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I’m on my 4th Thinkpad T-series - T520, T530, T450s, T460s - each one was a a winner. I ditched the T5XX series when they borked the keyboard layout by adding a
by gkop 9y ago
I’m on my 4th Thinkpad T-series - T520, T530, T450s, T460s - each one was a a winner. I ditched the T5XX series when they borked the keyboard layout by adding a numpad. Used to run Ubuntu, now I run Debian, stable or testing depending on point in release cycle at install time. I plan to take another look at Ubuntu now that they gave up on Unity. A coworker is happily on the T470s (first USB-C in the series). I always get 1920x1080 since my eyes are accustomed to it, but multiple coworkers are happy with 2560x1440. Used to get the Nvidia cards, now very happy with the integrated Intel graphics. In general, last year’s hardware requires almost zero messing with Linux to make everything work, whereas with the latest hardware, be prepared to solve a couple minor issues. Ubuntu’s font rendering or Infinality are both amazing and better than macOS or Win10 to my eyes.
I’m ridiculously excited to eventually upgrade to a T480s because it’s the first in the series to offer a quad-core CPU. They’re selling the quad-core with Intel graphics which is exactly what I want. I hope Lenovo did a good job with the thermal engineering...
Thanks to all the open source developers that deliver this totally rad experience on Linux, Debian, and Gnome <3
- aviraldg 9y agoDo your co-workers not have issues with HiDPI support on Linux? I've heard it's not the best experience and can require quite some fiddling to get working correctly.
- bonoetmalo 9y agoGnome has always worked pretty well with High DPI. But yes Linux display managers are generally pretty bad, as I learned with my 1440p 13 inch laptop as recently as 2015.
- Symbiote 9y agoI have no problems on KDE for home use, I think the problems are mixing multiple screens with different pixel densities.
- mixmastamyk 9y agoWorks great with Mate.
- digi_owl 9y agoBest i understand, the problem child is Gnome. The devs involved there basically ignore xorg provided DPI information, resulting in all kinds of problems.
- pedrocr 9y ago2560x1440 doesn't even require HiDPI support really. Just increasing the font sizes is enough. The Ubuntu Unity desktop has abstracted away that in a single slider for a long time. Apparently the next GNOME version is going to go all the way and do non-integer scaling of controls as well but in my experience that's just a small benefit, just tweaking up the font sizes is more than enough.
- gkop 9y agoSurprisingly, both engineers on the 2560x1440 are happy! They run Ubuntu with a second screen at their desks (27” 2560x1440 external monitors). I’m actually the one that’s unhappy because their font size is too small for me to see when pairing ;) BTW I think 2560x1440 may not be high enough to technically be considered HiDPI?
- indemnity 9y agoAs someone with a 2560x1440 (27”) display at work and a 5120x2880 (27”) display at home, the former is very much not HiDPI, not even close :)
- maxnoe 9y agoDPI is Dots per inch. It's a density. As a matter of fact, 2560×1440 on a 14" notebook display is nearly identical to 5120×2880 on a 27" display.
- indemnity 9y agoI'm talking about 2560x1440 on 27", as is GP, and comparing that resolution at 27" to the pixel doubled resolution at 27"? 108 PPI for the former is not HiDPI, which is my point. I'm quite aware of pixel density, but thanks for the Wikipedia definition.
- jhoechtl 9y agoHiDPI on Linux is pretty much non existent. I am telling from experience. I have booth a decent 4K external monitor and a HiDPI IPS internal display. The only setup which is ok in the sense of least horrible is Gnome mutter Wayland with experimental per monitor fractional scaling enabled. And this one is only ok if you can restrict yourself to the few ported pure GTK3 Gnome apps. Which means not that much. No Firefox. No Chrome. No Thunderbird. And the speed of fixing HiDPI on Linux has actually slowed down. Frnakly, and I am a hard core Linux OSS fan - come back in two years and check again. The Linux desktop IS dead.
- denimnerd 9y agolinux desktop is isn’t dead.
- shmerl 9y agoLinux desktop is doing fine. But I prefer to avoid GTK when possible. It's years behind Qt. Some thing like Firefox are necessary though, but it's a pity it's stuck with GTK.
- saltcured 9y agoSo, what exactly is it that you expect as "HiDPI" support which is missing? As far as I can recall, it has been possible to configure the actual physical size/DPI for a monitor for many, many years. Any properly functioning X application should then be able to draw things a correct size on the screen, e.g. fonts sized in points or images and figures scaled to actual widths. I think this infrastructure may even pre-date the switch from XFree86 to Xorg. Is your complaint that there are still some applications which ignore this monitor DPI metadata or which do other pixel-based techniques? Like the previous poster, I stick to 1920x1080 on my 14-inch class Thinkpad. In my office I have dual 28-inch 4K monitors. These have identical dot pitch to my Thinkpad, so each monitor is like having a 2x2 array of my Thinkpad screens. When I made sure the monitors were set with the correct DPI, everything worked exactly as I would expect. Whatever rendered as one pixel on my laptop would also be one pixel on my workstation, and I just had 8 times more real estate on my dual monitor desktop. But, I sit further from the monitors than I do my laptop screen while also using them for much longer stretches of time. So, I adjusted the workstation to pretend it had higher DPI so that things would render a little bigger. It's been a few years, but I think I may have had to separately adjust Firefox because it has some of its own weird assumptions about fonts and DPI that I assume come from their renderer straddling several different platforms. I also had to adjust emacs and xterm to change from my decades old fixed font preferences to start using scalable fonts.
