reviews are Green Cell which is European, so shipping is absurd, and Duracell which no longer produces thinkpad batteries.

Those linux laptops are too expensive and they are not available in some countries
Used thinkpad is much cheaper
- Maybe there's a better place for this question, but how do you make sure a used laptop is safe? Or would removing Windows and installing Linux be enough?
  I want to buy a laptop for Linux, and would buy a used one so that it's cheaper but I have to admit I worry about it. I know one could be worried even about new laptops and what manufacturers could be up to, but I feel like the unknown arbitrariness of a used laptop gets to me.
  
  Reinstalling the OS and formatting all drives is good enough to not walk in to viruses or spyware.
  Beyond that, they'd have to install a chip somewhere to snoop on even the basics, like a usb keylogger. Some laptops have rescue partitions and services built in that can hide nasties or vulnerabilities, but those are generally only on enterprise-sourced equipment, and can usually be turned off in the BIOS anyways.
  If you want a guarantee, though, you'll have to take a laptop apart and confirm there's nothing unexpected. OCD for a normie, but if you're already paranoid...
  
  You could look into a Libreboot compatible model. When buying a used laptop for Linux the big thing you need to be careful of is a locked BIOS
  
  You should be fine if you just wipe the drive and install the OS of your choice. That'll get rid of whatever they may have installed on it.

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.
- I buy all my hardware, laptop and desktop parts, for these reasons.
  
  That's good, stealing is wrong
  
  Used*?

Because not one of those laptops have a TrackPoint style mouse.
- You mean the nipple mouse?
  
  Could be worse.
  https://xkcd.com/243/
- I love clits and nipples but I always found that nub so weird.

Cause thinkpads are cheap and easy to come by
Source: i work in ewaste
- Exactly this. Second hand thinkpads are stupidly cheap -- I'm currently typing on my $180AUD laptop. I never buy new.
- Out of curiosity, do you ever rescue laptops from your work and use or resell them?
  
  yes. Companies goal is to essentially take in e-waste and used stuff, sort through it and pull out decent laptops/desktops wipe(or destroy) hard drive based on instructions, and resell. The company that gives us the goods gets a cutback of what's being sold. everything else that is junk is then sorted and recycled to their respective correct facilities. Gotta use the second R in the 3 R's and the third for whatever is considered old. What's considered old goods is still very desirable to another company, especially companies outside of the U.S where computers may be more expensive, especially when you're trying to get them in bulk.
  the work laptop I use is definitely used goods, in fact relevant to thread as it is a 8th gen Thinkpad T490.
- Yes, exactly this. The alternatives would cost close to $1k as starter.

They can be found cheap as shit. I got a great t480 for less than $150 and another $50 I upgraded my RAM and battery. It's a really nice laptop and only cost me a couple hundred.

In the US a lot of business use them. It's not uncommon to see a pallet of "old" ThinkPads at the swapmeet selling for less than $200. We're talking x1 Carbons. These machines have upgradable SSDs, Wifi, and battery. For less than $300 you can get a BEAST of a machine that runs Linux very very well.
- Wish i had access to such cheap hardware. Companies in my country use them till it gets junked and most refurbishers sell for maybe 20% less than brand new but with significanly reduced warranty.

Cost.
Older Thinkpads remain extremely capable and (crucially) highly repairable. The T series in particular is also better built (read: more solid chassis) than many others, including some on this list.
It doesn't make a lot of sense to support these alternatives given the absolute shock difference in cost. $300 bucks for a used T series gets you a lot from a customizability, repairability, and reliability standpoint.
- It doesn’t make a lot of sense to support these alternatives given the absolute shock difference in cost. $300 bucks for a used T series gets you a lot from a customizability, repairability, and reliability standpoint.
  bios updates leaves you at the mercy of the manufacturer;
  not every bios and distro works w lenovo's bios update utility;
  and your battery life & performance has a big dependency on your bios so using something that it's not designed to handle (eg anything that's not windows) will result in less than optimal results. 3.5) same goes for hardware eg nvidia
  
  I've had 4-5 such systems running Linux and never experienced any issues with BIOS.
  Obviously you shouldn't get a model using nvidia if you want to run Linux on it (unless you are aware of the extra time it takes to set up and the other pitfalls). I do actually have a T440p with a 730m in it -- and it's fine, I just run the open-source driver.
  
