[HN Gopher] Ask HN: Are new ThinkPads still worthy?
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Ask HN: Are new ThinkPads still worthy?
        
       if not alternatives 1) good for windows Linux and double boot (I
       have acer and is really painful install linux)
        
       Author : imachine1980_
       Score  : 42 points
       Date   : 2021-12-09 20:19 UTC (2 hours ago)
        
       | CountSessine wrote:
       | I just replaced a thinkpad x1 extreme gen 2 with a dell xps 17 (I
       | wanted a 16:10 screen and shipping estimates for the x1 extreme
       | gen 4 were ridiculous. Also, Lenovo of Canada are a bunch of
       | dirty crooks).
       | 
       | The thinkpad was pretty good, and wayland on fedora worked
       | beautifully (I only used integrated graphics in linux, didn't
       | even try to get the discrete gpu working). The one thing that
       | really didn't work in linux was the fingerprint scanner - it
       | would fail about 7/8 times I used it, which is really too bad
       | because fedora has really nice fingerprint integration with sudo.
       | 
       | Also, something seemed to be a bit funny about it's displayport
       | implementation - when it was connected to my DP monitor and went
       | to sleep, the monitor would wake it back up again almost
       | instantly and it would get into this weird back-and-forth between
       | sleep mode and waking. That happened in both linux and windows.
       | This doesn't happen with my new xps.
       | 
       | Otherwise it was pretty smooth sailing. It was a well-built
       | computer with a nice keyboard. I might get another thinkpad at
       | some point, but I'm loving this super-compact 17" 16:10 display
       | on the xps.
        
       | moonchrome wrote:
       | I had a p15 at a job a few years ago. I was onboarding on this
       | large .NET project that had like a day of environment setup just
       | to get it running.
       | 
       | After going through the grueling setup I couldn't get the damn
       | thing to start and the errors were coming from some random
       | windows service that I couldn't see referenced anywhere.
       | 
       | Fortunately I was on onboarding with another person and they had
       | the exact same problem, so it wasn't just something I was doing
       | wrong.
       | 
       | Two days worth of googling and fumbling around I figured out we
       | were the first to get the updated model of the laptop everyone
       | else was using and the dolby surround drivers that came with the
       | new version were killing some windows messaging service used by
       | some database feature.
       | 
       | A hard pass on Lenovo stuff after that experience, drivers
       | breaking core OS services is not something I'd call a
       | professional device. Who the hell buys a P15 for Dolby Atmos
       | support anyway ? It could have no speakers included and be
       | equally good for the intended use case.
        
       | keb_ wrote:
       | I used to have an x201 which I loved to death. I upgraded to an
       | x240 a couple years ago and I honestly find it mediocre; it has
       | an awful trackpad, and it gets hot way too easily.
       | 
       | I bought my dad an x220 for his birthday a couple years ago and I
       | love that thing to death -- such a great laptop in look and feel
       | (if you dig the retro aesthetic).
       | 
       | I'm hoping to pick up an X1 Carbon or a Framework laptop one day,
       | but I frankly have minimal use for laptops in general at the
       | moment.
        
       | 12ian34 wrote:
       | I have an X1 Carbon (6th or 7th gen, I forget) and I love it.
       | I've handled dozens of other laptops and tried out loads at shops
       | and nothing else feels as good to me. It ticks so many boxes for
       | me:
       | 
       | - Dual boots Arch and Windows perfectly, never had issues.
       | 
       | - Several years old but still faster than I need with the i7,
       | NVMe SSD and 16 GB memory.
       | 
       | - Soft plastic non metallic feel, doesn't get too hot or cold,
       | fan only rarely comes on and it's way quieter than pre M1
       | MacBooks
       | 
       | - Feels like the lightest performance laptop I've ever used.
       | 
       | - The PERFECT laptop keyboard. Love the travel, love the dim
       | click, love the positioning of every key, love the dedicated
       | home, end, page up, page down, delete keys. Love the physical
       | left, middle and right click buttons and of course the nipple for
       | comedy factor (however the trackpad obviously sucks relative to
       | MacBooks).
       | 
       | - Lid opens and closes easily.
       | 
       | - Perfect connectivity options, two USB C (PD, Thunderbolt,
       | ethernet), 2/3 USB A, HDMI, microSD, SD.
       | 
       | - Matte screen.
       | 
       | - Physical camera slider.
       | 
       | I understand the latest X1 Carbons have most if not all of these
       | features.
        
