7 ms·

I consider the cost acceptable given they don't just "slap Ubuntu on it". The hardware is curated towards 100% Linux compatibility, and their custom OS (admitte

I consider the cost acceptable given they don't just "slap Ubuntu on it". The hardware is curated towards 100% Linux compatibility, and their custom OS (admittedly an Ubuntu variant) is tweaked to suit the hardware. It's a good marriage and to some it's worth the extra cost. Look at it like you would a Macbook; Apple charges a premium but the benefit the buyer receives from that extra cost is hardware and software that feels cohesive and works perfectly together. I'm not saying System76 has reached that same mark just yet, but it's what they are working towards and they have made great progress in that endeavor. With all of that said, there's something to buying a used or marked-down Thinkpad and installing your distro of choice; you'll (usually) get a great device with excellent Linux community support, and in my opinion the industrial design of the Thinkpad series is more appealing than System76 machines. Personally I don't care for Lenovo because of their past malware shenanigans, but they do make solid hardware.

HankB99 7y ago
Have you purchased a Lenovo lately? I've not had good luck with them. Despite 2 returns for service my Thinkpad T500 remained with a loose charging connector. My next Lenovo (notably not a Thinkpad) was a Y50 Ideapad. Audio to the speakers failed, the housing developed cracks at the hinge. The Ethernet connector broke (though used very little.) and now the SD card slot has failed. I'm giving Dell a try. You can buy them with Ubuntu factory installed or buy with Windows and 'slap the distro of your choice' on it. I have an XPS-13 9370 and after nearly a year, the WiFi finally seems to be working reliably (using Debian Testing.)
- robocat 7y ago
  > WiFi finally seems to be working reliably I got the XPS15 and installed Ubuntu 18.04 (best choice of laptop I could find that had an i9 8950hk, although only Windows is officially supported). I had heard it was best to replace the Killer WiFi with an Intel mini card. However the Killer WiFi has been rock solid for me with Ubuntu (I have read that Windows has more problems with Killer WiFi than Linux!). Regular Linux BIOS updates from Dell from within Ubuntu 18.04 - I'm a happy customer. Edit: comment from elsewhere in this thread: "only three years ago I had to replace the default wireless card in my Dell XPS 13 because the broadcom one was flaky as hell in Linux"
  - HankB99 7y ago
    Yes, I think they fixed the Killer problems on Ubuntu first and pushed their changes upstream. That may be why it works on Debian (It's only been a week.) I can dual boot Ubuntu but for reasons not immediately obvious to me DNS queries were frequently timing out, making web browsing pretty slow. I think that Debian is getting the firmware updates too, though for the last one it didn't apply so I just booted Ubuntu and it worked w/out issue. (It uses EFI which is another benefit of that.)
  - voltagex_ 7y ago
    Yep, replaced both the NVMe and the Broadcom wifi in my 9350. I'm not buying this year's model as the Killer wifi is soldered down. Killer indeed.
    - ac29 7y ago
      For what its worth, I've had zero issues with WiFi on my 9380. The "killer" wifi is just an ath10k: 02:00.0 Network controller: Qualcomm Atheros QCA6174 802.11ac Wireless Network Adapter (rev 32) Subsystem: Bigfoot Networks, Inc. Killer 1435 Wireless-AC Kernel driver in use: ath10k_pci As far as I can tell, its no different from any other Qualcomm Atheros WiFi. I believe the "killer" differences are just in the Windows drivers.
      - voltagex_ 7y ago
        That's interesting - the only other issue is that I then can't upgrade to Wifi 6 or whatever, but that's probably not an issue until a few years down the track when all my other devices support the same standard.
- freedomben 7y ago
  I have purchased two Lenovo T580 laptops within the last year, and both worked flawlessly with Fedora with zero tweaking. Both machines are running great so far. An older Lenovo I've had for a few years did have a hard drive die, but Lenovos are so easy to service that it was cake to replace the drive. If anyone from Lenovo is reading this, thank you for making it so easy to service the laptop for a user. I have had a few Dells and I think hardware-wise it is the best, but that dual video card setup never worked quite right. Also until Fedora 29 came out (with a newer kernel) the only distro that I could install was the stock Ubuntu that came with the laptop (which didn't have full disk encryption, unfortunately). I would recommend a Lenovo T580 or Dell XPS 15/5520. I think the Dell hardware is actually nicer than Apple, which is a high compliment.
