6 ms·

Pretty much all lenovo Thinkpad laptops works perfectly fine with Linux. Source: I have about 5, different models.

by aortega 10y ago

Nullabillity 10y ago
Pretty much all laptops work perfectly fine with Linux. The only real reason to look for one with it preinstalled would be to avoid the MS tax.
- dagw 10y ago
  They may work "perfectly fine", but they rarely work perfectly. There always seems to be some thing that doesn't quite work (function keys, HDMI output, card reader, graphics card switching etc.).
crazy2be 10y ago
By perfectly fine, do you mean: - Wifi is flaky (ier than on windows) - Battery life is shit (ier than on windows) - Sleep mode has one of the following problems * Does not properly suspend (i.e. wakes up immediately when suspending, shuts down instead of suspending) * Does not properly resume (i.e. kernel crash on resume) * Sometimes does not properly resume (even more annoying to debug) * Resumes randomly, when you don't want, often turning your backpack into a forge. - Hibernate mode doesn't work (at all, your hardware has been blacklisted). - Plugging in an external monitor occasionally causes everything to crash (but sometimes just compiz). These are the most annoying problems I have on my Linux laptop. Admittedly, mine is not Thinkpad, but looking at reviews on the latest Thinkpad, at least the battery life issue seems to be ever present. These are pretty much the same problems I've had for the 10 or so years I've been running Linux on laptops. I would have thought they'd been fixed by now. 10 years ago, Windows had a bunch of these problems too, so it was excusable. Now, it's just embarrassing. I still run Linux on my laptop because I like the dev environment and tools so very very much, but I would pay serious money for hardware that was guaranteed to just work (tm) with Linux, with all of the above solved by the vendor rather than by me. I used to enjoy these little problems, but now they just annoy. The sleep mode problems are the most annoying to me, the most elusive to solve, and the most impossible to predict from reviews :/
- plouc 10y ago
  I can only speak about myself of course but running Ubuntu 16.04 on a thinkpad x250 I have absolutely none of the issues you have listed above. Maybe you hear more about people having bad experiences than good ones?
  - catmanjan 10y ago
    I remember having these issues on an x60 series maybe 8 years ago, but my friends who have thinkpads are all running them fine, even on the jankiest distros with a bit of careful driver picking
- snvzz 10y ago
  That got an NVidia GPU? Not much can be done with vendors that are actively hostile.
- yaantc 10y ago
  Owner of a Thinkpad X1 3rd gen running Debian (started with Jessie, now Stretch), and my experience is quite different but there are some things to know. Let's trade anecdotes: > - Wifi is flaky (ier than on windows) No problem there, always been rock solid. The chipset is likely to matter, my laptop uses an Intel chipset. Performance wise Intel may not be the best, but the Linux support has always been good in my experience. > - Battery life is shit (ier than on windows) A very common misunderstanding, and very easy to solve. The thing is, a stock Linux distro is made independently of the PC hardware that will run it. There's no integration like any PC vendor does when installing Windows, making sure the Windows configuration is well tuned. In order to be functional on most devices, a Linux distro is typically conservative, and will typically stay away from enabling low-power modes that are flaky on some crappy PC models. But for most tier 1 PC brands, the hardware is fine and it's perfectly safe to enable aggressive low-power. So just install a package like The Laptop Project (tlp), or the older laptop-mode, and you're good to go. You can even tune the configuration, it's simple and well commented. For example, with a fast SSD (no spin up/down), one can be very aggressive on putting the drive into low-power. With this done, taking about 10 mn tops, I have a longer battery life on Linux as on the stock Windows8.1. And this is as reported by the firmware through ACPI, so same estimator on both sides. > [Various sleep mode issues] There was a very nasty bug in Linux MMU set-up that's been solved in 4.8. Before this, it could trigger some random and sometimes hard to reproduce bugs on some models, leading to crashes on resume. I've been affected, and it was a pain. The bug was there for a long time apparently. Since 4.8, it's been rock solid. Zero issues. And it's really night and day in term of user experience. In case some of your issues were related, you may want to make sure you're running a recent enough kernel. As for the unwanted wake-ups in a bag turned into an oven? Only ever happened to me on my work TP running Win7. From experience, sleep is not perfect there too. No experience on using an external monitor with my Linux laptop. One of the main weakness is that there's no ODM integration if you install Linux yourself. With big brands like TP, it's still mostly been smooth in my experience, except for the nasty resume bug fixed in 4.8. If that's a problem for you, there are now vendors with pre-installed Linux. Then it's a similar situation to Windows.
ruben_varnish 10y ago
I have been on the X2XX series for over 10 years, counting 5 laptops. EVERY single thing has worked with Ubuntu (every single six months release, since 12.04 only used LTS releases) and required little to no effort. As for a "Desktop" I haven't touched one at work since 2004. TBH I believe only gamers care. And gamers like to build/adapt their own hardware. Unless you can differentiate heavily and have something unique (something like building a RED camera or a super fast Electrical car) how is that going to fly in a marked that is in decline? Keep yourselves to building a super high end laptop that can rival a Lenovo X series model and we will look into that.