- shazow 9y agoThe bad news: There's no unified HiDPI solution on Linux that works well end-to-end. The good news: You don't really need one. Bumping the font configuration fixes 80% of the scenarios, and the rest I tweak on a case-by-case basis. The good standards-conforming apps (e.g. modern terminals, browsers, etc) automatically multiply the font sizes by your screen DPI. Most desktop managers have a scale sliders for the GUI size, if you're into that. Some stragglers include Steam which recently added support for a 2x size multiplier (it's something, but not the best). You kinda get exposed to how the sausage is made, but the sausage still tastes great. Linux desktop is better than it ever was, but the road to perfection is long and eternal.
- eof 9y agomy system76 handles 4k perfectly
- gurkendoktor 9y agosystem76 actually ships a custom daemon that makes mixed LowDPI/HiDPI setups easier to manage, and I hope other distros will follow suit: https://elementaryos.stackexchange.com/a/14234 https://elementaryos.stackexchange.com/a/14234
- thomastjeffery 9y agoMost apps are written in GTK or Qt, which do scaling well. The main issue is that scaling can't really be done on a per-display basis.
- MightySCollins 9y agoI wish everything just used wayland and scaled correctly I am sick of having to launch chrome with an environment variable so it can run on one screen and having another instance for another. Also silly things like file dialogs not fitting. It's annoying when you look and the issues are all from years ago and still not fixed.
- merb 9y agoThe biggest problem in linux is not directly HiDPI. HiDPI works (mostly). However if you can't use wayland you will have a problem when you need the following: Multiple monitors with different screen resultions. Lets say your laptop has 4k and you use two external monitors with 1080p than it gets tricky with older wayland or x.org. However on later stable/edge channels most things are probably better than when I tested this and I even have a colleague which has a 13" xps with ubuntu which works pretty will with its docking station.
- nitrogen 9y agoIf you have a good GPU you can use the xrandr commandline tool to set up display scaling, so your secondary low-DPI screen is rendered at high DPI and scaled down. Then you only need one DPI setting for your DE.
- sridca 9y agoI have a Thinkpad P71 and I run NixOS on it. Works great with a 5k monitor, and DPI is perfect.
- SZJX 9y agoIt's actually quite OK, with just some minor annoyances. Three scenarios for my use case: 1. Use the laptop screen only. This is easy. Just change the DPI value in my ~/.Xprofile and everything is solved. 2. Use external monitors only. Just use the default DPI value. 3. Use laptop screen in combination with external monitors. This doesn't occur hat often. But when I have to do this, there are also some ways to make it work. You can refer to https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/HiDPI https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/HiDPI for some reference. - The first way is to increase the DPI in ~/.Xprofile and actually scale up the external monitor instead. I don't like this method since the external monitor just looks blurry for some reason. - Or you can keep the DPI and downscale your internal monitor. - Or, and this is what I do currently, use apps that support manually setting DPI in their settings, e.g. Firefox and Thunderbird, on the laptop display. You can also manually change font sizes of apps that you're going to use on the laptop display. This is a bit inconvenient but the display result will look totally natural.
- paride5745 9y agoThis. I'm on a ThinkPad t470s, amazing little machine, I love it more than my old MacBook Pro 2015.
- smoyer 9y agoI'm a huge fan of the X1 Carbon
- brockers 9y agoSame here, out entire dev shop is X1 Carbons on Linux.
- rkangel 9y agoWhat sort of battery life do you get for normal dev activities?
- eat_veggies 9y agoI have the 5th gen x1c and I'd say 6-8ish hours if you use tlp or powertop, although I've never actually run it all the way down to zero battery before.
- zepearl 9y agoUsing a Lenovo X1 Carbon (running Gentoo Linux) since ~1y and I absolutely love it - excellent battery runtimes (~6h with mixed programming activities, 8-10h if mostly idle, no crashes so far). Keyboard, touchpad and screen are fantastic. Threw it a couple of times (forgot I had it in my bag) onto my car's seat without repercussions (did the same with an XPS 13 but keyboard got skewed).
- therealdrag0 9y agoX1 Carbon 3rd gen has been my personal laptop for 3 years and it's my favorite PC laptop.
- linkmotif 9y agoI don’t really understand how people overlook the whole Chinese government thing with regard to Lenovo. Can someone shed light on this? I would be very uncomfortable using Lenovo, and I’m not even a huge privacy person. But Lenovos must be bugged by the Chinese. How could they not be?