  If you're a FOSS enthusiast, might as well buy one of the models that are supported by Libreboot
  
  This is just fear mongering and wrong.

The only good system on that list is the framework and it’s $2800 for my ideal version.
Last year’s Thinkpad P-series goes for around $400 on eBay.
- You're comparing ideal to "will get the job done" which is a big gap
  The Thinkpad probably doesn't have a high resolution high refresh screen, which is exactly why I'm shelling out $1400 for the Framework.
  
  To many of us that doesn't matter. My secondary machine is a laptop from 2008 (not a Thinkpad, though), with a standard-for-the-time 1280x800 17" screen, and I'm fine with that, because I'd rather have a coarse 16:10 17" screen than a high-res 16:9 14-15" one. Occasional window shopping suggests that a new laptop with a screen of the same physical size as my old one would cost more than I really want to pay at the moment.
  You obviously have different priorities. That's fine—plenty of machines of different sorts to go around—but please try not to project your priorities onto others.
  
  I think what hes trying to say (correct me if im wrong OP), is that not everyone needs that high end machine, so its not comparing apples to oranges as you seem to suggest. Its like comparing a Lamborghini to a regular albeit good sedan for the purpose of taking your kids to school, doing groceries, etc. If we ignore the obvious impracticalities of the Lambo for these jobs, sure its really cool, but if you can achieve the same task with the sedan (again ignoring that the Lambo might not allow you to conveniently achieve them and assuming practicality is equal so that the car analogy can fit in with the laptop question), why specifically go looking to get the Lambo?
  Edit: meant to reply to nyan@lemmy.cafe

Cost and availability.
Most of those laptops cost over 1000€ if not even closer to 2000. And they don't seem to ship to all countries.
While you can get a good used Thinkpad for 500€ everywhere in the world.
- And that's with shipping included.
  
  And the CPU + RAM upgrade.

First of all I wouldn't use a pre-installed OS (I would always wipe and install my own for security reasons).
Secondly: Thinkpads (at least when I bought mine, last year) let you buy them without an OS and don't charge you for it.
Thirdly: the linked manufacturers above tend to be either US-centric and/or more expensive than Thinkpads.

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.
- Exactly this - none of those vendors will sell to me, but I can get a ThinkPad shipped from any of the major local retailers, or direct from Lenovo themselves. I'd love a Framework, and I'm trying to set it up so I can get one shipped to a friend in the UK who will be visiting next year but I'm sceptical that the timing will work out or that Framework will accept my credit card
  
  What I don't like about buying things from abroad is that RMA-ing gets difficult and expensive.

None of them are available in my country
- Even if they'll sell one to you internationally, you're probably shit out of luck if something breaks and needs to be fixed under warranty.
- I yearn for a starfighter and they send to my country but my government has an astronomical tax on anything priced over 200 dollars.

They stand the test of time, used ones can be bought at reasonable prices, there is an abundance of configurations, and they still have the best (the only good) keyboards for any laptop.
- thats exactly why i bought my dirt cheap x1 3rd gen

Price. You can find second hand Thinkpad's whereas new laptops are very expensive.

Avoid purism at all costs. Watch Louis Rossman video on Purism mobile.

Secret sauce: it's much easier to get an employer on board with buying you a Thinkpad as part of a bulk order than it is to get them to spring for any of these more obscure models as a one-off.

I usually grab a 3-4 year old Thinkpad every year or so for anywhere from free to 300 bucks. I pick them up from old corporate liquidation lots. Usually grab one that is a little dirty or beat up and then just clean it up and install my own SSD and upgrade ram from my stockpile.
I like some of the others on that list, but with how cheaply and easily I can get a Thinkpad, I just can't be bothered to spend more. I use my laptop mainly for code, and I do a lot of low-level programming so performance is usually way more than enough. The programs I write are extremely small and very efficient. Any processor from the last 20+ years will run what I am usually working on.
When I want to spend big bucks on a computer, I put that money towards my desktop where I do more gaming and some digital artwork.
- Where do you buy them from?
  
  I usually look for corporate office liquidations in the paper or on social media. Other than that, I stop into colleges and businesses and ask them if they have hardware they need to recycle. Companies usually pay for recycling, so sometimes they will just give you stuff to lower their recycling cost.
  And lastly, ebay if all else fails.
- Would love a reputable Canadian source for a T series. Importing anything kinda sucks in terms of brokerage fees and additional tax levies, etc.
  
