Hi, want to buy some used hardware to run with Linux (Gnome DE ON Mint, Debian OR ElementaryOS). Mainly Office use, transcoding, but also for casual gaming Half-life 2 and maybe some more modern games.
Are Thinkpads with integrated GPUs sufficient for that?
Any nice alternatives which are sturdy and can be upgraded?
Stay away from the Thinkpad T580 with the Geforce MX150. It's horribly throttled and can't even run Quake 3 properly although it should actually be capable of running Doom 2016.
Depends on the GPU and how current you want to get with the titles, but yeah, should be fine. Just search around with the specific model name to double check it's Linux compatibility.
Modern games are not going to run well. Look for a Thinkpad with a Thunderbolt 3 port (make sure it actually has 4 PCIe lanes, some only have 2) and use an eGPU. Retro games will run fine on integrated graphics though.