Prices as of March 22nd based off my own observations.
System76 (base prices, not including addons)
- Lemur Pro: $1400
- Pangolin: $1300
Purism (base prices, not including shipping and that Purism is a shady company)
- Librem 11: $1000 (a literal tablet)
- Librem 14: $1370
- Librem Key: $60 (A USB)
Tuxedo (base prices, not including shipping costs to burgerland) (based in Germany)
- TUXEDO Aura 14 - Gen3: 840 EUR
- TUXEDO Pulse 14 - Gen3: 1238 EUR
- TUXEDO InfinityBook Pro 14 - Gen8: 1419 EUR
Slimbook (Based in Spain, base prices no shipping or taxes)
- Elemental 14 Intel i5 1235U: 600 EUR
- Excalibur 16 AMD Ryzen 7 7840HS: 1200 EUR
- Executive 14 Intel i7 13700H Black: 1400 EUR
Framework (base prices, but addons usually add $90-150)
- Framework 13 (AMD and Intel): $850
Minifree Ltd (Run by a trans fem in the UK, very cool brand)
- Libreboot 820 (1920x1080 IPS Screen Intel Core i5-5200U, 1 TB SSD): £378.00.
- Libreboot T440p (1920x1080, 4 core, 1 TB SSD): £558.00.
- Libreboot W541, (15.6″, 4-core Intel i7-4800MQ, 1920x1080, 1 TB SSD): £698.00.
Asahi Linux (from Refurbished Apple Store)
- 13.3-inch MacBook Air Apple M1 8gb RAM 256 GB SSD: $760
My current laptop
- Lenovo Yoga 6 2-in-1 AMD 13.3 inch 8 GB RAM (the one with the weird denim texture in the front): $450 from a Best Buy which has a battery life of 7-8 hours.
Note that these are just retail prices, obviously the best way to score good tech is to always buy refurbished laptops from reputable resell sites (used thinkpads rock). I just wanted to point out the absolute state of Linux ™ laptops. It’s pretty disheartening that a lot of Linux laptops are clearly geared towards software engineers who have the money to splurge online.
Until this changes, your best bet is to hunt for windows laptops that are reported to have a good track record with Linux and perform the sorcery there. But that also makes Linux an obscure option for a lot of people. 
since hardware support is either hit or miss (or distro specific).
Economy of scale, unfortunately. They don’t make enough to take advantage of lower bulk prices or they buy laptops from another manufacturer. Either case cost you more. I think you can get a Dell XPS with Ubuntu for around 1k, but that’s about it.
Second hand thinkpads stay winning. I think a framework laptop is worth the cost mostly cos of its self service repair and parts supply as well as the upgrade potential.
I think the idea with a framework is you only need to buy one then you’re set for a long time unlike most ewaste laptops
Still generates ewaste (whole mobo gets tossed or at best resold, every x years) but, you know, less of it for sure, major step in the right direction
The mobo doesn’t have to be since it can run as independently as a PC also. There are enclosures for them so they can be repurposed as a media center or even emulation console or lan party PC. This is like on another level of ewaste reduction that I don’t think anything else comes close to.
the main difference is that the mobo size is standardized and the manufacturer is actually promoting those sorts of diy reuse projects, they were always possible with many laptops but basically nobody did them (pessimistically: there’s a good chance this will still be the case for the vast majority of old frameworks). Its a good step in the right direction for sure, and I’m thinking of buying one for an org I’m involved with, but its not quite as revolutionary as their marketing makes it out to be
The HP Dev One was pretty reasonable at $1000 and hardware support built out with help from system76. So of course they killed it after like 9 months.
The pinebook pro just doesn’t have the guts for most people to be happy with it (rk3399 so 6 core BIGlittle architecture. not horrible but struggles to run modern massive webapps). But if you want a little ARM-book that is as FOSS as possible it’s okayish at $200 or less. I found the screen and keyboard and overall feel to be pretty good. Speakers and power management chip both pretty bad.
but like yeah point taken, the landscape is pretty poor still, requires a lot of research to see what has good compatibility, or splurge on something like you listed, or accept major tradeoffs
Don’t buy HP. It is on the BDS boycott list.
Ah very good point. Luckily you can’t buy one anyhow. I just happened to have experience using one that was mostly positive
I install Endeavour OS on every laptop that comes through my home. Found a Toshiba Sattellite L500 for $20, jammed 4GB into it, runs great. I’ve had a lot of luck with hardware support on linux.
Yes, and if you’re buying a windows laptop, you have no choice but to pay the windows tax, and then nuke it to install linux. It should be illegal to force consumers to buy windows and pay for it, basically no choice from most laptop manufacturers.
struggling with the exact same issue myself, looking for a new laptop but all the “linux first/FOSS friendly” options have zero low-to-mid range options leaving only a couple different 2000 dollar options to pick from which is just way too much money for me to be spending on a laptop.
i guess ill be sticking with my modded thinkpad t440p for the time being, its age is beginning to show but it still gets the job done as a web browser and media watcher
It seems like Linux laptops serve like “pro users” and they don’t really care about the entry or mid range price point. You really have to go for the netbook enthusiasts club computers to get something affordable, but it’ll be super under powered and run on a random ISC. Probably arm64, but maybe MIPS or RISC-V depending.
That said, Pine64 does have pretty cute little netbooks for like 100 USD and there’s extra space inside the enclosure for secret notes and stickers.
I am currently struggling with this lol.
Those minifree laptops look quite affordable. Sure it’s more than buying a used ThinkPad but the t440p comes pre-upgraded and with an open source bios. System76 is on the expensive side but it’s a low volume niche product with a lot of software engineering going into it (esp the firmware with both open source EFI and Embedded Controller. A lemur pro was my daily driver for a long time and even reclaimed that title after I got a framework since I preferred the lemur for a number of reasons (until it died :( I have a pre-order for the framework 16 but I may end up switching to a slimbook.
The reality is that buying nice laptops is expensive. Especially if they’re niche.
