Hmm, seems like currently the costs of the more "open" laptops are around this:
StarBook ~1000€
Librem 14 ~1250€
Framework ~925€
I can see why they'd focus on this price point, but what are some of the better budget options? Best i can think of are:
StarLite ~500€ (available soon)
Pinebook Pro ~250€ (out of stock)
Raspberry Pi 400 ~100€ (not a true laptop, but interesting)
I actually bought my x86 notebook for around 200€, which was perfect for note taking in University and now occasionally serves as a low-power long battery life web browsing or typing machine: https://techbite.eu/en/laptopy/laptop-zin-3-14-1 (i got a slightly older revision)
That said, it seems like you should only go for the more popular devices so you don't run into stupid weirdness with drivers, even in popular *nix distros (4 GB of RAM just wasn't enough for usable Windows), for example, that manufacturer i linked had problems with the fingerprint scanner in the model i got.
Of course, what i'm after might be better for those who prefer desktop computing for most tasks and only need something for being on the go occasionally (or just are frugal, like me, due to only being able to make savings slowly).
That said, it seems like you should only go for the more popular devices so you don't run into stupid weirdness with drivers, even in popular *nix distros (4 GB of RAM just wasn't enough for usable Windows), for example, that manufacturer i linked had problems with the fingerprint scanner in the model i got.
Of course, what i'm after might be better for those who prefer desktop computing for most tasks and only need something for being on the go occasionally (or just are frugal, like me, due to only being able to make savings slowly).