I have a Thinkpad X395 which I bought refurbished. I has average specs for a laptop, you can find it with up to 16 GB of RAM and a quite nice 1080p touchscreen (depending on the configuration). Also it may come with a fingerprint reader, an LTE modem or a Smartard reader. I don’t know how serviceable it is because I have never opened it but you can easily remove the keyboard by unclipping some clips and undoing some screws, you don’t have to open the case

Here is a good resource for whether you can install another OS on a particular Chromebook

Thinkpad T480s with an i7 cpu. Lightweight, portable and useful.

Thinkpads are super durable and kind of fun. I got a bunch of T420s (nice) from my boss for free and they’re all running Mint fantastically, as well as some 90s games. (They are being used for the occasional LAN party)

The T420 is from around 2011, so if you spent money on one you could get a better one easy.

I recently got a think pad from the prior generation, so like 2-3 years old. It’s been good for most things, but I’m not trying to play the latest graphics heavy game on it either.

10-year old lenovo thinkpad unanimously wins, as expected

As expected, ThinkPad. I have a Yoga X1, the stylus and touch works fine. But if you’re installing Linux take great care of to have copious amounts of swap or swapfile because ram is low.

Generally, I would recommend getting an enterprise laptop such as Lenovo T or X series, Dell Latitude, or HP EliteBook. In that order.

Interestingly though, these models are supported by W11, because they’ve had various security features for years. If you want something specifically unsupported by W11, the selection is suddenly narrowed down to consumer-grade crapbooks. They should be cheap though, so might as well buy two while you’re at it.

For under $200 you can either get a used thinkpad t series or a dell business notebook. You can also get an Intel mac for around that price. The difference in serviceability is often what can be done by you with a screwdriver set and guitar pick versus needing a hair dryer and plastic putty knife.

I got a thinkpad E14 off of eBay for $400. There was a slight haircrack in the hinge, but it came with 40gb of ram 1tb ssd and amd ryzen 7730u I believe. I always recommend looking on eBay first, it’s likely you can find a $1000+ laptop for $400 like I did.

Specs aren’t too important. I like my distros lightweight, and a web browser will be the most demanding thing it’ll run.

web browsers are pretty fucking heavy these days, I think the minimum spec for an “ok” experience is a 3rd gen quad core “mobile” chip like the 3612qm or an 8th gen quad core “ultrabook” chip like the 8650u

eBay Thinkpad all the way. T460-480 are what I usually go for. Easily less than 200 bucks.

The Pinebook Pro is unfortunately not a very good laptop. It’s very slow, has a weird storage setup, and the hardware isnt 100% supported by any distro even now, years later. The battery also takes forever to charge and doesnt last all that long.

I get better performance on a Raspberry Pi 4 and even that is too slow for me

It was a cool idea and if the software support was there it might have become a very compelling laptop, but as it currently exists the PBP is not worth what it costs

While an old macbook air won’t be serviceable, they are cheap, super portable, and you can replace the battery.

I got two laptops from local electronics recycling this past month. One of them is 2020 spec and just needed a charger and some dents smoothed out. Can’t beat rescuing something that’s going in the trash, sustainability wise. If you’re going on the actual used market, Thinkpad like everyone else said.