Linux

The beauty of Linux is that it'll run on almost anything. I recommend second-hand office desktops for your use-case, you might find a good deal and get peripherals with it. If you somehow manage to come across GPUs at your price bracket, avoid Nvidia; poor drivers, support, corporate hostility etc.

My first distro recommendation is going to be a bit different from the usual, purely based on my experiences with other popular go-to distros. I'd recommend you try Fedora KDE, Fedora is a wonderful distro that always makes you feel welcome. KDE is a lot less resource demanding than Gnome, and is the desktop that ships with the steam deck. Personally I don't like Gnome since it's a bit Fischer-Price my first DE for me, but I encourage you to try everything.

I'm using the Budgie DE by the way, it's a good middleground between Gnome and KDE. Fedora provides "Spins" for all major desktops.

If you're feeling brave I'd like to quickly mention a version of Fedora called Fedora Kionite, it's whats poorly named an "immutable" distro (Atomic is a better name but don't worry over that right now). Very basically these distros restrict access to the core, or base, system files; which massively improves security and reliability. I use Fedora Onyx which is immutable with the Budgie DE, Kionite is KDE. Immutability is very new in the pseudo-mainstream and very much in it's infancy, so it will annoy you at times if you choose this path. But it has massive benefits and, I think, is the future of the Linux desktop.

I'm assuming this is your absolute first adventure into the FOSS world, which I know is probably wrong since you're on Lemmy, but I'm also still going to mention you should use the Firefox web browser as you said you were doing JavaScript. Firefox is the absolute most popular browser on Linux and has amazing developer features.

We're all eager to help budding penguins on their journey, so feel free to message me directly anytime for support or make posts right here.

Debian! As far as hardware you'd probably have an easier time with an AMD GPU but otherwise most everything works. Get intel wifi if you can/want wifi.

bunches of refurbished t-series thinkpads out there - t480, t430, etc. apparently the 490 is one to avoid. I got a t470 some months back for $150 - put mint on it and have been very happy with the performance.

Thinkpad T480 is the last of the good Thinkpads and should be more than your Budget

Edit. Corrected typo.

I'm adding to the pile of Linux Mint recommendations, though I recommend the XFCE version, as it's lightweight. For hardware, if you want a laptop, definitely go with a refurbished ThinkPad. If you're wanting a desktop, look for something cheap and used. If you aren't gaming, the specs aren't super important

Hey for me it was the same. For Hardware you can use anything. The optimal is a full AMD build Or Intel AMD build but Nvidia could give you a headdic. For distros I recommend something Arch based like Manjaro or EndeavourOS. As DE I recommend Kde Plasma because out of the box it looks pretty much like Windows but is highly customizable.

I think I need to narrow some things down;

My current Windows PC isn’t what I’m looking for; it’s a big and powerful gaming laptop from a few years back. I’m looking for something light and portable, but with a full keyboard for coding.

Pricewise I’m looking for something around $350; if this is unreasonable let me know.

As I understand it, Steam Deck uses KDE, so I’d like to stick with that for now.

But literally any PC that’s within your budget. OK maybe that’s not true, there might still be some crap WiFi cards out there with weird firmware that don’t support Linux very well. Find an older name-brand PC within your budget. Before buying it Google “[make and model] Linux WiFi” and see whether there’s tons of complaints about the WiFi. If not, go ahead and get it, put Ubuntu or Linux Mint on there, start banging out JavaScript projects, profit.

Even a smol potato like the Orange pi zero 3 (which -still- has zero linux support) can run Linux, so don't worry about it.

Start anywhere, being interested in it is all you need (and a decent search engine, and learning how to describe the problems you have to the search engine). Whatever you do, I think it's a good idea to pick something that will be your project on Linux so that you have a concrete goal that makes Linux useful.

For hardware I'm a cheapskate so I recommend using whatever you already have, but I'm sure others here will point you in the right direction 😹

I recommend dual booting at first with grub, so it's more of a departure from windows. Using a VM like Virtualbox or Hyper-V is a bit safer and easier, but you're probably not interested in Linux for safety or ease of use.

We're lucky to live in a time where if all you have is a Linux tty (no gui, just a text mode shell) you still usually have a phone with Internet to look for help. It's a good exercise when you have the time to try and get the system back up in those situations without external help for at least a few minutes. Most distros still install manpages just for times like these (man and info commands view them)

Thank you.