I don't believe it. They said the same thing more than a year ago, it is still announced in their website for the P models (the choice for ubuntu or fedora), but yet they are impossible to buy. I have harassed the lenovo sales people for months and I have given up in buying a P laptop with linux installed. I do not understand why do they play this kind of stupid games. The only thing that they offer is to buy the laptop with windows, then renounce the windows licence, then follow an online guide to install linux. Honestly, to buy a few laptops for 4000 EUR each, it is fairly insulting to be told that.
> I don't believe it. They said the same thing more than a year ago
On the flip side... Does it really matter?
I just checked and I could get a $100 off my ThinkPad of choice by selecting “no OS”. To me that’s more than sufficient.
I’ll setup my Linux the way I want it anyway, and you better believe that’s going to be from scratch.
Edit: from scratch with a vanilla installer. Nothing zealous or crazy.
Edit 2: I also found out my (Lenovo) work-computer is seamlessly receiving BIOS- and other FW-updates seamlessly via fwupdmgr in Linux. I have no reason ever to boot Windows on that thing.
All in all, happy Linux-using Lenovo-customer checking in.
As you said, finding any laptop with linux is near impossible. Coincidentally I have become friends with a guy at a large reseller near me, so every time I want a new laptop, I call him up, tell him which ones I've set my eyes on, then I go with a live USB to see which one works out of the box.
Manufacturers are obsessed with shoving some half-baked proprietary hardware on their higher end laptops, rendering them unusable for anyone but Windows users.
What really rises my eyebrow is the "fedora" part here. I haven't used Fedora since 2015 and for the time being I don't intend to switch to anything new/old. I can't recall a single time I've seen a linux-out-of-the-box laptop that has anything other than Ubuntu(which I truly hate). It would be nice to see someone putting something else and shipping it like that for a change.
Three and a half years ago I looked into buying a Thinkpad with Linux. After not finding it on the web site I called the number listed there. It was a weekend. The person said Linux laptops are under commercial sales and gave me a number to call Monday during business hours. I never did and bought a Dell mobile workstation without Linux because it was a deal on the Dell Outlet. Don’t know if it’s still the case that Linux laptops are via commercial sales.
Today, I would just buy a Thinkpad and install Linux if I wanted a Thinkpad with Linux to the point I was ready to spend. It’s a simple problem to solve with little or no money depending on whether a Linux Thinkpad is cheaper. I’d rather spend a few minutes installing Linux than hours of shopping over multiple days. Or to put it another way, Google search doesn’t turn up a lot of pages with Linux on Thinkpad installation horror stories. At worst it will just be the usual Linux on a laptop friction.
This is likely something that you have to go through a distribution partner for. A lot of their products are specifically for enterprise customers - they may not bother stocking them for direct retail.
System76 exists. I don't know what your requirements are, and I haven't used them so I won't swear by them.
Were I in the market for a new laptop, I would want their Lemur Pro. Open firmware, good specs, decent price. They have a variety of laptops and desktops as well.
I've got a P53 for work and I can think of a thousand reasons why this didn't pan out yet. One major problem is still updating your firmwares. While you can update your BIOS and "embedded controller" (https://fwupd.org/lvfs/search?value=p53), you miss out on firmware updates for your WWAN adapter, your Thunderbolt 3 docking station and several smaller things too. I suppose Lenovo's sales or whoever is in charge listens when the engineers tell them "you will have the following problems immediately, which we are not ready to solve yet". Would be nice if they actually delivered instead of promising, but I'm not mad at them for not rushing it.
Huh, I've been using Fedora on my personal T460 for a few years (now on 31) without any major breaking issues. Performs well, upgrades well, bought refurbished for ~$500 of Amazon, bought it extra RAM and an SSD, good life w/standard battery, I can't remember ever hearing the fans run medium/high, uses the standard Thinkpad docking station just fine, and more I'm sure. I'll edit my post if I remember anything worth mentioning.
A few minor issues that seem to get resolved by software updates within weeks of breaking installations:
- The touchpad goes out, so I'll use the red keyboard nub or reboot the machine.
