Finding the right hardware for Qubes is one of the toughest challenges. Looking on the forum for some other threads would be my suggestion.
I recently started a new job and fortunate to receive a $5k hardware budget. I’ve been using an Intel NUC (mini-pc) with i5-8259U (4 cores) +32GB + NVMe SSD. Its snappy but the fans are constantly spinning and I’d really love to gift my ears some silence. I figure better airflow and more cores and new processor architecture would help.
I run 5-6 appVM’s + 4 sysVM’s and do mostly front-end dev, no heavy compiling or processor intensive work. My research has led me to a Thinkpad P1 gen 3 with i7…
Regarding the recency of the device:
Meme credits: Memes about Qubes OS - #18 by quququbebebe
I would look for a laptop with 3+ years that has been highly tested. For example the X1 Carbon Gen 5 is what the developers (and I) use and it should be relatively cheaper these days (especially if refurbished or second hand).
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