I’ve had good experiences with most modern Dell Laptops. Also Thinkpads. What’s “budget range” to you?

Are you refering to this comment?

https://mastodon.social/@popey/112591863166141029

@bytebro Yeah, their butchered Ubuntu install, and anti-snap stance is anti-consumer.

Reporting is done by users who voluntarily upload their system specs via
# hw-probe -all -upload

So not skewed at all…

As you need an installation medium anyway, get those packages while you’re at it, then install them on the VM.

I ran it very successfully on a RPi4 as a media center connect to the living room TV.

However, I don’t really get your plan to virtualize them on one machine. What’s the goal here?

Much better to quickly determine CPU and memory load.

You again.

I’m looking for a Debian based distro

I hate bloated distros

So… Debian?

Have dabbled with LMDE on several 2-4 years old Dell XPS models, which are basically the same hardware as in the Precision models.

What I tested all worked fine, including automated BIOS updates through LMDE itself.

It would depend on the actual laptop in question though, as those lines come in a wild variety of possible hardware options.

Did you even read the post?

Notably missing will be Code-to-CAD options like OpenSCAD. I have a couple of them, and I have dabbled in PHP, Python, Pascal, and BASIC over the decades, but my brain just doesn’t “see” in code.

I’m not sure I’d call that “missed”. Rather “left out on purpose”.