  The T series is probably my favorite. Currently I am running a P52 I got for free that was a recycle. A little big, but plenty of performance. Prior to this one I had a T460s with the i5 I got for free, it was just missing one of the two internal batteries and had a couple screen imperfections. Maybe in a year or two I will get lucky and get another T series.

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.
- What king of dell pro compares to a thinkpad?
  
  not sure what you mean, but I find that Dells are also cheap (second hand) easy to find, reliable, solid and easy to maintain (like the hardware is easy to access for cleaning and replacing/updating).
  edit : I'm using a latitude 5470 with lubuntu. I bought it second in a pawn shop a few years ago and added some RAM last year, it still runs like a charm.

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.

- This
  I've run Linux on a bunch of different kinds of laptops and the only time that ever actually looks "good" is on a ThinkPad.

None of them really match the ThinkPad reliability, cost effectiveness and after sales experience.

yeah good luck getting those brand outside of US
- Tuxedo is German? I had a laptop from them and it was perfect:-)
  (It was a company laptop, unfortunately had to return it when I got a new job)
  
  yes, it is.
- You can also find secondhand thinkbooks for very reasonable prices.
  I havent bought a brand new laptop in over a decade now, dont think ill be starting any time soon either.
- No problem getting a Framework in France

I have no dog in this fight, but of the brands mentioned, I’ve heard of 1, and I consider myself fairly techy. Lenovo is a brand name that most people are going to recognize and implicitly trust (whether they should or not)

My third world country only have Thinkpad around so. It is what it is.
- same
- I also live in Europe

Lenovo makes great computers. They have amazing price-to-performance ratios.
- Lenovo makes great computers.
  Used to. No longer.
- The only reason I wouldn't buy Lenovo is they were caught twice shipping laptops with spyware, and on my NAS their upgrade firmware contained google ad banners. While this will not affect a linux reinstall it just shows they are a shit company
  
  American producers are shipping NSA spyware as well. If this is a concern (which it should be), best thing is to install Linux on it yourself.

Funny red nipple
- "Clit mouse," per xkcd. And it's a major reason why I buy them.
- I mean.... It didn't NOT persuade me....
- Exactly. Track point is the number one reason
  
  I literally spent my hard earned bucks on a Tex Shinobi from one guy in Taiwan just so I could get the trackpoint for the desktop with a mechanical form factor without having to source a 30 year old Model M.
  It's my favorite keyboard ever btw. Don't sleep on the Tex keyboards.

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.

Not everyone lives in America and has access to all, if any, of those options.
- System76 and Pinebook never ever ship to Indonesia even they have branch in Singapore, or even sorting center in Batam Area (which is Indonesian soil), :/
  
  At least you still have a lot of options shipping to Indonesia. Of all the listed options above, only Starlabs ships here in the Philippines 🥲

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've heard of potential security issues when buying them. How can I mitigate that - buying from a safe source, wiping them etc.?
  Thanks it sounds like simply wiping the system is enough to get around security flaws.
  
  Always wipe and do a fresh install. If you're installing Linux, its unlikely that the refurbisher will have installed your flavour of Linux anyway. If you want to dual-boot with Windows, most business ThinkPads come with a Windows Pro licence - just download the ISO and install it fresh, then install Linux.
  
  We're talking about Linux here. You'll probably wipe it anyways. Chances are slim the company that used it before put Arch on it.

It saddens me to say this, but don't buy from Purism. My Librem 5, after 2 years, still didn't arrive.
- 100% don't buy from Purism. I had their laptop. Librem 14? 15? And I gave it away to a friend after about a year. I had so many problems with it.
  I had pre-ordered the phone but I asked for a refund just a month or so before everyone started saying they stopped giving refunds.
  I have 4 pinephones, while they're not daily driver ready, they're awesome little devices and I've written a couple things for them. I also have 0 complaints about my system 76 laptop.
- I opted for the Fir model, knowing version 2 would probably be 5–7 years away. My wife joked that we would have a school-age child before I got it… except it's slowly becoming not a joke (and we didn't even have kids when I preordered).
- I got a Librem 13. Wasn't worth it.

Availability for me, none of those brands are available in my country.