- Sometimes can't use the touchscreen (between larger upgrades) but I don't use this often, it wasn't supposed to have one!
- Screen can flicker in GNOME when bouncing between workspaces (Windows + Page Up/Down)
Even then, these issues may just be my own machine/configuration!
Others have mentioned being wary of pre-installed Lenovo support, and I can agree. While I'd still replace their Fedora for my own install, they'd certainly help my confidence that the laptop was built to fit Linux expectations.
I had the same issue with the touchpad going out on my Thinkpad, running Ubuntu. This would always happen after coming out hibernation so I wrote a systemd service[1] that runs a small shell script [2] after coming out of hibernation.
That's great news. It looks like Fedora will be available on the P series (powerful workstations) and X1 Carbon. I hope it will soon be expanded to other laptops. I am really interested in T series with AMD Ryzen 4000 line (should be released later this year) and would love to avoid paying the Windows tax.
I just wonder if the fingerprint reader is finally supported on Linux. Also the LTE modem on my X1 Carbon (6th gen) has no support.
This is great news, even if you don't plan to use Fedora or if you plan to buy the same laptop with Windows pre-installed instead of Linux. It means some Red Had people were paid to make sure all the hardware in the laptop works. Even if the patches are not all upstream at the time of release (and I'm 100% sure the Fedora people will try to upstream as much as they can), you know they exist and you will be able to use if needed.
I recently got a Thinkbook from my employer and the touchpad doesn't work and there are no patches available for it. I'm stuck with having to use a mouse because my employer didn't care consult me before buying a laptop...
The areas where Linux shine are the areas where people are paid to get open source stuff done. And I am thankful for the existence of companies like Red Hat, Suse and Canonical. Because HW manufacturers and OEMs clearly have no clue about how to write and ship software...
> It means some Red Had people were paid to make sure all the hardware in the laptop works.
IIRC, I've heard from former RH engineers that RH already runs mostly on either Thinkpads or Dell laptops, so this could easily have been an internal push to make their own rollouts easier. It certainly makes provisioning faster if the guy preparing the Lenovo laptop doesn't have to start with blowing away the OS, loading Fedora, and then applying a dozen patches or other config changes to make the laptop happy w/ Fedora.
This is a really good sign. I hope this means more corporate IT support for Linux desktops. This is the first year I've been able to use Linux (Fedora 31) on a corporate owned machine (T490s) and I don't think I could go back. For my work, it really is a better experience.
I've also been using Fedora as the primary OS on my personal devices since 2011 (T410 -> x220 -> T470s and a couple of custom PCs). I stay on fairly standard hardware and really haven't had any major issues in the past 9 years.
> I hope this means more corporate IT support for Linux desktops.
Admittedly I'm biased by my own experience, but my understanding is that many software-engineering-heavy companies already primarily use some flavor of Linux for their corporate engineering workstations, including many of the FAANG companies (and excluding, for obvious reasons, Apple).
Of course, I doubt many non-engineering workers are using a traditional desktop Linux, but I recently noticed that my kids' pediatricians' office does use a form of desktop Linux (something Gnome based) for their scheduling/reception system computers.
I prefer Ubuntu. If I buy one of these models, does it mean that there are drivers/support for all hardware in Ubuntu as well? Are some of the divers proprietary or Fedora-specific?
Really glad they decided to launch this with Fedora. Nothing against Ubuntu per-se, but I - and many others - prefer Linux from the RHEL / CentOS / Fedora family. And there already are, or have been, OEM's shipping Ubuntu. Nice to see somebody go with Fedora.
Any grey-beards wanna weigh in on the state of current ThinkPad models? There usually seems to be quite a bit of nostalgia for the IBM-owned days, where everything was modular/replaceable and the laptops had a 10-year lifespan.
I've seen some murmuring that the more "ultrabook" they become, the less dependable. In which case, I would probably just stick with the Dell XPS line, which I've been pretty happy with so far.
