stupid_asshole69 [none/use name]

Debian works fine. Post your model number.

I generally point people away from both the solutions you’re asking about and the thing you’re doing.

If you are concerned about recovering from a failure then everything you’re talking about doing will make it very hard to complete using standard tools and techniques and very easy to lock yourself out of completing.

If you’re not concerned about recovering from a failure then why are you doing what you’re talking about doing?

A more functional solution for a laptop or desktop might be ext4 with dm-crypt or whatever and nightly backups. Another fix might be moving towards software that doesn’t require the capacity to reverse updates frequently.

BF16 of deez nuts

Look into the t-series thinkpads. T480 is the meme one, but many newer models are very inexpensive and modular. I don’t have dells, but people who do recommend the Inspiron or Vostro ones. They’re similarly cheap and repairable. There are business class hp laptops for cheap too.

For my needs these computers have been very useful and fast.

Often a whole parts unit (bad screen, no ram, no hd for example) of one of these laptops can be had for the price of a single replacement part from one of the smaller manufacturers.

Because they’re so common, new production third party replacement batteries are available and new old stock as well.

If you value environmentally friendly actions, using these machines is literally taking plastic out of the waste stream.

If you haven’t already bought something:

What do you have now?

I would generally recommend against chromebooks. They’re often aimed at the lowest end of the market and have esoteric processors and boot processes that will make you frustrated.

I would generally recommend against small laptop manufacturers like framework etc. because of parts availability. People will say that you can get parts from the manufacturer but for how long? People will say you can make the parts themselves because the design is open source but I have a board etching setup, hot air station and injection molding machine and I don’t do that.

Obviously if you just want to “vote with your dollars” the above doesn’t matter.

If you want to get a laptop that’s gonna run linux well and last a long time get a used business class machine. There will always be a huge market for parts and they have almost always had someone put the effort in to document getting their distro to work right on their work assigned computer.

The black sheep option is to get a mac. Parts are everywhere for cheap and every microsoldering and computer repair shop will work on them because so many people have them and want to get them fixed. Obviously do your research first, but asahi is coming along and you’ve always got a Unix system to fall back on if it isn’t working out.