         | scruple wrote:
         | Same here. I've gotten a lot of mileage out of my 7th
         | generation X1C. Perhaps more than any laptop I've previously
         | owned. I've had no problems with it whatsoever. I've been
         | running Ubuntu on it since the day it arrived.
        
         | miniatureape wrote:
         | I have a 7th generation as well. I had an issue with screen
         | flicker, but I sent it back and the fixed it promptly (for
         | free) and its been fine since.
         | 
         | Otherwise, its been very good. I used this guide to set up the
         | dual boot with
         | https://www.mikekasberg.com/blog/2020/04/08/dual-boot-
         | ubuntu..., with some small changes because that is a dell
         | machine.
         | 
         | I have the UHD display and the type is a bit small, but the
         | scaling works well.
         | 
         | The only thing that is a little flaky is the fingerprint
         | reader. The battery, with Ubuntu, is not great, but fine for my
         | uses.
        
         | atsaloli wrote:
         | I am still using my X1 Carbon 2nd generation. Q4OS for the
         | operating system (https://q4os.org/) and DWM for window
         | manager. Works great!
        
         | gtirloni wrote:
         | +1
         | 
         | I have a X1 Carbon 5th gen and it's awesome. No issues at all
         | running Fedora and Windows. I'll likely buy the newest version
         | next year to replace it.
        
         | handrous wrote:
         | > Perfect connectivity options, two USB C (PD, Thunderbolt,
         | ethernet), 2/3 USB A, HDMI, microSD, SD.
         | 
         | I miss USB-A ports on MacBooks. Every indication is I'll still
         | miss them in 2025. Perhaps by 2030 it will seem like an OK
         | choice.
         | 
         | I don't miss dedicated Thunderbolt ports, whatever those were
         | called. Like they had on 2015 and earlier MacBooks. Replacing
         | those with thunderbolt-capable USB-C ports is absolutely an
         | improvement, and the right call for Thinkpads, too.
        
         | dahfizz wrote:
         | I also have a 7th gen X1 Carbon, and love it. The keyboard is
         | excellent and the 14" 1440p screen is my ideal setup.
        
         | blakesterz wrote:
         | I'll just second everything said here. I have the same setup,
         | mine is 2 years old, I think it's gen 7 maybe 8. I can't add
         | anything else said here. It's solid.
        
       | soco wrote:
       | T495 of last year here, an AMD with all(?) extras, love it.
        
       | trylfthsk wrote:
       | My P15 supports ECC, has great graphics, ok cooling, and in a
       | pinch is heavy enough to be used in self-defense.
        
         | pvarangot wrote:
         | The cooling on the P51 is what sold it to me. I have a maxed
         | out one with the quadro and everything, it's my photo editing
         | and now DAW laptop. It's really nice to be able to work on it
         | for an hour or more and know that I'm not going to loose 50% or
         | my computing power while working on Ableton and have to stop
         | until it cools down because I have too many plugins running.
         | 
         | Got it a year ago for 2500 and I'm a bit on the fence about
         | having gotten it, it's a great computer but the new M1 Mac
         | would smoke it and I prefer MacOS to Windows.
        
       | smoldesu wrote:
       | It's weird. I own two Thinkpads, a "golden era" model with the
       | 7-row keyboard (x201) as well as a newer Skylake model (T460s).
       | The difference between the two is noticeable, but not as much as
       | people make it out to be. The older model feels like a really
       | solidly built device, and the performance is surprisingly good
       | while running Linux. It idles on the hot side (little less than
       | 40c no matter what you're running), but CPU usage is low even on
       | high-bloat desktop environments like KDE. Without anything
       | running in the background, CPU usage stays below 2%, which kinda
       | blows my mind for a machine pushing a decade old. The newer model
       | I have is much the same way, but it's thinner and idles at a much
       | more reasonable temp (28-30c). Frankly, I think they're both
       | fine. The new keyboards aren't mind-blowing, but I'd still put
       | them leagues beyond Dell and Apple's offerings these days. I'd
       | frankly recommend either of them, as long as you can find one
       | without a TN panel. The other advice I'd give is to not buy
       | directly from Lenovo, since their prices are all over the place
       | and tend to screw you over if you don't do your due diligence.
        