My beard isn't completely grey yet but I've been to redhat offices in Stockholm and most people there use Lenovo laptops.
I've enjoyed them for many years too. My first Lenovo "ultrabook" was X1 Carbon. It was quite obvious that there were very few (perhaps none) CRUs on it. But it has served me for 4 years and still works. The battery discharges faster now of course.
So late 2019 I got an X1 Yoga to replace it, 2nd Lenovo Ultrabook. So far so good.
I work in Fedora every single day, very extensively. I find these laptops and Fedora to be very dependable. But of course that means little because people who run OpenBSD make the same claims.
I've been using the combo for since the late 1990s. You always need to research the specific machine a bit, because each new generation of chipset or peripheral may introduce a temporary Linux headache. Being an early adopter means experiencing some of that until it converges back to smooth support.
I am currently very happy with a T495 and Fedora. I ordered it soon after it launched in the US, gambling that the chipset issues were mostly resolved with other machines that launched earlier with the same AMD Ryzen platform. I first installed it with Fedora 30 and upgraded to 31. There was one weird kernel update that would not boot without custom boot params. I think that was addressed with both later kernel updates and also a BIOS update that made some ACPI changes.
Mostly, I've seen Thinkpads that still worked fine when they were long in the tooth and I upgraded as work budgets cycled. This history includes (as best as I can recall): X20, X22, X40, T40, T41, T61, X200, T410s, T440p, T460s, and now T495. I had brief encounters with Dell, Hitachi, and Sony before that first X20.
Over all the years, I've had a few types of hardware failure. The worst was a T41 which failed thermally and had its mainboard replaced at an IBM service center. I also had a heatsink and fan replaced on the X200 because it made an annoying vibration at times. I had an Intel SSD fail abruptly in a T440p. I also had a key jam and then eject itself on that T440p, requiring a new keyboard. I had fluorescent backlights go pink and fail in the old days. An of course I've had batteries lose their capacity over time.
I've upgraded the SSD on a few devices to add space after a couple years, and I bought an aftermarket battery once. But, generally I've provisioned the machine with the RAM and wifi I wanted on day 1 and never touched it again.
I currently use a T460p which after almost 4 years of constant use and lots of traveling still runs perfectly and hasn't had any hardware defects. My battery even still has 95 % of its initial capacity, which I find really surprising in a positive way. The model I used before was a T430, which had to be repaired twice during its 3 year lifespan and which had many issues (broken/loud fan, failing hinges, broken display connectors, broken chassis parts). For a while I also used a Carbon X1 and a P60, which I had very good experience with again. So I'd say the build quality and materials can strongly vary depending on the model, though I think it has become much better again recently. The prices have gone up as well though, so I'm seriously thinking about buying a Macbook Air as my next laptop as the price difference to an X1 or T model isn't that large anymore.
I have two ThinkPads. One is a T510 from 2010 -- so yes, it literally has a 10-year lifespan. It was my daily driver up until 2018, now it is a NetBSD box.
The other is a T450s from about 2014. It is very light, but not an X1 Carbon so it is still pretty "thicc" and modular.
Neither machine will probably compare to the IBM days. They're tricky to disassemble and their components are not as modular as back then. But they are a lot more IBM-like than, say, the MacBook Pros of their respective eras -- even though the 2014 one comes from the era when Lenovo switched to chiclet keyboards.
I am using a T480S with CentOS and almost everything works to my satisfaction. Including battery life time thanks to systemd hybrid sleep.
It's a bit of a nuisance to have to change audio inputs and outputs with the Pulseaudio pacmd but maybe there's a better way I have not yet discovered.
Also as a long time Macbook user I am not happy with the Lenovo touchpad. This has been the topic of a call to action and many discussions such as https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19485178
> I would probably just stick with the Dell XPS line
From the product line I think officially they only support the XPS13 on Linux. For larger screen sizes you're probably better off with something from the Dell Precision product line.
I have an XPS13 Developer Edition and have also been pretty happy with it. I like that the experience is improving over time as Wayland and Firefox get better. IMHO the XPS13 is somewhat like a 11" MacBook Air but with 13" screen and a quad-core processor.
