What is the cheapest laptop I can buy for development

I’d say an older gen Thinkpad. They’re usually the best value for your money if you’re looking for a bargain.

You can find sellers who might be willing to ship internationally on eBay. You also have to factor in taxes or levies your country may charge on electronic imports.

Sounds like a use case for a ChromeBook.

You would have to check which Chromebooks let you install Linux.

Also some of the cheaper Windows laptops would do. In my experience, they all let you install Linux.

What is your maximum budget? You can get refurbished ones for less than $100. If you are willing to pay $200, you can even get new laptops with up to 15 inch screen size:

https://www.productchart.com/laptops/for_less_than_200

Any used business-line laptop: Lenovo Thinkpad, Dell Latitude, HP Probook/Elitebook. Please don't by a consumer-line laptop - they are terrible except of Macbook.

Older Thinkpads, in particular Thinkpad x230 is an overall a good powerful machine selling for around 150$ second hand. It also has good screen and really awesome keyboard.

I'll also vote old thinkpad. I run T430 with xubuntu as a side machine, and startup and shutdown is near instant. Compared with my macbook pro 2016 - which, although it throws something up on screen very quickly, then spends 30s before it's actually responsive - yes, apple cheats.

HARDWARE SIDE:

The cheapest will be to ... not buy laptop. You can go for 2 in 1 and use your Android phone (if you have one) or buy one.

Any Android phone will do the job, but best look for one with USB3.1 (these will support display port on phones USB socket) as it carries video signal as well.

Here you have phones released in 2021 and 2022 supporting it: https://www.gsmarena.com/results.php3?nYearMin=2021&sFreeTex...

If you want to go for used phone feel free to refine search and set older years.

Portable screen you can get on Chinese websites for as little as 80-150USD (with shipping including)

Then get yourself bluetooth keyboard with trackpad (there are even foldable ones), or BT keyboard and BT mouse (whatever you like) and you should be already good.

Nice to have is also USB-C hub with HDMI output, so you can plug any wired USB devices or output via HDMI to regular screen or TV, these will cost 10-20USD with shipping

Optionally: You might also want a better control over your Android OS, or be able to receive updates way longer than vendor ships them - if so I will recommend to go for one of the phones supported here https://download.lineageos.org/ (most modern hardware with USB3.1 is supported by OnePlus, but you might find other brands and models that does the job)

SOFTWARE SIDE:

First you need install Termux on Android, it is kind of linux shell for Android linux kernel (all you basically need to start any development)

Once you'll have this, you can head for gcc, clang or whatever you need

Last piece is IDE, I use this one: https://github.com/coder/code-server

On recent ChromeBooks you can enable developer mode, which turns them into a low-cost Linux notebook. https://au.pcmag.com/linux/89550/how-to-install-linux-on-you...

There are several retailers on Amazon that sell suitable notebooks. Would that work for you?

I bought Thinkpad T440p for about 200 eur used. It was actually pawned by someone so I bought it locally no shipping was needed. It is an excellent device and hardware wise very powerful - i5-4300M, 8GB of RAM, 250GB SSD. Got lucky and it had battery with still 85% capacity left so that makes it run for about 2 hours, which is great. Only drawback it has is low resolution screen.

I got me an Acer Chromebook (Acer Chromebook CB314-1H-C2KX 14) for 129 EUR on Prime Day this year.

I used it for developing a game app, teaching my daughter programming over the summer holidays. The machine did pretty well for this purpose, running all the applications we required decently. Even Blender runs and can be used for simple tasks but I wouldn't want to work with such a heavy app nine to five on the little machine. Godot for a 2D game is absolutely fine though, we haven't used 3D much but that was OK too.

A nice thing was, that we could open and analyze competing Android games on the same machine. We couldn't have done this on a pure Linux machine.

I'd say Chrome Books are a very good fit for your stated requirements if you can live with the privacy implications of owning a Google device.

Rent the cheapest server from Hetzner or equivalent, and get whatever laptop is capable of running ssh. (Which is all of them.)

look for second hand thinkpads, models from x220 to x270 should fill all your needs. Screen size is 12". best you can get for 100-300$. Should come with 8gb of ram and decent CPU.

Check out the compatibility first, but for quite a long time as a student I was using bargain bin laptops. Usually the components are common/old enough to work out of the box with Linux. If you're happy with performance, it's... ok.

The hardware improved enough that as long as it's got 8gb of ram and runs... You should be fine for minimal dev work.

The "eBay Deals" page often has discounted refurbished laptops: https://www.ebay.com/deals/tech/laptops-netbooks

The advantage of buying from the deals page is that eBay has vetted the sellers in advance.

Old T or X series Lenovo gets my vote. Good machines, although I'd question if they're the best bet right now as some are getting kind of old (e.g. I had a quick look at a T430, cheap but it's a 3rd gen CPU). Could a consumer machine be a better bet at the expense of ruggedness? Might be quicker.

I just bought 12" ThinkPad x270 for $170. (i5 7gen, 8GB ram, 256 ssd). I'm very happy with it, it even has usb-c and works with my LG Ultrafine.

Nice price to value ratio, I think the screen is the biggest downside, but that's only in comparison to my MacBook.

Does it have to be new? Buy a used 7-8 gen+ intel laptop from your own country, i.e. used office stock from US and Europe is regularly available around the world. For around 300$ bucks you can get something very usable.

You can get any laptop made in the last 15 years, easy. Probably a free one.

buy some cheap thinkpad, put on programmer socks and install arch.

im joking but this is actually a pretty good idea for very cheap

Refurbished Thinkpad T or X series (don't buy other letter) cost nothing and it's reliable. First digit is display size, second digit is year of release, so T440 is 14" released in 2014.

Plenty of refurbished ThinkPads available in A1 condition for less than half price of a new machine.

I would recommend you buy from a specialist retailer rather than ebay though. You may pay a bit more but you are more likely to get a good quality, ex-corporate machine that has been properly checked and with some sort of guarantee.

There are some great refurbished ThinkPads that come with coreboot/libreboot/osboot and support the creator of those, at https://minifree.org/

Any Windows laptop older than 4 years should be obtainable for a song and work fine.

I still use a T420S Frankenpad with a better quality 1600x900 screen panel and maxed-out memory / ssd.

The keyboard is great, both batteries are OKish, although not original of course.

It has that gorgeous 7-row keyboard... um...

Thinkpad x250 with full hd ips panel. You can add an additional ssd if needed and 16gb of ram. It has a nice docking station, you can exchange batteries

Can't some HN folks just get together and send you $100 each so you can buy a great laptop? Happy to on my part...

Where are you based ?

I'd go for a second hand latitude.

I use slimbook they are very nice

What is cheap to you?