Pretty much all lenovo Thinkpad laptops works perfectly fine with Linux. Source: I have about 5, different models.

by aortega 10y ago

Pretty much all lenovo Thinkpad laptops works perfectly fine with Linux. Source: I have about 5, different models.

Pretty much all laptops work perfectly fine with Linux. The only real reason to look for one with it preinstalled would be to avoid the MS tax.

dagw 10y ago
They may work "perfectly fine", but they rarely work perfectly. There always seems to be some thing that doesn't quite work (function keys, HDMI output, card reader, graphics card switching etc.).

crazy2be 10y ago

By perfectly fine, do you mean: - Wifi is flaky (ier than on windows) - Battery life is shit (ier than on windows) - Sleep mode has one of the following problems * Does not properly suspend (i.e. wakes up immediately when suspending, shuts down instead of suspending) * Does not properly resume (i.e. kernel crash on resume) * Sometimes does not properly resume (even more annoying to debug) * Resumes randomly, when you don't want, often turning your backpack into a forge. - Hibernate mode doesn't work (at all, your hardware has been blacklisted). - Plugging in an external monitor occasionally causes everything to crash (but sometimes just compiz). These are the most annoying problems I have on my Linux laptop. Admittedly, mine is not Thinkpad, but looking at reviews on the latest Thinkpad, at least the battery life issue seems to be ever present. These are pretty much the same problems I've had for the 10 or so years I've been running Linux on laptops. I would have thought they'd been fixed by now. 10 years ago, Windows had a bunch of these problems too, so it was excusable. Now, it's just embarrassing. I still run Linux on my laptop because I like the dev environment and tools so very very much, but I would pay serious money for hardware that was guaranteed to just work (tm) with Linux, with all of the above solved by the vendor rather than by me. I used to enjoy these little problems, but now they just annoy. The sleep mode problems are the most annoying to me, the most elusive to solve, and the most impossible to predict from reviews :/

plouc 10y ago
I can only speak about myself of course but running Ubuntu 16.04 on a thinkpad x250 I have absolutely none of the issues you have listed above. Maybe you hear more about people having bad experiences than good ones?
- catmanjan 10y ago
  I remember having these issues on an x60 series maybe 8 years ago, but my friends who have thinkpads are all running them fine, even on the jankiest distros with a bit of careful driver picking
snvzz 10y ago
That got an NVidia GPU? Not much can be done with vendors that are actively hostile.
yaantc 10y ago
Owner of a Thinkpad X1 3rd gen running Debian (started with Jessie, now Stretch), and my experience is quite different but there are some things to know. Let's trade anecdotes: > - Wifi is flaky (ier than on windows) No problem there, always been rock solid. The chipset is likely to matter, my laptop uses an Intel chipset. Performance wise Intel may not be the best, but the Linux support has always been good in my experience. > - Battery life is shit (ier than on windows) A very common misunderstanding, and very easy to solve. The thing is, a stock Linux distro is made independently of the PC hardware that will run it. There's no integration like any PC vendor does when installing Windows, making sure the Windows configuration is well tuned. In order to be functional on most devices, a Linux distro is typically conservative, and will typically stay away from enabling low-power modes that are flaky on some crappy PC models. But for most tier 1 PC brands, the hardware is fine and it's perfectly safe to enable aggressive low-power. So just install a package like The Laptop Project (tlp), or the older laptop-mode, and you're good to go. You can even tune the configuration, it's simple and well commented. For example, with a fast SSD (no spin up/down), one can be very aggressive on putting the drive into low-power. With this done, taking about 10 mn tops, I have a longer battery life on Linux as on the stock Windows8.1. And this is as reported by the firmware through ACPI, so same estimator on both sides. > [Various sleep mode issues] There was a very nasty bug in Linux MMU set-up that's been solved in 4.8. Before this, it could trigger some random and sometimes hard to reproduce bugs on some models, leading to crashes on resume. I've been affected, and it was a pain. The bug was there for a long time apparently. Since 4.8, it's been rock solid. Zero issues. And it's really night and day in term of user experience. In case some of your issues were related, you may want to make sure you're running a recent enough kernel. As for the unwanted wake-ups in a bag turned into an oven? Only ever happened to me on my work TP running Win7. From experience, sleep is not perfect there too. No experience on using an external monitor with my Linux laptop. One of the main weakness is that there's no ODM integration if you install Linux yourself. With big brands like TP, it's still mostly been smooth in my experience, except for the nasty resume bug fixed in 4.8. If that's a problem for you, there are now vendors with pre-installed Linux. Then it's a similar situation to Windows.

ruben_varnish 10y ago

I have been on the X2XX series for over 10 years, counting 5 laptops. EVERY single thing has worked with Ubuntu (every single six months release, since 12.04 only used LTS releases) and required little to no effort. As for a "Desktop" I haven't touched one at work since 2004. TBH I believe only gamers care. And gamers like to build/adapt their own hardware. Unless you can differentiate heavily and have something unique (something like building a RED camera or a super fast Electrical car) how is that going to fly in a marked that is in decline? Keep yourselves to building a super high end laptop that can rival a Lenovo X series model and we will look into that.