I’m considering buying a secondhand Yoga Slim 7 with AMD/Ryzen 7 for 400 dollars. Is this a good deal? My parents advise against it because the laptop is old (3-4 years), so I’m not sure. I also don’t know how well Linux (Fedora/KDE) runs on this particular model. It comes with 512/16GB. I need advice cause I need to make a decision in like 2 days.

    • Wild Bill@midwest.socialOP
      3·
      17 days ago

      I’m planning on using it as a personal computer and something I can use for college. So mainly writing text documents, web browsing, YouTube, but no gaming or video/image editing.

      • Omega_Jimes@lemmy.ca
        4·
        16 days ago

        Imo, your biggest enemy here is going to be battery life. I bought a sale-priced Lenovo t14s and I always keep a battery back in my bag just in case.

        With a low power profile, having Eclipse open, a web browser to view slides/ documents and Logseq for notes my battery lasts most of the day but if I forget to charge it, it’s a pain to use pen and paper for notes.

        An older laptop will have a degraded battery, and you really want maximum lifetime with multiple classes in a day.

      • Offbus@lemmy.world
        2·
        17 days ago

        If you plan on using the device for school, it might be worth your effort to check with the school to see if your program of study will be accommodating, allows for, or otherwise specifies directly what os to use. Some institutions offer free or reduced cost licenses for what os is required. I know that there may be some coursework that can require a specific os for the applications you’ll be required to use. Test monitoring software is the first, and probably most extreme, example that comes to mind.

  • Random Dent@lemmy.mlEnglish
    1·
    16 days ago

    If it helps at all, I’m typing this on a Lenovo Ideadpad 5 that has a Ryzen 5 and 8gb that’s running up-to-date Arch (btw) and KDE perfectly well with no troubles at all. I haven’t owned the Yoga Slim specifically, but I’ve had a few Lenovos over the years and mine have all run various forms of Linux quite happily.