this post was submitted on 21 May 2026
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askchapo

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[–] shallot@hexbear.net 7 points 2 days ago (1 children)
[–] Assian_Candor@hexbear.net 4 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Drop 32 gb of ram and an M.2 in that bad boy and you've got a ripping fast machine for pennies on the dollar

[–] shallot@hexbear.net 4 points 2 days ago (1 children)

The lifetime per dollar you can get out of a mildly upgraded refurb thinkpad running Linux really is incredible.

[–] TrashGoblin@hexbear.net 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

My daily driver laptop was built in 2012. Replaced HDD with SSD, upgraded RAM (initially to 8 gb, now to 16), completely usable for everything except gaming and local "AI". It's started to slow down because the heat sink needs repasted and it thermal throttles, but that's doable.

[–] shallot@hexbear.net 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Hell yeah. I’ve had a t420 for about forever, SSD+16gb upgrades, plus I put an i7 in there. Still kicking along. It couldn’t run win10 for shit… flawless with a lightweight Linux distro though :)

I was too broke to do the screen upgrades when pets were more available for doing that. Now if only I could get an OEM battery…

[–] TrashGoblin@hexbear.net 3 points 1 day ago

Mine is an X230, with the tradeoffs that entails, but I've been happy with it. Not even using an especially lightweight Linux on it. It's running Fedora, and even Gnome runs fine on it, though I prefer Niri.