I have a Dell Precision 15" with Ubuntu pre-loaded for work and a ThinkPad X1 Extreme with PopOS loaded by me. Just on hardware, I would take the Thnkpad. It's lighter (like WAY lighter) and I vastly prefer the keyboard and track point, not to mention I got it for 1/3 the price of my work Dell.
That said, I wouldn't not recommend the Dell. It's my second Sputnik system from Dell and this one had way better support out of the box.
They are better than most laptops in the market for sure, but still a far-cry from what they used to be. But at the same time, Thinkpads were in the verge of dissapearance back in the 20 days, they HAD to do something to appeal more to mass consummers.
Their E-series, normally targeted at budget buyers, still retains a fair bit of repairability. I have a recent E-series as well as a P-series from a few years ago, and there isn't really any difference in build quality between the two.
I was annoyed when they dropped the swappable external battery on the T490, especially since the previous few models had both a connectorized internal and an external battery, meaning that the external one was hot-swappable without a power outlet, which I thought was pretty neat.
So I ended up buying a used T480 on eBay and then completely gutting/refurbishing it. I'm talking display swap to get the 1440p panel, keyboard swap to get the backlit keyboard, trackpad swap because the one it came with was grungy, new SSD, maxed out RAM, clean out the inside, new thermal paste, new internal battery, new external battery, etc. I didn't replace the motherboard, RTC battery, fan/heat spreader assembly, webcam(s), hinges, or the external shell, because they were in pretty good shape, but it wouldn't have been difficult to do so.
I've upgraded laptops before, but it always seemed a little more perilous than upgrading a desktop, because I was always afraid of braking something, or not getting it back together properly. I'm really glad I took this route, because I no longer feel like I'm walking on eggshells. I can take this thing apart and put it back together blindfolded now, and if I accidentally break something like a snap, I know I can either work around it or get a replacement.
Construction on the T480 is still very good. Lots of magnesium on the core structure, captive screws, connectors everywhere, clever layout to make (dis)assembly easy. Unique parts are easier to get than I expected. You can pay full price and get them from Lenovo, but you can also usually find them new for a little (sometimes a lot) less on eBay.
The T480 is probably the best Linux laptop I've had so far (Previously I've had a T520 and a T60). Somewhat ironically, the only complaint I have about the hardware has to do with that battery hot swap feature that I wanted. The charge controller decides which battery to discharge when they're both charged. It prefers to draw power from the newer / less worn out cell first, and on my machine that seems to be the internal cell, and probably only because it came with a few hundred mAh more capacity than nominal, while the external battery was right around nominal. What this means is that it draws the internal battery down to 5%, then it discharges the external battery, and by the time you'd want to hot swap the external, the internal is somewhere between 0 and 5%, making the hot swap seem precarious at best. You can individually tweak the full charge thresholds to keep the batteries from wearing out prematurely, but you can't change that 5% threshold, and you can't change the discharge order. Maybe someone will write better firmware for this thing at some point. But still, I get like 15 hours of battery, and coach on long haul flights usually has an outlet now, so it's not a big issue in practice.
One of the things that has kept me from trying Linux in earnest (and yes, I'm very lazy) is concerns about which hardware is supported by which flavors, and how much.
You can option it up to 40GB of ram, it comes with a banging CPU and it weighs less than a macbook air. System76 makes sure that PopOS and Ubuntu both work flawlessly with their hardware.
I bought one the day it was released to replace my Carbon X1 (gen 6) and it has been perfect. In particular for me, USB-C charging + monitor works flawlessly when I disconnect and reconnect, and the power button is on the side, which is great because I use my laptop as a workstation most of the time.
Just download Ubuntu, or Fedora. Both have great hardware support baked into the live image. Boot from the USB drive, and test all your hardware. There's absolutely zero cost or headache to you, outside of the 10 mins or so it takes to download and flash the iso to the thumb drive, and lets you 'try before you buy'.
