It finally happened. My trusty personal laptop died. To be fair I can’t complain; it’s had a good innings, surviving around 11 years. It was a Sony Vaio, which means it long outlasted the part of Sony’s business that manufactured it. It was brought back from the dead once already thanks to a local IT shop, but the fix was impermanent and isn’t worth repeating.

Technology sure has moved on over the decade-plus since I got it. Whilst it could still cope with the basics, it might have gotten too slow to use without frustration after one Windows 10 update or another had I not discovered the virtues of Linux, having installed Linux Mint a while ago.

The performance difference was night and day. No more waiting around for hourglasses to spin or 10 minute boot-up times. And also no more sponsored “recommendations” for apps I’d never want. No more extremely low quality unsolicited “news” in the Start menu.

You can turn much of that off to be fair. But, come on, even the once-sacred, once-pure pastime of many an office worker - sol.exe - was infused with 30 second long video advertisements. Oh, don’t worry, you can still play their solitaire and minesweeper ad-free if you want to. For $20 a year.

For anyone else who has old tech that’s too slow for the more mainstream operating systems, yet correctly detests unnecessary e-waste, I strongly advise you give Linux a go. Despite its reputation, these days if things go smoothly it’s not an immense technical challenge to install, and it’s certainly not hard to use for day-to-day work and play once it is installed. At least if you go for one of the distributions that prioritises ease of use and/or consistency with the computing experiences of other operating systems (Linux Mint being one of those, many other options exist). So you’ve not got a lot to lose if you alternative is throwing the machine away.

Plus there’s no shortage of high quality Linux software to replace your Windows apps. Much of it is free of charge and it’s often extremely easy to install thanks to various pre-installed graphical package managers. And in the case that you do need to run Windows programs, technologies like Wine might get you there.

I soon learned to enjoy Linux more than Windows. I’d set it up as a dual boot system but found that I never actually booted to Windows. Thus I figured that this time I’d go out of my way to buy a laptop designed for and preinstalled with Linux to replace it. I imagined it might even be a cheaper option give there’d be no Windows licensing costs for manufacturers to pay. As much as I’d enjoy some £5000 power-beast it’s just not going to happen right now short of a lottery win.

Turns out I was very wrong, unless I just didn’t search well enough.

Not all that many companies seem to sell new machines with Linux pre-installed on. System76 seem to be amongst the most famous dedicated providers of Linux offerings. But all are substantially above $1000, even without considering any shipping costs to the UK. Juno Computers are another option. Their “entry level” laptops appear to start from £970. Although actually if you click around enough you can find some with older processors that start from £655. StarLabs are another provider, their laptops start at £969.60.

Of the more mainstream computer providers, Dell also do some. They even offer instructions as to how to replace the OS their other laptops come with with Linux which is very cool. But their famous XPS range that has the option of coming with Ubuntu Linux are all above £1000 as far as I can see.

Why so expensive when you can go to some high street shop and get a (admittedly not great) Windows laptop for like £300? To be honest I haven’t done the research to know the answer to this question, which almost certainly has an an actual answer. But heaven forbid I do my homework. So I’m just going to make guesses, that it’s one or more of these potential reasons:

  • Linux laptops are not at all popular. It’s a niche market. It’s much more expensive per item to make things fewer people buy.
  • Maybe they tend to have better hardware? I guess it’s probably nerd types that tend to want them. Perhaps they’re more likely than average to care about performance.
  • If you’re intending to support your customer’s usage of your machine then there would presumably be ongoing costs for that. It must be harder (more expensive) to find agents who can help people solve Linux problems than Windows.
  • You’d also have to make sure that drivers etc. for all the hardware you include exist in Linux - and write and maintain them if not.
  • Most Windows PC manufacturers and distributors appear to pre-install a load of truly garbage software that you probably don’t want on the system before selling it to you. Clearly this is not for altruistic reasons. Maybe the kickback they get from doing that is so high that it more than makes up for the cost of Windows.
  • Perhaps the people that want Linux laptops really want Linux laptops so will pay more? And far be it from any company to not exploit every possible £ of revenue opportunity.
  • I’m sure OEMs don’t pay the same for Windows as us mere people do. Perhaps Windows is very cheap for them, or they even receive benefits from Microsoft for ensuring more folk get into their ecosystem.

Nonetheless it seems like a potentially missed opportunity. You can buy (low-performing) Chromebooks for not much more than £100. But I don’t think I could live with a Google operating system, and I’d assume a lack of software choice from the point of those of us who enjoy tinkering, who love options screens with 100 preferences, who occasionally might want to do our own coding.

So, despite my philosophical and in-practice preferences, I’m opting for some sub-£500 Windows machine. In any case, there’s always the option to replace Windows with Linux, which I can totally see myself doing in short order. But I guess I will experiment with Windows 11 for a bit first given I’ve never used it. Maybe I’ll be pleasantly surprised.

That decision does mean I’ll probably want to dedicate some time to reading and acting on a ton of articles like ‘How to disable annoying ads on Windows 11’ and “How to remove bloatware from your new PC” to try and minimise the semi-spyware and advertising networks that apparently infuse Microsoft’s latest creation, an apparently ever more enshittifying iteration.

Ads in the Start menu, in File Explorer, maybe even in Settings for crying out loud - although perhaps fair to note that most of the latter ads are likely for Microsoft services that are supposed to improve your experience, such as OneDrive - if you’re willing to pay. In any case, I like Alaina Yee’s take in PC World:

Look, I’m not in marketing, but if an ad causes a seasoned tech journalist to briefly think his PC got infected with malware, maybe your advertising approach needs improving.