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.
> 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.
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.
> I understand the latest X1 Carbons have most if not all of these features.
Definitely not all of them. They key travel and (I think) keyboard size have been reduced recently, Ethernet adapter is no longer included, matte option is only available for cheaper low-resolution screen options.
Since all laptop manufacturers are heavily influenced by trends set by Apple, I really hope that recent changes to MacBook Pro (bigger dimensions, more weight, return of old keyboard design) will make Lenovo reconsider in their mindless pursuit of kneecapping their designs to shave off some additional 30 grams of weight.
I’ve got a 6th gen and also absolutely love it. Also dual booting Linux/windows (95% use Linux) and it’s never let me down. Everything “just works” and I treat it like crap yet it keeps trudging along.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Tangentially related: How is XPS 17 doing? I've been pondering the idea of getting one, but have been scared away by some internet reputation (like not working sound, unstable wifi, etc.) Would love to hear second opinions like yours.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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...)
I have two Dell XPS13s, one five years old, one new. Both took to Linux (Mint, in my case) like ducks to water. They dual boot from rEFInd, but I seldom use Windows (I have just one heritage Win application to support, and that's been stable for five years). However, while these are light, compact and highly specced, they're not user upgradeable and their fans get noisy under load.
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.
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.
I used to have an X1 Carbon 4th gen. I was super excited to get a 9th gen.
I was utterly disappointed. The fan would turn on for no good reason and make noised. My 4th gen never did that. And the performance was not that different from my 4th gen.
So, I returned it after a while. Got myself a Macbook Air M1. The hardware is brilliant. But to my taste, Mac OS is nowhere near close to how comfortable I was with my Linux/KDE setup. So now I'm backing marcan's effort to get Linux running on this device, but that doesn't seen to be close. Thus, I'm thinking of giving the Lenovo T14 Gen2 a try. As of now every moment I use the Air is pain.
I just bought my 3rd X1 Carbon (gen 9), and then returned it the next week. It made a constant buzz. $$$$ laptops aren't supposed to sound like the cheapest USB charger knockoff. Plus it would never go to sleep (so it just discharged every time I shut the lid).
I've never been able to get any X1 to seamless work with a thunderbolt dock either. 3 docks tried, and the Macbook is fine on 2, but the thinkpad always has problems. A firmware upgrade helped a little, but it's never seamless.
I wish I could find my next linux laptop. My gen 5 is getting a little long in the tooth.
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.
I would say be extremely careful with the model that you purchase. I purchased the new E15 Gen 3 AMD model (I know, my mistake) and running Linux on it has been pure hell.
I installed Ubuntu 16.04 initially and half of the drivers did not load. Every time I installed a new driver another cog stopped working. It was a mess to get Bluetooth working, WiFi just wouldn't work and my display driver straight up wouldn't work. After a week of getting stuck in this tangled mess, I decided to move to 18.04 assuming that drivers would be available on a later version of an LTS distribution. I was partialy right, I managed to get the WiFi and Bluetooth working but the god damn display drivers just won't load. This means I cannot suspend my PC, adjust brightness or connect to an external monitor. I will sell you this machine but looks like you need linux as well.
So I have a decently speced hexa-core PC with a dream keyboard, great screen but cannot run Ubuntu which is what my job as a robotics engineer most need. Everytime I look at it I'm infuriated at my utter lack of due diligence. There's a guide on the Ubuntu website with a list of supported PCs. Refer to that before making a purchase. Its hellish, frustrating and heartbreaking otherwise.
I know it's just a rant, and I'm assuming that you need some specific software for the job, but both of those OSs are ancient in terms of hardware support. Maybe the HWE stack gets it going, but maybe it breaks other things too.
The Linux kernel containing the drivers as the distribution model is usually seen as a good thing, but it's also a huge downside when it comes to these problems. There's just no easy way to get a new GPU driver onto an older OS (except Nvidia). Any WiFi card that isn't Intel is probably going to be a fun time.
16.04 is ~ 5 years older than the hardware. 18.04 is still ~ 3 years older than the hardware.
For example, the 3500U in my ASUS laptop still had problems in 20.04. That's an older CPU/GPU but much newer OS.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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):
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.)
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.
[+] [-] 12ian34|4 years ago|reply
- 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.
[+] [-] handrous|4 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] blakesterz|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dahfizz|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] miniatureape|4 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] caskstrength|4 years ago|reply
Definitely not all of them. They key travel and (I think) keyboard size have been reduced recently, Ethernet adapter is no longer included, matte option is only available for cheaper low-resolution screen options.