I've been a full time Linux user since 2004, and can't remember having -any- hardware issues in the last five years. Prior to that, closer to 2004, I would have agreed. Finding and compiling alsa drivers, network drivers, graphics drivers, etc was a real pain in the ass. Not so today, AMD and Intel graphics are built into the kernel, even!
You can install Linux on part of your hard drive, and your other operating system on another part. Just reboot your computer to swap between them. It's called dual booting. If you don't like your experience with Linux, just delete its partition.
Fedora has been the only distro that seems to work with my ThinkPad Yoga immediately after install. I battled against Ubuntu and other distros for ages trying to get the screen rotation to work and eventually just made scripts to convert between portrait and landsacpe and even with that the touch controls failed to work properly.
Still, you'll get a machine that's not pleasant to look at. Funny that GNU/Linux OS has been advancing greatly the past decade, outperforming Windows and Mac, but without proper hardware match. Lenovo laptops are so ugly and battery performance usually not more than 6h. My work laptop used to be Dell 7000 series, which is perfect on Fedora but with one drawback: calling Dell support to change motherboard every 6 months. Now some companies come to fill the gap, one of them is Purism. I was so happy to see them operating. Well, after paying 1300$, for a really modest processor, the whole laptop fell apart in less than 6 months. It was even worst than any Ascer laptops I've used!! You finally, with all the shame, go back using a Macbook. Fedora on MacBook is the future; but long way to go to get everything working properly.
Now Lenovo please step up your laptop game. 16:10 screen, small bezels, HiDPI screen with sane resolution (like 3200x1800) -> good trade-off between battery life and sharpness, and perfect for 2x integer scaling (better performance). Good speakers and microphone.
This would be a major game changer. Fedora does things the right way Linux support wise (not relying on proprietary drivers). Combined with the high build quality of a thinkpad, this may become the go-to developer laptop.
This is very good. Manufacturers will make sure that the hardware is fully supported.
There is also System76 and I think you can buy laptops from Dell as well w/ Ubuntu preinstalled
My precision 5520 pre installed with Ubuntu was riddled with issues, had garbage audio compared to the windows version (tried all kinds of eq programs and tweaks), and the battery life was terrible... Was not a good experience
Lenovo (IBM) has been an active supporter of Linux since around 2006. The Thinkpad T43p had a lot of Linux enabled for the workstation users. I recall when I was at ATI involved in their effort, we worked closely with the engineering team in Japan to make sure that suspend/resume and hibernation worked well with the graphics portion.
It's good to see that this has continued.
Don't underestimate how much use of Linux on high end PC hardware happens within the Workstation market.
Sounds great. From the major hardware vendors, I heard only of Dell, to offer laptops with Linux preinstalled. Sadly my personal experience with an Dell XPS was so bad (hardware, quality-wise) that I do not want to buy their hardware again.
The big thing here is not that you don't have to install Linux yourself, but that they care about the driver support. Not having to install a Linux yourself is a nice bonus though.
I use Fedora on a Thinkpad X1 Carbon (7th Gen) and it works flawlessly. Enabling beta firmware even made the fingerprint reader (historically a problem area) work perfectly.
I'd definitely have bought it with Fedora if it'd been available at the time, the Windows 10 install was gone within twenty minutes of me opening the box.
Why should I trust their Linux installation any more than their Windows installations, which have been preloaded with backdoors, malware and all kinds of phone-home nasties at least several times over the years? It'll be nice if it ends up being cheaper than the Windows version, but I'll still be wiping it.
[+] [-] enriquto|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dathinab|6 years ago|reply
1. To "show" that you can nicely run Linux on their hardware.
2. Have a better position wrt. deals with Microsoft. As they always could start promoting Linux on their systems much more widely.
3. Good publicity.
Ironically all of this can be archived with "selling" the product officially but then not putting much work/care into the actual sells. ;=)
Just hope this gets better.
[+] [-] josteink|6 years ago|reply
On the flip side... Does it really matter?
I just checked and I could get a $100 off my ThinkPad of choice by selecting “no OS”. To me that’s more than sufficient.
