I didn’t use it myself, but the parents of a friend of mine. They had two macs of different generations.
On the newer one we played command & conquer (although not being able to right click to cancel placing a construction was annoying).
We didn’t use the older one a lot, except that the Screensaver was also a game of some sorts, kind of a cross between Asteroids and some 2d space exploration game.
Whoa. So I grew up on Slackware but switched to Debian some time ago, and I can say I’m MUCH happier on Debian. The dependency hell on Slackware just killed it for me. I know they have some management of it now, but I just couldn’t take it any more - I was spending way more time administering the machine. I held my breath updating, which made me reluctant to update, which isn’t a good thing from a security point of view…
Yeah. My journey was similar. I appreciate the philosophy behind Slackware, but I don’t feel like I have the kind of spare time I feel like I would need to run my systems that way.
I think, for me, the proverbial straw was the Unifi controller. I was just like, “No. I can’t do this. I don’t want to do this.” My desktop was running Kubuntu at the time, so installing it on there temporarily was a breeze (confirming I was making the right choice), until I got the server switched to Debian.
People should be scared, this kind of thing will likely be normal eventually. It’s amazing how quick people just become normalised to shit like this. I remember a Reddit post about Angry Birds 2 where someone had posted a picture of it requiring an internet connection to play and then had just written “Uninstalled” beneath it; now like 80% of the free games out there require an internet connection to work. We could have Netflix that’s half the price and included password sharing, we could have all games working offline, and so much more, but there’s so many people out there simping for these corporations that don’t give a fuck about them.
So many things became normalized… paywalls, popups, clickbait titles, bloated sites, all sorts of data collection and abuse, geographic restrictions, being forced to have a phone with you all the time, having to use apps as the only means to access stuff outside from the internet, software obsolescence of functional hardware, and the list goes on.
And here we are, like boiling frogs, collectively accepting everything.
I’ve just been through the process you’ve described and bought a laptop. Your budget is way overkill for your use (documents, browsing, video watching).
I recently bought myself a “like new” second hand Dell Latitude (5300, I think), 8th gen i7, 16GB Ram for £150 and it is amazing with OpenSUSE.
I got my wife a new HP Aero 13 (Ryzen) a couple of years ago and even that was £580 brand new and has been great.
Consider the secondhand market. A lot of laptops will meet your criteria.
You’re right. I actually bought my current Pixel phone secondhand, so I’ll check out the market for computers. Do you know of any red flags to watch out for in secondhand computer ads?
I wouldn’t buy a used MacBook from an individual seller unless I could meet in person to verify there’s no BIOS/TPM lock going on that would prevent me from doing a secure erase and wiping the SSD to start fresh. A laptop with a replaceable ssd is probably less of an issue, but I’d still feel more comfortable having a picture of the BIOS showing no password set or anything, and a picture of it booted to desktop at minimum so you know it isn’t a stolen laptop that has a password no one knows. If you’re buying from like a second hand recycler or something, anyone that sells through significant volume of devices, I’d be much more comfortable just pulling the trigger sight unseen.
I used eBay so I could get a refund if the laptop wasn’t as advertised. I spent weeks looking at new listings looking for a good deal. I eventually found an amazing deal from a hospice that was selling excess stock. I’ve worked in a hospice before and know this would have only ever been used sparingly in an office and be very well looked after.
On eBay I would avoid anyone who hasn’t written out a complete description and detailed pictures of condition and specifics. Like the other comment says, the BIOS being unlocked is very important. Read descriptions carefully. People fall victim to buying expensive things that can’t be returned because it was mentioned in the listing (e.g. buying a box only for a very expensive price). For any laptop I find, I search for forum posts from other users about how that model works with Linux and videos for a teardown to make sure that RAM, WiFi module, etc can be upgraded. Make sure the charger is included.
Search eBay for “8th Gen 13 inch 16GB”, then sort by lowest price for buy-it-now. That’s what I did for a number of weeks. Got one for myself and a great one for my dad as well. Good experience both times.
If it were me, I’d first be looking at used Thinkpads (with the caveat to make sure the specific Thinkpad has hardware which is generally supported). I’d also look into Linux-friendly manufacturers, like frame.work or System76.
Ive had great success with their all amd systems, and older machines go on sale often, so you can score a Ryzan 6850 w/ 16GB of RAM for 700-800CAD if little else matters.
All of them. But specifically this one place my parents took me to that just started speaking in tongues right in the middle of the sermon. This went on for like, half an hour, everyone just flailing around and speaking in “tongues”, which was just them making up a bunch of gibberish.
My dad said it wasn’t a great service.
He’s right, it was the worst.
Also, that, plus many other stupid and incongruent moments led to my exodus from the church, and religion as a whole.
I’m much happier now, not being forced to attend these silly wastes of time that are church sermons.
The “superior OS” is whichever one meets the users needs the best.
For most people Windows works just fine because a PC is an appliance to them, and an important feature of an appliance is simplicity for the user.
But for others Linux works better, especially if you want to do anything server related
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