Since all laptop manufacturers are heavily influenced by trends set by Apple, I really hope that recent changes to MacBook Pro (bigger dimensions, more weight, return of old keyboard design) will make Lenovo reconsider in their mindless pursuit of kneecapping their designs to shave off some additional 30 grams of weight.
[+] [-] atsaloli|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sen|4 years ago|reply
It’s the only non-Apple laptop I’ve ever loved.
[+] [-] scruple|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gtirloni|4 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] Loic|4 years ago|reply
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|4 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] moonchrome|4 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] 908B64B197|4 years ago|reply
There's a reason I stay away from these machines.
[0] https://www.cisa.gov/uscert/ncas/alerts/TA15-051A
[+] [-] CountSessine|4 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] flakiness|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Dracophoenix|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] boomskats|4 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] thetwentyone|4 years ago|reply
Paypal refunded me the money after reviewing the case, but I'm now fighting a debt collector for the ~1k USD.
[+] [-] dunco|4 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] rvense|4 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] int0x2e|4 years ago|reply
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...)
[+] [-] pengo|4 years ago|reply
If I were buying a laptop for Linux only, I'd be considering the Framework (https://frame.work/) or System 76 (https://system76.com/laptops/).
[+] [-] marto1|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] melony|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] emilsedgh|4 years ago|reply
I was utterly disappointed. The fan would turn on for no good reason and make noised. My 4th gen never did that. And the performance was not that different from my 4th gen.
So, I returned it after a while. Got myself a Macbook Air M1. The hardware is brilliant. But to my taste, Mac OS is nowhere near close to how comfortable I was with my Linux/KDE setup. So now I'm backing marcan's effort to get Linux running on this device, but that doesn't seen to be close. Thus, I'm thinking of giving the Lenovo T14 Gen2 a try. As of now every moment I use the Air is pain.
[+] [-] lostdog|4 years ago|reply
I just bought my 3rd X1 Carbon (gen 9), and then returned it the next week. It made a constant buzz. $$$$ laptops aren't supposed to sound like the cheapest USB charger knockoff. Plus it would never go to sleep (so it just discharged every time I shut the lid).
I've never been able to get any X1 to seamless work with a thunderbolt dock either. 3 docks tried, and the Macbook is fine on 2, but the thinkpad always has problems. A firmware upgrade helped a little, but it's never seamless.
I wish I could find my next linux laptop. My gen 5 is getting a little long in the tooth.
[+] [-] trylfthsk|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pvarangot|4 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] momofuku|4 years ago|reply
I installed Ubuntu 16.04 initially and half of the drivers did not load. Every time I installed a new driver another cog stopped working. It was a mess to get Bluetooth working, WiFi just wouldn't work and my display driver straight up wouldn't work. After a week of getting stuck in this tangled mess, I decided to move to 18.04 assuming that drivers would be available on a later version of an LTS distribution. I was partialy right, I managed to get the WiFi and Bluetooth working but the god damn display drivers just won't load. This means I cannot suspend my PC, adjust brightness or connect to an external monitor. I will sell you this machine but looks like you need linux as well.
So I have a decently speced hexa-core PC with a dream keyboard, great screen but cannot run Ubuntu which is what my job as a robotics engineer most need. Everytime I look at it I'm infuriated at my utter lack of due diligence. There's a guide on the Ubuntu website with a list of supported PCs. Refer to that before making a purchase. Its hellish, frustrating and heartbreaking otherwise.
/rant
[+] [-] doubled112|4 years ago|reply
The Linux kernel containing the drivers as the distribution model is usually seen as a good thing, but it's also a huge downside when it comes to these problems. There's just no easy way to get a new GPU driver onto an older OS (except Nvidia). Any WiFi card that isn't Intel is probably going to be a fun time.
16.04 is ~ 5 years older than the hardware. 18.04 is still ~ 3 years older than the hardware.
For example, the 3500U in my ASUS laptop still had problems in 20.04. That's an older CPU/GPU but much newer OS.
[+] [-] smoldesu|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ChuckNorris89|4 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] RankingMember|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] johnmaguire|4 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] kesslern|4 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] razemio|4 years ago|reply
Both run arch like a champ.
[+] [-] shmerl|4 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] elabajaba|4 years ago|reply
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...
[+] [-] ratiolat|4 years ago|reply