The second-hand market for Linux-friendly laptops is full of hidden treasures. Instead of paying a small fortune for a brand-new laptop that performs only marginally better than one or two generations old laptops, it makes a lot more financial sense to buy a used laptop on Amazon and potentially live with a few small scratches from the previous owner. The only problem is knowing which used laptops on Amazon are Linux-friendly. This article explains the steps you should go through to select a used laptop with flawless Linux compatibility and hardware specifications that fit your needs.

Narrow Down Your Search

The good news is that there are so many used laptops on Amazon that everyone is guaranteed to find exactly what they are looking for. The bad news is that having so much choice can be a bit overwhelming. As such, you should start by narrowing down your search results as much as possible.

Try to come up with a list of things you would like to do on your new laptop. Is playing Linux games one of your priorities? If so, you need a dedicated graphics card. Are you a developer who hates long compilation times? A high-end CPU can help you reduce them considerably. Are you worried about security? Then you should look for a laptop that can support a Linux or Ubuntu VPN. Maybe you’re a writer or student, and you spend your days typing on the keyboard. In that case, you should definitely go with a laptop that has a comfortable keyboard with a sane layout.

You might be tempted to buy what once was a flagship laptop with many bells and whistles, but we recommend you get a middle-of-the-road laptop instead. Flagship laptops often come with exotic hardware with limited Linux compatibility. What’s even worse, the Linux user base of a typical flagship laptop is tiny, which means that you often find yourself on your own when troubleshooting problems. Brands such as Dell, Lenovo, and HP stick with tried and tested hardware components, and they have huge followings of dedicated Linux users.

Of course, we should mention that there are also laptop brands that specialize in selling Linux-friendly laptops. They include System76, Station X, and Alpha, among many others. Unfortunately, these brands are not nearly as popular as mainstream laptop brands, which means they are quite hard to find used and in good condition.

See What Other Users Are Saying

Once you’ve narrowed down your search to a handful of used laptops, try searching online to see what others are saying about them. Read as many reviews and user reports as you can to understand which laptops are the most Linux-friendly and which should be avoided.

You might discover that your favorite Linux distribution contains a bug that affects one laptop that caught your eye but not the others. At that point, you should visit the bug tracking system of the distribution to find out if the bug is on its way to being resolved. If you find out that the bug isn’t anyone’s priority, you might be better off buying a laptop that isn’t affected by it.

Consult Compatibility Databases

Before you click on the buy button and order a used laptop from Amazon, you should consult Linux hardware compatibility databases. We recommend starting with Linux on Laptops, which features comprehensive reports on running Linux on laptop computers. TuxMobil is another great compatibility database with installation guides on almost any laptop or notebook model.

From there, we recommend you also check the hardware support list of your favorite Linux distribution. Ubuntu has a great one, and so do Linux Mint and Debian. Some laptop manufacturers who sell laptops with Linux pre-installed have their own compatibility lists, such as Lenovo and Dell.

When you finally receive your new laptop, you should test everything you can to ensure that all buttons, components, connectors, and features work as they are supposed to. Don’t forget to test the function keys as they often misbehave in Linux. If you find something that doesn’t work, Google it. Unless you’ve picked an unpopular laptop, the chances that someone has already solved the same problem before you are high.

Top 5 Best Used Laptops on Amazon to Run Linux in 2021

Running Linux on used laptops in 2021 is easy if you avoid convertible and experimental models with non-standard hardware components.

If you’re upgrading from an older laptop, then you should know that modern laptops tend to be very limited in terms of upgradability. Increasingly often, we see laptops that don’t make it possible to upgrade anything besides storage. Yes, even RAM is now commonly soldered to the motherboard, making it more important than ever to select a laptop whose specifications won’t hold you back even several years down the road.

That’s why we recommend you get the best-used laptop your budget allows, especially if spending some extra money can get you twice the amount of memory or double the number of CPU cores.

