So I'm looking for a laptop, but before you downvote and move on, I've got a twist: I'm looking for a laptop with Linux support that's going to intentionally be console-only and rely on TUIs to make a lower-distraction device.
I was looking at older Thinkpads with 4:3 screens and the good keyboard before Lenovo went all chicklet with them, but I'm kinda concluding they're both way too expensive AND way too old to be a reasonable choice at this point.
A X220 or T40-whatever would be great and be the perfect aesthetic, but they're expensive, hard to find parts for, and using enough crusty old shit that this becomes yet another delve into retro computing and not one into practical, useful computing which is the goal here.
So, anyone have any recommendations of any devices in the last decade that have a reasonable keyboard, screen, use modern enough components that you can source new drives and RAM and batteries and such, and preferably aren't coated in a coating that's going to turn to sticky goo?
Thin(ner) and light(er) would be nice, but probably not a dealbreaker if the rest of the pieces align. This will be almost entirely used at a table for writing and such.
One thing you probably need to figure out first: how are the dgpu and igpu connected to each other, and then which ports are connected to which gpu.
Everyone does funky shit with this, and you'll sometimes have dgpus that require the igpu to do anything, or cases where the internal panel is only hooked up to the igpu (or only the dgpu), and the hdmi and display port and so on can be any damn thing.
So uh, before you get too deep in planning what gets which gpu, you probably need to see if the outputs you need support what you want to do.