I’ll setup my Linux the way I want it anyway, and you better believe that’s going to be from scratch.
Edit: from scratch with a vanilla installer. Nothing zealous or crazy.
Edit 2: I also found out my (Lenovo) work-computer is seamlessly receiving BIOS- and other FW-updates seamlessly via fwupdmgr in Linux. I have no reason ever to boot Windows on that thing.
All in all, happy Linux-using Lenovo-customer checking in.
[+] [-] axegon_|6 years ago|reply
Manufacturers are obsessed with shoving some half-baked proprietary hardware on their higher end laptops, rendering them unusable for anyone but Windows users.
What really rises my eyebrow is the "fedora" part here. I haven't used Fedora since 2015 and for the time being I don't intend to switch to anything new/old. I can't recall a single time I've seen a linux-out-of-the-box laptop that has anything other than Ubuntu(which I truly hate). It would be nice to see someone putting something else and shipping it like that for a change.
[+] [-] brudgers|6 years ago|reply
Today, I would just buy a Thinkpad and install Linux if I wanted a Thinkpad with Linux to the point I was ready to spend. It’s a simple problem to solve with little or no money depending on whether a Linux Thinkpad is cheaper. I’d rather spend a few minutes installing Linux than hours of shopping over multiple days. Or to put it another way, Google search doesn’t turn up a lot of pages with Linux on Thinkpad installation horror stories. At worst it will just be the usual Linux on a laptop friction.
[+] [-] legitster|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unethical_ban|6 years ago|reply
Were I in the market for a new laptop, I would want their Lemur Pro. Open firmware, good specs, decent price. They have a variety of laptops and desktops as well.
[+] [-] pronik|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TheSpiciestDev|6 years ago|reply
A few minor issues that seem to get resolved by software updates within weeks of breaking installations:
- The touchpad goes out, so I'll use the red keyboard nub or reboot the machine.
- Sometimes can't use the touchscreen (between larger upgrades) but I don't use this often, it wasn't supposed to have one!
- Screen can flicker in GNOME when bouncing between workspaces (Windows + Page Up/Down)
Even then, these issues may just be my own machine/configuration!
Others have mentioned being wary of pre-installed Lenovo support, and I can agree. While I'd still replace their Fedora for my own install, they'd certainly help my confidence that the laptop was built to fit Linux expectations.
[+] [-] lofties|6 years ago|reply
[1] https://gist.github.com/briandeheus/bfa498000f52fbf1b581b9a0...
[2] https://gist.github.com/briandeheus/3c765d520680053da54b680d...
[+] [-] jacek|6 years ago|reply
I just wonder if the fingerprint reader is finally supported on Linux. Also the LTE modem on my X1 Carbon (6th gen) has no support.
[+] [-] dyingkneepad|6 years ago|reply
I recently got a Thinkbook from my employer and the touchpad doesn't work and there are no patches available for it. I'm stuck with having to use a mouse because my employer didn't care consult me before buying a laptop...
The areas where Linux shine are the areas where people are paid to get open source stuff done. And I am thankful for the existence of companies like Red Hat, Suse and Canonical. Because HW manufacturers and OEMs clearly have no clue about how to write and ship software...
[+] [-] AdmiralAsshat|6 years ago|reply
IIRC, I've heard from former RH engineers that RH already runs mostly on either Thinkpads or Dell laptops, so this could easily have been an internal push to make their own rollouts easier. It certainly makes provisioning faster if the guy preparing the Lenovo laptop doesn't have to start with blowing away the OS, loading Fedora, and then applying a dozen patches or other config changes to make the laptop happy w/ Fedora.
[+] [-] sh-run|6 years ago|reply
I've also been using Fedora as the primary OS on my personal devices since 2011 (T410 -> x220 -> T470s and a couple of custom PCs). I stay on fairly standard hardware and really haven't had any major issues in the past 9 years.
