cheap laptop suggestions that will boot to ubuntu without hassle

[Liam Proven]

On Thu, 28 Nov 2019 at 13:20, Mike Marchywka <marchywka at hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> I had previously been concerned with booting from syslinux or grub with older computers
> such as e-machines. This new Dell Precision with uefi seemed to work well with Ubuntu
> installed by Dell so I never fiddled with it once determining that the USB sticks will
> boot too ( Dell had originally been pushing kernels until efi partition filled up but it
> looks like they fixed that much ).

They were putting kernels in the EFI partition? That's not normal!

> With all the brew-ha-ha about holiday deals,

(?)

Oh! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brouhaha

> and remaining interest in using "lo tech" or obsolete machines in niches,
> I looked around amazon briefly and found this older model asus for 170 USD,
> ( If they had a "cite" button or supported BoMTex, I could just paste a cool
> biblio or bill-of-materials like description designed by them lol)
>
> https://www.amazon.com/ASUS-Ultra-Thin-Processor-L203MA-DS04-Microsoft/dp/B07N6S4SY1?ref_=Oct_DLandingS_D_b59e35aa_62&smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER

Looks very low-spec. I'd much prefer a used Thinkpad or something.
When researching UEFI boot problems on my girlfriend's Lenovo
minitower, I found to my great surprise that my Thinkpad X220 has UEFI
that's emulating a BIOS. It's been so trouble-free I never realised.

I hate UEFI myself and Dells are among the worst I have encountered.
Laptops and desktops both.

Thinkpads, no problem.

> it comes with windoh's but curious if there are known problems putting ubuntu on it and having
> boot on power up well. Do you know if any of these will turn on with power applied or
> do you need a server for that?

Usually a BIOS/firmware setting, I think. Called something like "power
on after power outage".

>  I was debating about using something like this for
> a security camera system - it comes with a camera and could probably just add more -
> or similar unattended functions
> and the battery should keep the included camera up during power outages. During extended
> outages though wanted to see it it would turn back on, I guess many computers
> have a net wakeup mechanism although this one does not appear to have a wired NIC.

I'd favour a NUC or something for that but I take your point about
working during power outages.

I'd still prefer an old Thinkpad to a cut-price anything else, laptop-wise.


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