         | RankingMember wrote:
         | Curious for your thoughts: Where would you recommend buying
         | from, a retailer like Best Buy?
        
           | gkop wrote:
           | Lenovo.com will let you customize the machine, and often
           | offers nice discount codes on the order of 10-15% off list.
        
             | elabajaba wrote:
             | More like 40-60% off. Their base prices are insane for
             | Thinkpads.
        
           | smoldesu wrote:
           | Yep, Best Buy and Amazon are both solid first-party
           | retailers. I don't really buy Thinkpads new-in-box anymore,
           | but from what I've seen, Lenovo's pricing is insanely
           | inconsistent.
        
             | lotsofpulp wrote:
             | I would recommend Best Buy over Amazon since Amazon
             | commingles inventory.
        
           | shmerl wrote:
           | lenovo.com allows you customizing your builds. Other stores -
           | not really.
        
         | ChuckNorris89 wrote:
         | _> high-bloat desktop environments like KDE_
         | 
         | Which KDE is that and how exactly is it "high bloat"?
         | 
         | Definitely not Plasma. Modern KDE is very resource efficient,
         | even giving XFCE a run for its money.
        
           | smoldesu wrote:
           | I mean, I use KDE Plasma on many of my devices. I'm pretty
           | familiar with it's resource footprint, and while it's
           | certainly better than it used to be, it's still on the high-
           | end of resource usage when compared with it's contemporaries.
           | It's gotten much better at memory management, but there's a
           | considerable amount of latency and cruft surrounding the
           | menus and dialogues the system uses. On every system I've
           | ever used, krunner takes ~600ms to boot launch, menus have a
           | good 200ms of lead-time and activity switching can be 1500ms+
           | on the right configuration. XFCE still feels faster to me,
           | but maybe it's a hardware thing.
        
             | ChuckNorris89 wrote:
             | How did you measure all these latencies? Anecdotally , KDE
             | on my OpenSUSE Tumbleweed is pretty fast on both new Ryzen
             | and very old Intel laptops. Maybe something is wrong/buggy
             | on your setup.
        
             | WhatIsDukkha wrote:
             | Eh? You have something wrong. 4-5 desktops/laptops with
             | wide variety of profiles and I don't see any of that
             | latency.
             | 
             | Turn off animations.
        
       | rvense wrote:
       | I have a T490s from last year for work.
       | 
       | I just had the keyboard (well, entire top assembly) replaced
       | today via the on-site warranty because the touchpad was ghosting
       | and the physical buttons had stopped working, i.e. it was
       | basically impossible to use without an external keyboard. This
       | also meant that the left shift key no longer comes loose all the
       | time, which it started doing soon after I got it. It also has a
       | couple of dead pixels, though I don't care too much about those.
       | 
       | Battery life at this point is less than one hour, after which it
       | cuts out with no working. That might be a Linux issue, but the
       | battery reports its charge state at ~25% when it cuts out. I had
       | hoped they would replace it as well, but my work didn't get the
       | extended warranty for the battery, which is a separate thing.
       | That means that the warranty is only one year, and as such Lenovo
       | want 300 EUR or so to do the replacement, and that's if I send it
       | to them (onsite I imagine it'll be even more expensive).
       | 
       | All in all, I'm not very happy with the machine. Overall feel is
       | OK (not fantastic), but the random shut-downs and keyboard
       | wonkiness are extremely off-putting, as is the development in the
       | battery life - it barely works as a laptop anymore.
       | 
       | My personal laptop is an almost antique X200, I've gone through a
       | couple since 2008, but they always feel dependable in a way that
       | this just doesn't, and I can't see myself getting a new Lenovo
       | now based on this experience. In my personal life I don't need
       | the extra speed at all, and I wish Lenovo would just keep making
       | spares (and new batteries) for the X200 so I could use that for
       | the rest of my life.
        
       | fmo1973 wrote:
       | I'm writing this from a P14s Gen1 (AMD) and it works great on
       | Fedora 35 and that includes the fingerprint reader. It obviously
       | works great on Windows but I don't use that.
        
         | jcastro wrote:
         | P14s Gen1 (AMD) here too, love this thing!
        