- SkyMarshal 9y agoI think the same thing every time I see someone on HN recommend Lenovo. Glad someone is calling it out. That said, if you're not Chinese/in China, the Chinese govt has little/no power over you, and probably isn't sharing what they collect on you with your govt, which does.
- confounded 9y agoWhere would such a bug be? If you’re installing Linux, that wipes out software bugs (seems the most likely place to me). Lenovo provide details about the components and design, which means you could verify/replace things if you like. ThinkPads are trusted enough by the USG for various uses (though they seem to prefer Dell). Personally I’m more freaked out by Intel’s Management Engine.
- forapurpose 9y ago> If you’re installing Linux, that wipes out software bugs Linux would address OS bugs, and it brings bugs of its own. All your applications also could be exploited. > Intel’s Management Engine That and other pre-boot subsystems are exploitable by adversaries.
- EpicEng 9y agoNothing you said is specific to Lenovo.
- forapurpose 9y agoThe parent makes no sense to me.
- closeparen 9y agoFriendly reminder that Lenovo made a deliberate choice to ship malware payloads to its customers from the factory [0] by preinstalling an SSL MITM proxy configuration from an adware vendor. This is not some suspicious technology with legitimate uses like Intel Management Engine. This is not concerns about the second-order implications of your voluntary uploads to Facebook and Google. It's not even an agency with a real national-security mission overstepping its bounds. It's honest-to-goodness we're-going-to-fuck-you-because-we-can pwnage officially authorized at the highest levels of the company to make a few bucks. When you ask your Lenovo machine to browse the web, you're not seeing the web, you're seeing a version edited by Lenovo's advertising partners. Sure, anyone here can beat it, but where else in the stack have they subverted your machine? If you're even slightly concerned about data privacy and user freedom, please do not be complicit in Lenovo's continued existence. [0] https://www.theverge.com/2017/9/6/16261988/lenovo-adware-superfish-settlement-fine-state-ag https://www.theverge.com/2017/9/6/16261988/lenovo-adware-sup...
- throwafk81 9y agoFriendly reminder that nobody cares.
- jwatte 9y agoThey did it twice (once in BIOS) and I care. Never again Lenovo!
- ClassyJacket 9y agoI care greatly and would never buy a Lenovo because of it.
- sevensor 9y agoI have a collection of old ThinkPads going back to the R31. I loved ThinkPad -- Linux compatible, nice keyboard, trackpoint, the well thought out work light you could activate in the dark. But Lenovo lost my trust and have done nothing to regain it. I'm not buying another ThinkPad.
- lloeki 9y ago
- ledgerdev 9y ago> I ditched the T5XX series when they borked the keyboard layout by adding a numpad Let's hope this changes soon. https://forums.lenovo.com/t5/ThinkPad-T400-T500-and-newer-T/Who-would-like-a-15-inch-ThinkPad-that-has-a-centered-keyboard/m-p/4006468/highlight/true#M123497 https://forums.lenovo.com/t5/ThinkPad-T400-T500-and-newer-T/... https://www.notebookcheck.net/Lenovo-wants-to-release-a-new-15-inch-ThinkPad-without-a-numpad.291718.0.html https://www.notebookcheck.net/Lenovo-wants-to-release-a-new-...
- organsnyder 9y agoI just replaced my T410 with a T480, and have been very pleased so far. Installed Debian on it without a hitch. I got a model with the dGPU, and it's working fine so far—I only use the dGPU when I'm gaming on Windows. I might be losing some battery from not properly disabling the dGPU when running under Linux, but I haven't bothered to check yet (battery life has been good enough). The machine is very very fast. One caveat on the T480: only the versions with the dGPU have two heat pipes—the iGPU models have one; therefore, apparently the dGPU model has better cooling, regardless of whether you're using the dGPU or not. The T480s has two heat pipes regardless of whether you have the dGPU or not. The /r/thinkpad subreddit has a lot of conversations around the thermal engineering of each model—lots of information to consume there. I greatly prefer my T480 to my work-issued Macbook Pro Retina—more ports (Ethernet!), more flexibility (I can configure it to not automatically go to sleep when I close the lid), and a vastly better keyboard. It's also easier to service and more upgradable. I was able to get seven+ years out of my T410, and I intend to do the same with my T480 (at least that's what I told my wife, to justify the cost... :-D ).
- Light2Yellow 9y agoRegarding Infinality: note that it's long deprecated and unmaintained, and it will break freetype2 stuff. See <https://gist.github.com/cryzed/e002e7057435f02cc7894b9e748c5671> https://gist.github.com/cryzed/e002e7057435f02cc7894b9e748c5...
- gkop 9y agoThe gist 404s. Is there an alternative that has emerged?
- aagha 9y agoIf you also get an account at perksatwork.com, you can get 30-45% off a T-series.
- locusm 9y agoLisa Gades review of the T480, T480S and X1 Carbon https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gOsERJzMhLc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gOsERJzMhLc