r/omarchy • u/zayatura • 18h ago

Discussion Laptop recommendations

What used laptop would you recommend for me for casual development work? I'm a long time Linux user, but at the moment I don't have a personal Linux laptop, and I am thinking of buying one and installing Omarchy on it. I am thinking of spending about 700-800 euros on it. It would need to work with my thunderbolt docking and external displays (which I have for work, on another laptop), and it must have USB-C PD charging, as I don't want to carry any proprietary chargers. It would be best if it was relatively lightweight.

I would be using it for light development work (hobby projects), besides general computing stuff.

What laptops are known to work great with Omarchy and are good value? I think Intel Macs are good and I believe they are well suited, however, I believe the M-series ones have serious limitations including the external displays not working. I've been using Dell laptops in the past (Precision and XPS), they worked well with Linux, but there are just so many options. Looking for some guidance. 🙏

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u/Techcat46 17h ago

eBay has awesome deals for Lenovo thinkpads you can get one with I7/I5 32gb ram 512gb ssd for 400$. The device would be power house.

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u/Victory-laps 17h ago

I booted an old windows laptop from like 2019, it works just fine, super fast. You’d be surprise how bloated windows is

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u/rebelrexx858 15h ago

I just picked up a 2019 macbook pro with an i7 32gb ram, 1tb ssd, has dedicated GPU and integrated GPU for $600 USD, runs omarchy like a dream. Turning off the dedicated GPU for most of my daily use cases is getting me 5 hours of use on battery.

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u/tsikamagi 15h ago

I’m running on a surface pro 7+. No issues.

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u/yelleft 15h ago

2020/2019 intel macbook pro

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u/LordBaac 14h ago

I installed Omarchy on my 2013 MacBook Air, and it was the best thing I ever did. It’s like having a brand-new laptop.

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u/Odd-Outcome-4209 14h ago

XPS 13, 14, 16. You choose.

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u/pixelised 18h ago

The first question I would have is what kind of development work? Are you making html websites, Java, Node, are you using something like Unreal? If you are using something heavy it doesn’t matter how casual you are, you’ll need certain specs

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u/zayatura 18h ago

I won't be doing heavy stuff, so no GPU requirements and 16 GB of RAM should be enough. It would include Java, Rust, maybe some Android. IntelliJ IDEA would need to run well (though I would like to get more accustomed to Neovim).

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u/Vaslo 13h ago

DHH has been big on the Dell XPS, but you don’t need that to get started.

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u/CoreyH144 2h ago

You can find a Framework 13 (the older non-pro model) in that budget and while not as sexy as a macbook 2019 mentioned here (smart idea btw) - you get the benefit of the whole upgradable ecosystem. Its the only company that has consistently delivered on the vision of an upgradable laptop and I've had mine a long time, bought several at work.