       | neverminder wrote:
       | Dell Precision 7xxx series. Unlike Lenovo, Dell officially
       | supports linux on their laptops and actually ship them with it
       | preinstalled. Also unlike chinese owned Lenovo, Dell doesn't have
       | a track record of installing spyware.
        
       | dunco wrote:
       | They are worse than they used to be, but the bar is so low in the
       | market that they are still among the best. My gripes are entirely
       | with reliability.
       | 
       | I have had many issues with mine (Carbon X1 G6, then G7), all due
       | to bad firmware, which lenovo swapped out the mainboard 5 times
       | trying to fix. They also keep making the keyboard shittier on the
       | X1, but then don't let you choose a good display on a larger
       | model (at least in Aus when I was looking, but I know there is
       | some variability in what is available where and when)
       | 
       | Have a look at frame.work laptops to see if that might suit you.
       | I have never used them, but they look great. The major
       | manufacturers seem to be on a treadmill, pumping out half-
       | finished unreliable garbage to keep up with industry trends.
       | 
       | From the limited surveys etc I could find online, all windows
       | laptops have roughly twice the failure rate of macs. As best I
       | could determine, It seems you have about 1 in 5 chance of major
       | failure from lenovo/dell etc. and about 1/10 chance from apple
       | (from memory, could be 1/10 vs 1/20). Major failure being
       | something that requires the device to be serviced or sent back,
       | not necessarily a show stopping issue.
       | 
       | Get on-site servicing when its offered because it doesn't cost
       | much and there is a good chance you will need to use it.
        
       | Loic wrote:
       | I have a T480 as my daily driver, my kids are using my old X220
       | and I still have an X60s around to experiment. I really like all
       | of them.
       | 
       | Interestingly, my son, 14, told me, even after using desktops at
       | school, the Mac we have at home and probably some other computers
       | with friends, that the best keyboard is from the X220. I am never
       | talking about the quality of the keyboards, this was the first
       | time we discussed about it as he just told me that out of the
       | blue.
        
         | herodoturtle wrote:
         | Your son has good taste in keyboards.
         | 
         | At risk of sounding overly subjective, I've got an external
         | Thinkpad USB keyboard with Trackpoint - the 2012 SK-8855 model
         | - which is basically the X220 keyboard.
         | 
         | It is hands down the best keyboard experience I've ever had
         | (and I've owned plenty, including mechanical boards, most
         | recently the Logitech G915 TKL).
         | 
         | Sadly my backspace key is misfiring and it's beginning to show
         | its age. Which really saddens me. I wish I bought several of
         | these when they were still available. Now even second hand
         | models are difficult to come by.
        
       | marto1 wrote:
       | Thinkpads are generally better than Acer. That said:
       | 1. Modular build is non existent. With new thinkpads you can't
       | even remove the battery. That sucks.            2. Cooling. A lot
       | of their new models seem to have been modeled to be as thin as
       | possible and then some, so there's no space for cooling. CPU/GPU
       | throttling was unheard of from that brand for a long time and is
       | no longer the case.             3. Warranty. Depending on where
       | you are in the world you'll get very different attitude towards
       | respecting warranty. As some have pointed out it can get pretty
       | bad.            4. Linux support is mostly ok except for
       | NVidia/primus/optirun shenanigans.
        
         | melony wrote:
         | The current generation of ThinkPads are fairly easy to open up
         | to replace ram and battery but the outer shell is much flimsier
         | than Mac's. There is an over reliance on the 'roll cage' for
         | structural integrity and the area near the trackpad is easily
         | deformed and warped by a spudger.
        
       | johnmaguire wrote:
       | It depends. I'm a Linux user and my recent experiences are with
       | two devices:
       | 
       | 1. T470p - Out of the box it had a couple dead pixels, and the
       | right click physical button to match the red nub had a hair
       | trigger - I ended up disabling the nub entirely in BIOS so that I
       | could type without triggering it. I also regularly (daily?)
       | suffered video driver crashes. I don't know if it was faulty
       | hardware or something with the i915 driver, but I think the
       | former since my new device doesn't have this issue and others
       | with the T470p didn't experience it. The battery life wasn't
       | great either, which was surprising since it was one of the
       | chunky-battery models. I hated this machine.
       | 
       | 2. X1 Carbon (9th gen) - Works almost perfectly with very little
       | fiddling. I do occasionally still have some brief issues with the
       | Intel graphics causing freezes (both in Firefox and Zoom), but
       | nothing like the crashes I saw before and everything just works.
       | Plus it supports a USB-C dock that allows me to drive two
       | monitors, connect my mouse and keyboard, and charge the laptop
       | all with a single cable. Thin, light, with great battery life
       | too.
        