- NikolaNovak 7y ago
  Anything here will be Anecdata at best, but I've bought 3 refurb t420 and t420s; these are 8 years old now and still daily drivers for all my family members. The t420s in particular is my all-time favourite laptop of last 20 years, as it's thin and portable, but still modular (t420 is significantly thicker and more old-school portable), easy to upgrade and maintain, and with great keyboard with standard layout. I have also used regularly a t450 and t470 for work, and last year bought an anniversary t25 as a Xmas gift for myself :). Prior to that, I've used T530, T410, T60p, T41, T30, etc. My boss has been put on notice that a Thinkpad is a "condition of employment" for me - I cannot imagine using anything else. All of them have been absolutely positively rock solid. No issues as daily drivers for a travelling consultant - lots of plugging and unplugging, moving, backpacks, etc. Mostly various Windows versions, but T450 and T470 are RHEL full time, and I have a T61 with Lubuntu as well. That being said, for any brand, there'll be people with good and bad luck/experience. You have to look at your preferences, and stats...
  - pimeys 7y ago
    Same here. Although for work I prefer a workstation with enough cores for compilation. Just bought an X230, put OpenBSD in it and it is just perfect in the summer house. Put a SIM card in it and connect to the internet from everywhere. Superb keyboard, fast, small, durable, everything replaceable. I also have a T25 at home for development and can't say anything bad from that either, albeit a bit too big for carrying around.
    - carlesfe 7y ago
      I also have an x230 with OpenBSD, can you share which tutorial did you use to get the SIM wlan working?
      - pimeys 7y ago
        I have one of the supported cards[0], so it's quite straightforward: Check the APN from your operator's settings. - Try the card first in a phone. Preferably turn on the SIM lock and change the PIN code. - Insert the card to the laptop, boot. - `doas ifconfig umb0 apn your.apn.com` - `doas ifconfig umb0 pin XXXX` - `doas ifconfig umb0 up` - Confirm the gateway from `ifconfig umb0` when it appears, should say inet and it's the second IP. - When gateway is visible, `doas route add -ifp umb0 default XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX` - Confirm the DNS works, but you should now be able to access internet. Sometimes when you turn off the power or suspend, you might need to enter the PIN to the card, turn the device up and set the route again. A player automates this with a script. :) You can store the settings to `/etc/hostname.umb0`. [0] Lenovo H5321 gw
- wpietri 7y ago
  > Have you purchased a Lenovo lately? I've not had good luck with them. Same. My Thinkpad 25 has already been back twice. And both their field service and their factory service have really gone downhill. As much as I love the keyboard, this may be my last Thinkpad.
  - wyclif 7y ago
    But where can you go from there? Who makes a better PC laptop?
    - pimeys 7y ago
      Kind of funny, but you might consider getting a refurbished ThinkPad from a couple of years ago. If you're ready to replace some parts, a T440p will be fast and good for years to come. I got my X230 and it's so fast I really question the need for the new CPU generations...
    - wpietri 7y ago
      From what I can tell, Thinkpads are in a slow decline. So it's not so much that I expect to buy a better one, but that they'll be about the same as everything else. If they aren't already.
- neilv 7y ago
  If anyone else has a problem with a loose charging connector on T500... It looks like the T500 DC-in jack isn't mounted on a PCB, but is on a cable with a connector, and the jack is held in place wrt the chassis partly with a screw. So it might've just been the whole jack part wiggling within the chassis, and just needed a little tightening. Or just needed an $8 eBay part swapped in without soldering. Those old ThinkPad models had "Hardware Maintenance Manuals" ("HMM") PDFs that IBM/Lenovo freely shared, with step-by-step instructions for disassembly and reassembly. (Though I understand sending a new unit back, and also not wanting to possibly void warranty.)