[+] [-] danans|6 years ago|reply
Admittedly I'm biased by my own experience, but my understanding is that many software-engineering-heavy companies already primarily use some flavor of Linux for their corporate engineering workstations, including many of the FAANG companies (and excluding, for obvious reasons, Apple).
Of course, I doubt many non-engineering workers are using a traditional desktop Linux, but I recently noticed that my kids' pediatricians' office does use a form of desktop Linux (something Gnome based) for their scheduling/reception system computers.
[+] [-] vzaliva|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mindcrime|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] AdmiralAsshat|6 years ago|reply
I've seen some murmuring that the more "ultrabook" they become, the less dependable. In which case, I would probably just stick with the Dell XPS line, which I've been pretty happy with so far.
[+] [-] INTPenis|6 years ago|reply
I've enjoyed them for many years too. My first Lenovo "ultrabook" was X1 Carbon. It was quite obvious that there were very few (perhaps none) CRUs on it. But it has served me for 4 years and still works. The battery discharges faster now of course.
So late 2019 I got an X1 Yoga to replace it, 2nd Lenovo Ultrabook. So far so good.
I work in Fedora every single day, very extensively. I find these laptops and Fedora to be very dependable. But of course that means little because people who run OpenBSD make the same claims.
[+] [-] saltcured|6 years ago|reply
I am currently very happy with a T495 and Fedora. I ordered it soon after it launched in the US, gambling that the chipset issues were mostly resolved with other machines that launched earlier with the same AMD Ryzen platform. I first installed it with Fedora 30 and upgraded to 31. There was one weird kernel update that would not boot without custom boot params. I think that was addressed with both later kernel updates and also a BIOS update that made some ACPI changes.
Mostly, I've seen Thinkpads that still worked fine when they were long in the tooth and I upgraded as work budgets cycled. This history includes (as best as I can recall): X20, X22, X40, T40, T41, T61, X200, T410s, T440p, T460s, and now T495. I had brief encounters with Dell, Hitachi, and Sony before that first X20.
Over all the years, I've had a few types of hardware failure. The worst was a T41 which failed thermally and had its mainboard replaced at an IBM service center. I also had a heatsink and fan replaced on the X200 because it made an annoying vibration at times. I had an Intel SSD fail abruptly in a T440p. I also had a key jam and then eject itself on that T440p, requiring a new keyboard. I had fluorescent backlights go pink and fail in the old days. An of course I've had batteries lose their capacity over time.
I've upgraded the SSD on a few devices to add space after a couple years, and I bought an aftermarket battery once. But, generally I've provisioned the machine with the RAM and wifi I wanted on day 1 and never touched it again.
[+] [-] ThePhysicist|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bitwize|6 years ago|reply
The other is a T450s from about 2014. It is very light, but not an X1 Carbon so it is still pretty "thicc" and modular.
Neither machine will probably compare to the IBM days. They're tricky to disassemble and their components are not as modular as back then. But they are a lot more IBM-like than, say, the MacBook Pros of their respective eras -- even though the 2014 one comes from the era when Lenovo switched to chiclet keyboards.
[+] [-] ofrzeta|6 years ago|reply
It's a bit of a nuisance to have to change audio inputs and outputs with the Pulseaudio pacmd but maybe there's a better way I have not yet discovered.
Also as a long time Macbook user I am not happy with the Lenovo touchpad. This has been the topic of a call to action and many discussions such as https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19485178
[+] [-] Lio|6 years ago|reply
From the product line I think officially they only support the XPS13 on Linux. For larger screen sizes you're probably better off with something from the Dell Precision product line.
I have an XPS13 Developer Edition and have also been pretty happy with it. I like that the experience is improving over time as Wayland and Firefox get better. IMHO the XPS13 is somewhat like a 11" MacBook Air but with 13" screen and a quad-core processor.
[+] [-] gshulegaard|6 years ago|reply
That said, I wouldn't not recommend the Dell. It's my second Sputnik system from Dell and this one had way better support out of the box.
Disclaimer: I am not a grey-beard.