       | thetwentyone wrote:
       | I had a terrible experience with Lenovo. In October 2020 I
       | ordered a laptop. In the next couple of months I called and tried
       | to cancel (they would put in a "cancellation request").
       | Additionally, they sent an email saying the regulation required
       | that since it hadn't shipped, if it still hadn't shipped in 5
       | days they would have to cancel the order. A few weeks later, it
       | shipped and I had UPS "return to sender" before it even arrived
       | at my apartment. It was returned to the address Lenovo put as the
       | return address.
       | 
       | Paypal refunded me the money after reviewing the case, but I'm
       | now fighting a debt collector for the ~1k USD.
        
       | staticautomatic wrote:
       | I have a brand new X1 extreme through work. The on-board sounds
       | crackles and the on-board mic was broken for MONTHS awaiting a
       | software fix from Lenovo that only corrected the mic issue. That
       | is to say...no.
        
         | arrosenberg wrote:
         | I had the same experience with the onboard speakers.
        
       | blindfolded_go wrote:
       | I have a T495. Works great for me, very solid laptop for running
       | Linux.
        
       | shmerl wrote:
       | Zen 3 APU based ones are really good like T14 Gen 2 AMD. I wish
       | though AMD would have started using RDNA 2 there instead of Vega
       | GPUs. So for example no AV1 hardware decoder yet. For that we'd
       | need to wait until Zen 4 APUs probably.
       | 
       | For Linux, make sure to replace the Mediatek WiFi horror with an
       | Intel WiFi card.
       | 
       | And also get the correct one, since Lenovo has some fishy
       | blacklists for WiFi cards. You can search for non blacklisted
       | part codes here (narrow it down by your laptop model):
       | 
       | https://pcsupport.lenovo.com/us/en/products/laptops-and-netb...
       | 
       | Other recent gotcha I had, if you are replacing the NVMe SSD too
       | to something better than the stock one, make sure to buy a 0.5 mm
       | thermal pad for it.
       | 
       | Another thing, in the UEFI change the suspend setting from
       | Windows to Linux.
        
         | ratiolat wrote:
         | Whats the problem with Mediateks? Thinking about getting bunch
         | of P41s amd gen 1's for work but intel wifi is not available
         | because chip shortag so it's either realtek or mediatek.
        
           | shmerl wrote:
           | Lagging upstream support. Something is coming in 5.16 from
           | what I've heard. Intel on the other hand support their WiFi
           | in a timely fashion and their drivers are pretty solid. I
           | simply made myself a rule to only use Intel WiFi becasue of
           | so many problems with other drivers in the past even if the
           | do exist. Save yourself the trouble and frustration.
           | 
           |  _> Intel wifi is not available because chip shortag so it 's
           | either realtek or mediatek._
           | 
           | They are not that hard to buy as a separate part. I bought
           | one recently to replace this Mediatek chip.
        
         | elabajaba wrote:
         | T14 gen2 is now shipping with a realtek wifi card that won't
         | have mainline linux support until the next kernel (5.16) ships.
         | 
         | The main problem with the T14 is that the screens are either
         | bad or horrifically bad, and you don't know what one you get
         | until it arrives. The 400nit low power screens are more like a
         | 30hz panel for the best one (~30ms grey to grey (g2g), and PWM
         | so it causes headaches and eyestrain), or ~14hz for the worst
         | one (74ms g2g! It's feels as slow as an eink screen.)
         | 
         | https://www.notebookcheck.net/Lenovo-s-Panel-Lottery-continu...
        
           | shmerl wrote:
           | I got one with a Mediatek card and replaced it with Intel
           | one. It works fine after that.
           | 
           | I also replaced the SSD with 1 TB SK Hynix Gold P31.
           | 
           | I think my screen is 400 nit but I haven't really noticed
           | major issues with it. I didn't do a lot of testing though.
        