- ekianjo 7y ago
  I have purchased 4 lenovo laptops from different generations from x220 to t440p and they have always been rock solid build wise over several years of use. I replaced recently my cpu fan on the x220 but it was the oldest model from the bunch and now it works perfect again.
CoolGuySteve 7y ago
In terms of hardware support, the ArchLinux people seem to be doing more than anyone to document and tweak whatever laptop I look up. Kudos to them for doing so.
- godzillabrennus 7y ago
  I’m a big fan of the ElementaryOS approach to user interface consistency. I hope they start being an option at build from System76.
  - sammorrowdrums 7y ago
    Well Cassidy, one of the ElementaryOS founders worked on Pop!_OS too and I haven't tried it, but I'd hope that it therefore has some of his UX pizzaz! https://cassidyjames.com/resume/ https://cassidyjames.com/resume/ Having used ElementaryOS for two years I had thought that if my next laptop was a System76 I'd give Pop a go. I do hope they become the Mac of Linux.
- allset_ 7y ago
  I haven't used Arch in quite a while but their wiki is great and generally isn't specific to Arch.

HankB99 7y ago

Have you purchased a Lenovo lately? I've not had good luck with them. Despite 2 returns for service my Thinkpad T500 remained with a loose charging connector. My next Lenovo (notably not a Thinkpad) was a Y50 Ideapad. Audio to the speakers failed, the housing developed cracks at the hinge. The Ethernet connector broke (though used very little.) and now the SD card slot has failed. I'm giving Dell a try. You can buy them with Ubuntu factory installed or buy with Windows and 'slap the distro of your choice' on it. I have an XPS-13 9370 and after nearly a year, the WiFi finally seems to be working reliably (using Debian Testing.)

robocat 7y ago
> WiFi finally seems to be working reliably I got the XPS15 and installed Ubuntu 18.04 (best choice of laptop I could find that had an i9 8950hk, although only Windows is officially supported). I had heard it was best to replace the Killer WiFi with an Intel mini card. However the Killer WiFi has been rock solid for me with Ubuntu (I have read that Windows has more problems with Killer WiFi than Linux!). Regular Linux BIOS updates from Dell from within Ubuntu 18.04 - I'm a happy customer. Edit: comment from elsewhere in this thread: "only three years ago I had to replace the default wireless card in my Dell XPS 13 because the broadcom one was flaky as hell in Linux"
- HankB99 7y ago
  Yes, I think they fixed the Killer problems on Ubuntu first and pushed their changes upstream. That may be why it works on Debian (It's only been a week.) I can dual boot Ubuntu but for reasons not immediately obvious to me DNS queries were frequently timing out, making web browsing pretty slow. I think that Debian is getting the firmware updates too, though for the last one it didn't apply so I just booted Ubuntu and it worked w/out issue. (It uses EFI which is another benefit of that.)
- voltagex_ 7y ago
  Yep, replaced both the NVMe and the Broadcom wifi in my 9350. I'm not buying this year's model as the Killer wifi is soldered down. Killer indeed.
  - ac29 7y ago
    For what its worth, I've had zero issues with WiFi on my 9380. The "killer" wifi is just an ath10k: 02:00.0 Network controller: Qualcomm Atheros QCA6174 802.11ac Wireless Network Adapter (rev 32) Subsystem: Bigfoot Networks, Inc. Killer 1435 Wireless-AC Kernel driver in use: ath10k_pci As far as I can tell, its no different from any other Qualcomm Atheros WiFi. I believe the "killer" differences are just in the Windows drivers.
