I know you mentioned you don't want a Mac but the new M2 ones are really good for programming, portability, and battery life. If you want to get into iOS/Apple development then you would need a Mac and macOS is unix-based so the commands are pretty similar to linux.
this post was submitted on 26 Jun 2023
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I've been having a great time with my HP Elitebook 845 G9 which I got on sale for $950. It's crazy expensive now due to inflation but you might be able to snag it on sale somewhere. Mine came with an AMD Ryzen 6800U with 32GB of RAM and I manually replaced the SSD with a cheap 1TB one I found on Amazon. There's a FreeDOS option that allows you save $200 bucks by not buying a Windows license.
I find that the key components to check for Linux compatibility are the Wifi, webcam, and sound modules. For wifi, anything with an Intel or Atheros chip is usually supported very well
+1 for older Lenovo or Dell. They have served me well for years
Thinkpads are popular and well respected among linux users, and the trackpoint is dope as well. If you want a gpu workstation that also works for gaming, check out the P series.
If you want to learn how to program (C++, Jave, etc.), the most hardware demanding task is using the browser. So, your requirements couldn't be any lower. Any toaster from the past say 8 years will do fine.
E.g. have a look the the Dell Latitude 7480. You can get it second hand in really good shape upwards from 200 EUR. It's well built, well repairable, works well with Linux and the battery lasts a day.
Forget about GPUs. (iGPUs are sufficient, dGPUs are expensive, unnecessary for your use-case and draw lots of battery.)
P.S. And have a look at Arch Linux.
P.P.S. You might also have a look at war games.
Running a mongo database, an express server in VSCode with nodejs, the Angular app, also in VSCode with nodejs and the browsers proved a bit difficult for my existing (and ooold) refurbed Dell latitude. It might have been the last windoofs update that brought it to bay, too. I don't know.
Thank you for the wargames, I am going to try my hand.
Starlabs.