             | elabajaba wrote:
             | Well response time wise they're worse than the new
             | Macbooks, and those are pretty terrible:
             | https://twitter.com/andreif7/status/1452622025550438403
             | 
             | They're not actually using the Innolux display this year
             | sadly, only the AUO and BOE panels (which both have awful
             | ghosting). Once you know what to look for (or feel, since
             | bad ghosting gives me headaches and eyestrain :/), it
             | becomes obvious.
        
               | shmerl wrote:
               | Is the higher res panel better for them?
        
       | boomskats wrote:
       | I firmly believe Thinkpads are the best mainstream Linux laptops
       | you can buy.
       | 
       | I have a 2nd gen P1 with a 4k OLED screen, 9400H, dual nvme SSDs
       | and 64gb of decent RAM. It is the best laptop I've ever owned.
       | 
       | Dual booting Fedora ever since I've owned it, with 95% Fedora /
       | 5% Windows split. Never a hiccup, perfect thermals, extremely
       | servicable, tough as hell, best keyboard ever.
        
       | kesslern wrote:
       | I've been using two Thinkpad Extreme X1's for awhile now. I have
       | a first-gen I use for personal programming projects and gaming
       | and a second gen one that I use for work.
       | 
       | In my opinion, they're wonderful. I dual boot both of them. The
       | process was simply shrinking the Windows partition using the
       | built in Windows utility and then installing Linux into the free
       | space. I don't have any issues with the system sleeping or not
       | waking up. I haven't really messed with hibernation though since
       | I haven't been very mobile the past two years or so.
       | 
       | The hybrid graphics work fine too, with one caveat. External
       | displays require Nvidia mode, and mode switching can only be done
       | with an X11 server restart. Hybrid mode has much better battery
       | life but doesn't support external displays. My work laptop is
       | generally plugged into 3 external displays so I keep it in Nvidia
       | mode.
       | 
       | I haven't tried Wayland, so I have no idea how well it works vs
       | X11.
        
       | rozab wrote:
       | It hasn't been mentioned yet how Lenovo preinstalled malware on
       | their machines in 2014-15. There isn't really anything that can
       | redeem that sort of behaviour in my eyes. Also they've used
       | Uyghur forced labour.
       | 
       | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superfish#Lenovo_security_inci...
       | 
       | https://theintercept.com/2020/08/21/school-laptops-lenovo-ch...
        
         | randomluck040 wrote:
         | Shouldn't have read the article, it's gut wrenching. How can
         | people be like that, without any empathy and emotional
         | attachment? I understand that there are more brands involved,
         | what I don't understand is how no one really talks about the
         | situation. It's ugly.
        
         | boomskats wrote:
         | FWIW, and this is a Thinkpad-specific Ask HN - the malware was
         | never preinstalled to Thinkpads, only their budget/consumer
         | line of laptops.
        
       | alphabet9000 wrote:
       | note that on many of the new thinkpads, the exhaust vent is on
       | the _right_ side. if you are right handed and use a mouse, it
       | will blow hot air directly onto your hand.
        
       | xoac wrote:
       | I'd get the framework laptop.
        
       | teekert wrote:
       | I have an x13 gen 2, it's just ok. 2 annoyances, I find the led
       | next to the power button too bright and ctrl and fn are swapped
       | and I hate it, I swapped them back in bios but now the labels are
       | wrong.
       | 
       | It runs Ubuntu fine and feels sturdy. Keyboard feels good, but I
       | don't like those two touchpad buttons integrated into the pad, it
       | feels cheap to bend the pad itself.
        
       | brink wrote:
       | I've had a Lenovo x1 carbon (latest gen) earlier this year for
       | work - hardware compatibility for linux is good, didn't really
       | like the typing experience and the touchpad is imo awful.
       | 
       | For my personal laptop, I have Arch (Manjaro) on a 13" xps 9130,
       | and wouldn't trade it for anything. Screen is beautiful, keyboard
       | is the best I've ever used (including new m1 macbooks), touchpad
       | is fantastic - It's the perfect little laptop, imo.
        
       | razemio wrote:
       | I have a new t14 at work. I use a Dell xps 15 at home. Would
       | always go for the Dell. The t14 is incredible ugly (guess all
       | thinkpads are), wastes a lot of space with those mouse clickers,
       | is bulky and also heavy compared to the Dell. Sound / Display
       | aren't even comparable. Build quality is close but that's it.
       | 
       | Both run arch like a champ.
        