1. Dell XPS 13

We decided to dedicate the top place on our list of the best-used Laptops that can easily run Linux to the Dell XPS 13 because it’s versatile and readily available. Any version of this popular laptop is a solid choice, but versions with the 10th generation Intel Ice Lake processors tend to offer the best price to performance ratio.

Using the Dell XPS 13 is a joy thanks to its comfortable keyboard, vibrant InfinityEdge display, and carbon fiber palmrest. The biggest hurdle you may run into when installing Linux on the laptop is getting the Killer Wi-Fi 6 AX1650 to work without issues, but solutions do exist.

Dell also used to sell the XPS 13 Developer Edition, which came preloaded with Ubuntu and all available drivers. Unfortunately, that laptop version is no longer available for purchase, and finding a reasonably priced used model is difficult.

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2. Lenovo ThinkPad T470s

The Lenovo ThinkPad T470s is a business-ready laptop with excellent Linux compatibility and the toughness of a hardened nail. We recommend the version with the Intel Core i7-7600U processor, 256 GB PCIe-NVMe SSD, 8 GB of RAM, and a non-touch IPS display with the Full HD resolution.

Regardless of which version you choose, the T470s always offers excellent connectivity options, an exceptionally comfortable keyboard, and build quality that has passed 12 stringent military tests and over 200 quality checks.

One of the best features this laptop offers is docking over USB-C or using the standard ThinkPad docking port. If you want your laptop to double as a desktop computer when connected to an external monitor and other peripherals, this feature alone makes the ThinkPad T470s worth purchasing.

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3. Dell XPS 15 7590

Before releasing Linux kernel 5.12 on April 25th, 2021, we couldn’t recommend the Dell XPS 15 7590 because it wasn’t possible to control the brightness of its gorgeous OLED display. The good news is that the issue has been fixed, and the adjustment of the OLED backlight level is now fully supported in X11 and Wayland alike.

There are now only two issues that remain to be solved before the Dell XPS 15 7590 works flawlessly with Linux: the non-functioning Goodix fingerprint reader and NVIDIA Optimus support. As long as you’re willing to live without a working fingerprint reader and without the ability to easily use both the integrated Intel GPU and the dedicated NVIDIA GPU, you won’t regret your purchase.

In fact, we’re pretty sure that you’ll be thrilled with it because the laptop is one of the world’s lightest 15-inch performance-class laptops, weighing just 4 pounds despite its large 6-cell battery, which can keep it running for over 8 hours.

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4. Lenovo Thinkpad X1 Carbon

The Lenovo Thinkpad X1 Carbon is one of the most portable Linux-friendly laptops out there. It lasts almost 17 hours on a charge, and its anti-glare 16:10 IPS display has a maximum brightness of 400 nits, so using the laptop outside under direct sunlight isn’t a problem.

Unlike Dell, Lenovo does’t use Goodix fingerprint readers, so biometric authentication works just fine. Even the internal 4G modem is supported, but it might require some tweaking to work correctly on certain distributions (the always helpful ArchWiki provides some helpful information).

Lenovo sells the Thinkpad X1 Carbon with Ubuntu pre-installed, so that’s a solid choice if you want everything to work right out of the box. If we had to criticize one thing about the laptop, it would be the 720p webcam, but it’s not like other similar laptops (we’re looking at you, Apple) are doing much better.

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5. Thinkpad T14

The Thinkpad T14 is meant to do serious work and do it anywhere—both in the office or in the middle of the desert. If you’re shopping for a used laptop, then the first generation of the T14 will be much easier to find for a reasonable price, and it will work pretty much flawlessly with Linux kernel >=5.9.0.

But make no mistake: the Thinkpad T14 Gen 1 is still a fantastic laptop with the exceptionally great build quality and legendary durability, which has been tested against twelve MIL-STD 810G testing methods. You can expect around 10 hours of light use and around 6 hours of regular use on a single charge.

The Thinkpad T14 Gen 2 boasts upgraded hardware components, such as an 11th Generation Intel Core processor, but the overall value proposition remains more or less the same (and so does Linux support, thankfully).

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