Most of these are pretty expensive. I got a used Thinkpad for less than 200 bucks, and it works great for the price and my use case.

Because getting rid of Windows on a new device is half the fun
- In Denmark (maybe all of EU?), you can buy them a bit cheaper without OS.
  Edit: It's a Danish ruling from 2011, according to this. But it's not that you can buy the machine without Windows, but that you can get a refund for Windows if you haven't activated it.
  The story mentions that that's been Microsoft practice for several years prior, but that consumers rarely use the opportunity.
  
  Would be nice if everywhere in the world you could do that and not deal with the bullbloatcrap manufacturers push onto you

I'd say lack of marketing and higher price tags. Money / Performance ratio is also better with a decent Thinkpad.
Some of these options can't (or not without high markups) be bought and shipped to Canada.
Because it use common hardware and bought "en masse" by enterprises; they tend to be more supported with FOSS than other options.
I've been happy with my used T480 so far.
- I second price to performance ratio. If I had more money to burn I probably would go all in on some of these Linux-targeted laptops.
  I'd also add a lot of them seem overpowered for my needs. I do like me a big screen but I don't need a powerful GPU to go with it. I have a desktop rig for that. I can always just ssh into it if I need to do GPU heavy calculations.
  
  Same scenario for me! My laptop only serve to have a device when I'm on-the-go, but at home, I use my desktop. It was one of the reason why I went with an older Thinkpad, it's well supported and with no dedicated GPU, it's dead silent most of the time. I'd love a 16:10 screen, but the options are pretty expensive and often not as repairable as my T480.

Because I bought a Linux laptop from one of those vendors. It came with QubesOS but ran awful for it. I tried to debug but it fucking broke after 4 days.
That was 6 months ago and I'm still waiting for them to refund me after I sent back the broken device.
Never again. Thinkpad has my money for life if they keep making durable hardware.
- one of those vendors
  Which one?
  
  Looks like Purism is the only one of the six that has Qubes as an option for preinstall.

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.
- I did the OG Framework's DIY build. By far the best laptop build quality I've used. I'm a little partial because I love that the hardware is accessible. Clearly marked screws! Unlike my Lenovo X1 Carbon's that are just single boards (but I still really like them).
  Complaining they chose HiDPI display is pretty funny though. My X1 Carbon 7th gen has a HiDPI screen, and I had to go through all the same UI scaling issues. Each toolkit had to be scaled differently. Chrome of course did their own thing. It was a PITA, but hardly because of the screen's hardware pixel density.
  And to add, my Purism was trash and literally fell apart within months.
- As someone running a Framework 13 with Fedora 38 with 1.5 fractional scaling using Wayland I cannot say I experienced the same issue. Everything kinda just worked out of the box.
  Personally I couldn't go back from HiDPI screens. The lower resolution just makes stuff look blurry IMO.

Not everyone can spend +1000 dollars on a computer.

I'd recommend against any lenovo laptop after the T580 and T490. My company switched to dell since the lenovo laptops had so many failures and weird issues that we'd have to keep an extra one in stock for every 10 in use.
But if the older stuff suits your needs, go for it. Lenovo used to make great laptops.
- Agree with this. Any Dell Latitude can easily be as good as any Lenovo in terms of Linux support. Our company has moved away from Lenovo and only go with Dell's.

Same reason most people recommend gettinf a Honda/Toyota when asked for a general recommendation for a car. If you need to ask the question, then your needs are probably not that specialized. So something generally reliable, widely accessible, and good value would be appropriate. Lenovo still tends to fit that description.

I'm sure it's not everyone's reason, but mine was "Thinkpad still has physical left, right and middle mouse buttons".
- Yes!

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.

They are cheap and durable, and they work with most major Linux distros without much headache.
I have a spec'd out S76 Lemur, which is a great laptop for throwing in a backpack as a daily driver, and really packs a punch with a small footprint.
But I also have a couple ThinkPads that cost less than $100 to replace that I use for doing experiments in the field where a laptop is more likely to get damaged. No need to needlessly drag thousands of extra dollars in kit out into a mountain trail to do radio experiments. For that kind of work, these old systems have more than enough resources, and if I fall in a stream, or get caught in rain, the worst I have to do is replace the system for $80 refurbished on Amazon.
Of course, I've never actually had any issues requiring replacement, but ThinkPads are really hard to break. I'm not as convinced about the Lemur's durability, and would rather take fewer risks with it.