[+] [-] Niccizero|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lliamander|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ohazi|6 years ago|reply
So I ended up buying a used T480 on eBay and then completely gutting/refurbishing it. I'm talking display swap to get the 1440p panel, keyboard swap to get the backlit keyboard, trackpad swap because the one it came with was grungy, new SSD, maxed out RAM, clean out the inside, new thermal paste, new internal battery, new external battery, etc. I didn't replace the motherboard, RTC battery, fan/heat spreader assembly, webcam(s), hinges, or the external shell, because they were in pretty good shape, but it wouldn't have been difficult to do so.
I've upgraded laptops before, but it always seemed a little more perilous than upgrading a desktop, because I was always afraid of braking something, or not getting it back together properly. I'm really glad I took this route, because I no longer feel like I'm walking on eggshells. I can take this thing apart and put it back together blindfolded now, and if I accidentally break something like a snap, I know I can either work around it or get a replacement.
Construction on the T480 is still very good. Lots of magnesium on the core structure, captive screws, connectors everywhere, clever layout to make (dis)assembly easy. Unique parts are easier to get than I expected. You can pay full price and get them from Lenovo, but you can also usually find them new for a little (sometimes a lot) less on eBay.
The T480 is probably the best Linux laptop I've had so far (Previously I've had a T520 and a T60). Somewhat ironically, the only complaint I have about the hardware has to do with that battery hot swap feature that I wanted. The charge controller decides which battery to discharge when they're both charged. It prefers to draw power from the newer / less worn out cell first, and on my machine that seems to be the internal cell, and probably only because it came with a few hundred mAh more capacity than nominal, while the external battery was right around nominal. What this means is that it draws the internal battery down to 5%, then it discharges the external battery, and by the time you'd want to hot swap the external, the internal is somewhere between 0 and 5%, making the hot swap seem precarious at best. You can individually tweak the full charge thresholds to keep the batteries from wearing out prematurely, but you can't change that 5% threshold, and you can't change the discharge order. Maybe someone will write better firmware for this thing at some point. But still, I get like 15 hours of battery, and coach on long haul flights usually has an outlet now, so it's not a big issue in practice.
[+] [-] recursive|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] recursivedoubts|6 years ago|reply
https://system76.com/laptops/lemur
You can option it up to 40GB of ram, it comes with a banging CPU and it weighs less than a macbook air. System76 makes sure that PopOS and Ubuntu both work flawlessly with their hardware.
I bought one the day it was released to replace my Carbon X1 (gen 6) and it has been perfect. In particular for me, USB-C charging + monitor works flawlessly when I disconnect and reconnect, and the power button is on the side, which is great because I use my laptop as a workstation most of the time.
Highly recommended if you want a linux machine.
[+] [-] hellcow|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] axaxs|6 years ago|reply
I've been a full time Linux user since 2004, and can't remember having -any- hardware issues in the last five years. Prior to that, closer to 2004, I would have agreed. Finding and compiling alsa drivers, network drivers, graphics drivers, etc was a real pain in the ass. Not so today, AMD and Intel graphics are built into the kernel, even!
[+] [-] swebs|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] _ea1k|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] intrepidhero|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|6 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] fidelramos|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TheCapn|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] evacchi|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] murtio|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tsar9x|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bgorman|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aquir|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] N3cr0ph4g1st|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mtippett|6 years ago|reply
It's good to see that this has continued.
Don't underestimate how much use of Linux on high end PC hardware happens within the Workstation market.
[+] [-] arendtio|6 years ago|reply
The big thing here is not that you don't have to install Linux yourself, but that they care about the driver support. Not having to install a Linux yourself is a nice bonus though.
[+] [-] TekMol|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] petepete|6 years ago|reply
I use Fedora on a Thinkpad X1 Carbon (7th Gen) and it works flawlessly. Enabling beta firmware even made the fingerprint reader (historically a problem area) work perfectly.
I'd definitely have bought it with Fedora if it'd been available at the time, the Windows 10 install was gone within twenty minutes of me opening the box.
[+] [-] elric|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 2OEH8eoCRo0|6 years ago|reply