I’m considering buying a laptop from Tuxedo, but I’m in Australia and I’m not sure how bad that idea is. Does anyone have experience or recommendation? I would not buy from any american company though. Is there a risk to not go through the country, or that I would have to pay a massive tax on it?
I bought 2 lenovos before. It seems to be getting worse for Linux and Amd. My first one was awesome, the second one had so many issues and I have to use a usb wifi and blacklist the internal one, so I probably want to skip lenovo this time, even if I have to pay a lot more.
if your concern is hardware support then buying from a Linux installed company like Tuxedo is a good idea. If following from that your concern is hardware failure or part availability ask a local repair shop their opinion, they’ll tell you better than us.
If you buy from buy brands, e.g. Lenovo, then in my experience checking online forums for the exact model is enough.
FWIW I’d also consider Pine64 (geographically closer to you) and a RPi5 seeing your power consumption concerns but that implies no very demanding workflows.