So I'm looking for a laptop, but before you downvote and move on, I've got a twist: I'm looking for a laptop with Linux support that's going to intentionally be console-only and rely on TUIs to make a lower-distraction device.
I was looking at older Thinkpads with 4:3 screens and the good keyboard before Lenovo went all chicklet with them, but I'm kinda concluding they're both way too expensive AND way too old to be a reasonable choice at this point.
A X220 or T40-whatever would be great and be the perfect aesthetic, but they're expensive, hard to find parts for, and using enough crusty old shit that this becomes yet another delve into retro computing and not one into practical, useful computing which is the goal here.
So, anyone have any recommendations of any devices in the last decade that have a reasonable keyboard, screen, use modern enough components that you can source new drives and RAM and batteries and such, and preferably aren't coated in a coating that's going to turn to sticky goo?
Thin(ner) and light(er) would be nice, but probably not a dealbreaker if the rest of the pieces align. This will be almost entirely used at a table for writing and such.
Buy multiple drives, setup some sort of raid, setup some sort of backup. Then set up a 2nd backup.
Done.
All drives from all manufacturers are going to fail at more or less the same rate (see: backblaze's stats) and trying to buy a specific thing to avoid the death which is coming for all drives is, mostly, futile: at the absolute best you might see a single specific model to avoid, but that doesn't mean entire product lines are bad.
I'm using some WD red drives which are pushing 8 years old, and some Seagate exos drives which are pushing 4, and so far no issues on any of the 7 drives.