Spare parts and resilience. Thinkpads are the most tanky laptops available.
- You don't know yet about clevo laptops, my first laptop from 2015 and running good as new

Used thinkpads especially the older ones (t480 and older) have a ton of extra parts floating around, and you can get them cheap. I built a t480 with 8th gen i7 from parts for around $170 over a year ago, it has been a great experience. I upgraded the trackpad and keyboard and plan to upgrade the screen, cooling, and battery next.
- It really depends on where you are located for the things to be worth it. I had to buy a new keyboard for my t470 a few months ago after dropping a full latte on the computer top - only the keyboard got fucked, drain holes worked awesome and only need a little of internal drying and cleanup - and just that cost me 100 €.
  It really is the best laptop I ever had and I had on my hands a much more recent X1 and currently a Dell XPS, both which I hated.
  What I can say and be happy is that after all these years I can still at least find parts and buy them, any other computer I simply wouldn't be able to find any parts or after market for it.
  But in my country basically impossible to find market for it or parts and only recently did people were able to order some few models from their online store, the thinkpads simply weren't sold besides business deals around here.

I don't like thinkpads anymore. They used to be great but Lenovo decided to kill off their best feature - the keyboards.
My fingers actually hurt when typing on a ThinkPad keyboard now. They are so shit.
I think people are nostalgic and they remember what the brand used to be. But I'm not impressed by them anymore. They keep scoring top marks at notebookcheck reviews however, but every new ThinkPad has disappointed me with bad screen or bad looks or feel.
- To be honest, they also made them less serviceable. But in the not so long past they used to be really great. You can easily find replacement parts, upgrade them. If I have to buy a new one, I would buy Framework, if second hand is an option, ThinkPad is unbeatable, but you need to do a small research which model doesn't have soldered RAM and offers battery replacement.
- I have an amazing screen on my T16. But I wish it had a better keyboard and more upgrade options.

I, for one, haven't had to look at laptop manufacturers for nearly a decade because my Thinkpad is still running Linux without a problem.
Aside from political reasons (which are valid!), what makes those manufacturers worth choosing over a Thinkpad?
- Fingerprint reader support. Every fingerprint reader I owned didn't work on Linux. Every laptop I owned with a fingerprint reader never worked on Linux. It's almost a law of the universe: If it's not made for Linux people, the fingerprint reader won't work on Linux.
  
  Thinkpad T480s fingerprint reader working here...
  
  Works fine on my P52s. Required installing the drivers but no issues after that.
  
  Good point. It was quite the adventure trying to find drivers for my T470’s fingerprint reader. It’s been working great ever since, but it was a long road.

I literally threw a ThinkPad at a brick wall in rage a long time ago and it was fine a t-42 iirc. reccomended them ever since
- I dropped my T420s down the steps by accident. No issues, but the disc drive managed to fly out haha.

Price, keyboard and build quaility are my main reasons for buying a Thinkpad 3 years ago.
They are available for a good price second hand and their keyboard is the best laptop keyboard I've tried. Most of those Linux manufacturers use Clevo designs and thus the keyboard isn't amazing. Even if they design a laptop themselves it's difficult to nail the keayboard.
My next laptop will probably be from framework. But that depends whether I'm willing too spend as much and the other options available. And framework doesn't even sell laptops with Linux preinstalled.

I believe Dell even has some models that come with Linux preinstalled.
- Dell, HP and Lenovo can deliver with Linux pre-installed
  
  Not just deliver - they support them. I've got a Dell micro-PC running as an Ubuntu Server and it regularly receives BIOS and firmware updates from Dell through the default fwupgdr-mgr.
  
  Which HP models have good official Linux support these days? I thought they had stopped supporting the one(s) they did and I've had a bunch of bad experiences generally :(.
- I wouldn't trust a manufacturer-installed system to be honest
  Given the size of the userbase I doubt they'd invest in developing and adding preinstalled similar adware as their windows OEM systems but you never know
  Better order it without OS

I agree with a bunch of the comments here but wanted to add that there's a decades-long legacy of good FOSS/Linux support on Thinkpads. Before any of these companies existed, Linux was running pretty reliably on Thinkpads.
I do like the newer options with these newer manufacturers, but I won't be getting rid of my Thinkpads any time soon. I'm running a Framework now too.

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