       | abridgett wrote:
       | A friend was looking and in the end decided not to buy a Thinkpad
       | as both his current Thinkpads mis-order keys when typed quickly
       | and it seems unlikely that it's fixed. (And to be honest, they
       | don't deserve the money with such a bad bug).
       | 
       | See
       | https://www.reddit.com/r/thinkpad/comments/ekin47/the_x1_ext...
       | for the details.
        
       | sakebomb wrote:
       | I use a X1 Carbon Gen 9 for my daily driver after switching from
       | Gen 6. I still love both. I have been using Arch primarily which
       | has a great wiki for installing in case you were leaning that
       | way. Ubuntu is also spot on for all drivers.
       | 
       | I only had an issue with the battery in the Gen 6 early on, which
       | was fixed within two days by replacing it (under warranty). I
       | have not had any issues with my Gen 9 (though it is only 5 months
       | old).
       | 
       | Firmware is incredibly easy to update on it under linux.
       | 
       | I also from time to time swap out the M.2 SSD with windows when I
       | need it. The screws are super simple and you won't lose them.
       | 
       | I have used a XPS 13 in the past, though it is an okay
       | alternative, I will say, the keyboard is super compact and
       | inconvenient. The battery is iffy (one friend's exploded on him),
       | mine just did not last long. The form factor was nice, but it did
       | not feel nearly as nice as the X1 Carbon.
        
       | invernomut0 wrote:
       | I have a T14s with AMD Ryzen 7 and everything works on linux
       | apart the fingerprint reader.
       | 
       | Battery life is very good and you have great linux support
       | (including battery charge customization and other options with
       | TLP) It's light, you have a good choice of ports (USB A, VGA, USB
       | C) I think it's still a safe choice especially in the AMD variant
       | wrt the other linux laptops.
        
       | the_only_law wrote:
       | I got a new P14sand it managed to die within the year, after a
       | ton of power management issues where it just would not shut down
       | or wake up.
       | 
       | As far as I can tell the board is completely dead. Hours of
       | fiddling with the power button and trying anything I found
       | online, but it doesn't turn on anymore.
        
       | plmpsu wrote:
       | I use a first gen T14 running Manjaro. Highly recommended.
        
       | danieldevries wrote:
       | Second hand t480s running Manjaro. No issues with dual boot.
       | Great laptop!
        
       | patrickbolle wrote:
       | While not directly in the Thinkpad name, I have an older X1
       | Carbon (4th Gen) that has worked really well for me. Extensive
       | travelling, multiple drops, etc. Thing still is solid. Runs
       | Debian really well.
       | 
       | I have only ever owned Thinkpads (until the carbon) and I don't
       | see any reason I would personally switch back to Thinkpad
       | version. Carbons are so small and perfect for my usage.
        
         | zokier wrote:
         | X1 series has always been branded as Thinkpads, e.g.
         | https://www.notebookcheck.net/Review-Lenovo-ThinkPad-X1-NWK3...
        
       | shams93 wrote:
       | I use a thinkpad chromebook using chromeos but because this is
       | the high end thinkpad chromebook I run android studio and other
       | linux desktop apps. It has a beautiful keyboard and amazing build
       | quality. But I use linux apps on chrome rather than a desktop
       | linux distro.
        
       | int0x2e wrote:
       | I've used Lenovo laptops almost exclusively for the past 5 years
       | (coming from a Dell XPS 13). I've had a X1 Carbon, an X1 Yoga, a
       | couple of T4xx, and now a P1 Gen3. All of my lenovos were
       | awesome. None of them had real issue. I love how they're built
       | and their small design decisions.
       | 
       | You do have to keep in mind that small devices with great battery
       | lives usually don't have as powerful of a CPU or can't sustain it
       | for long without sounding like a small jet engine, but that's
       | more a question of adjusting ones expectations to what's
       | realistic within a category. This was largely the reason I
       | switched from an ultrabook-y lenovo (X1 Carbon and the Yoga) to a
       | slightly heavier device (P1) when my laptop became my main dev
       | machine during COVID (before that, my laptop was used for
       | hardcore dev work occasionally, but my desktop at the office was
       | my main machine for heavy lifting...)
        
       | beached_whale wrote:
       | At least with the thinkpad/legion line they have been repairable
       | and upgradable and perform well. I am using a legion 5 for my
       | linux notebook and it works great in windows and ubuntu.
        
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