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> And if you want a portable computer (which by the way are demonstrably more secure in the face of physical tampering) you basically relegate yourself to terrible battery life, poor display support, dicey sleep support, and the fixes for these often compromise performance.

This depends a lot on how well supported your hardware is. I run Linux Mint (MATE) on a Thinkpad T430 and have had 0 issues with displays, sleep, battery life, you name it.

discuss

vocatus_gate|9 years ago

Running Linux Mint MATE 17.3 on my ThinkPad T530 for a couple years now with no problems. I even game on it with Steam (XCOM runs OK on the integrated Intel graphics). Been very happy with it.

criddell|9 years ago

I have a T520 and last year I tried to run Ubuntu, but my battery life was around 20% worse than under Windows 10 (and the Windows 10 battery life wasn't great either). You say you haven't had any batter life issues. Does that mean it isn't worse than Windows?

KirinDave|9 years ago

Have you plugged in an external monitor and not had an issue? I think that's not the norm even for that setup.

semi-extrinsic|9 years ago

What do you mean by issue? After a couple of xrandr invocations to configure them, which could be automated by some GUI app if I were so inclined, I've never seen external monitors have issues on either of my Linux laptops.

unhammer|9 years ago

On my Thinkpad's X200 (VGA) and X220 (VGA, DisplayPort), plugging in external monitors has always Just Worked. I've been running Xubuntu on them for about 5 years.

It even worked on the first try from the X220's DisplayPort through a DP-to-HDMI-cable onto a TV.

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I've never had to use xrandr or any command line tool to select displays – on Xubuntu, there's this little graphical dialogue: http://netupd8.com/w8img2/xfce-mini-displays.png that pops up (or you can force it to show by hitting that key on the Thinkpad keyboard with the picture of an external display).

OTOH, I did just a month ago for the first time actually use xrandr, but this time it was because I wanted to write a script that set my windows and monitors up "just right" for how I like it when I'm at the office. I love how easy Linux makes it to do that stuff when I find I do want something automated.