    - voltagex_ 7y ago
      That's interesting - the only other issue is that I then can't upgrade to Wifi 6 or whatever, but that's probably not an issue until a few years down the track when all my other devices support the same standard.
freedomben 7y ago
I have purchased two Lenovo T580 laptops within the last year, and both worked flawlessly with Fedora with zero tweaking. Both machines are running great so far. An older Lenovo I've had for a few years did have a hard drive die, but Lenovos are so easy to service that it was cake to replace the drive. If anyone from Lenovo is reading this, thank you for making it so easy to service the laptop for a user. I have had a few Dells and I think hardware-wise it is the best, but that dual video card setup never worked quite right. Also until Fedora 29 came out (with a newer kernel) the only distro that I could install was the stock Ubuntu that came with the laptop (which didn't have full disk encryption, unfortunately). I would recommend a Lenovo T580 or Dell XPS 15/5520. I think the Dell hardware is actually nicer than Apple, which is a high compliment.
NikolaNovak 7y ago
Anything here will be Anecdata at best, but I've bought 3 refurb t420 and t420s; these are 8 years old now and still daily drivers for all my family members. The t420s in particular is my all-time favourite laptop of last 20 years, as it's thin and portable, but still modular (t420 is significantly thicker and more old-school portable), easy to upgrade and maintain, and with great keyboard with standard layout. I have also used regularly a t450 and t470 for work, and last year bought an anniversary t25 as a Xmas gift for myself :). Prior to that, I've used T530, T410, T60p, T41, T30, etc. My boss has been put on notice that a Thinkpad is a "condition of employment" for me - I cannot imagine using anything else. All of them have been absolutely positively rock solid. No issues as daily drivers for a travelling consultant - lots of plugging and unplugging, moving, backpacks, etc. Mostly various Windows versions, but T450 and T470 are RHEL full time, and I have a T61 with Lubuntu as well. That being said, for any brand, there'll be people with good and bad luck/experience. You have to look at your preferences, and stats...
- pimeys 7y ago
  Same here. Although for work I prefer a workstation with enough cores for compilation. Just bought an X230, put OpenBSD in it and it is just perfect in the summer house. Put a SIM card in it and connect to the internet from everywhere. Superb keyboard, fast, small, durable, everything replaceable. I also have a T25 at home for development and can't say anything bad from that either, albeit a bit too big for carrying around.
  - carlesfe 7y ago
    I also have an x230 with OpenBSD, can you share which tutorial did you use to get the SIM wlan working?
    - pimeys 7y ago
      I have one of the supported cards[0], so it's quite straightforward: Check the APN from your operator's settings. - Try the card first in a phone. Preferably turn on the SIM lock and change the PIN code. - Insert the card to the laptop, boot. - `doas ifconfig umb0 apn your.apn.com` - `doas ifconfig umb0 pin XXXX` - `doas ifconfig umb0 up` - Confirm the gateway from `ifconfig umb0` when it appears, should say inet and it's the second IP. - When gateway is visible, `doas route add -ifp umb0 default XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX` - Confirm the DNS works, but you should now be able to access internet. Sometimes when you turn off the power or suspend, you might need to enter the PIN to the card, turn the device up and set the route again. A player automates this with a script. :) You can store the settings to `/etc/hostname.umb0`. [0] Lenovo H5321 gw
wpietri 7y ago
> Have you purchased a Lenovo lately? I've not had good luck with them. Same. My Thinkpad 25 has already been back twice. And both their field service and their factory service have really gone downhill. As much as I love the keyboard, this may be my last Thinkpad.
- wyclif 7y ago
  But where can you go from there? Who makes a better PC laptop?
  - pimeys 7y ago
    Kind of funny, but you might consider getting a refurbished ThinkPad from a couple of years ago. If you're ready to replace some parts, a T440p will be fast and good for years to come. I got my X230 and it's so fast I really question the need for the new CPU generations...
  - wpietri 7y ago
    From what I can tell, Thinkpads are in a slow decline. So it's not so much that I expect to buy a better one, but that they'll be about the same as everything else. If they aren't already.
neilv 7y ago
If anyone else has a problem with a loose charging connector on T500... It looks like the T500 DC-in jack isn't mounted on a PCB, but is on a cable with a connector, and the jack is held in place wrt the chassis partly with a screw. So it might've just been the whole jack part wiggling within the chassis, and just needed a little tightening. Or just needed an $8 eBay part swapped in without soldering. Those old ThinkPad models had "Hardware Maintenance Manuals" ("HMM") PDFs that IBM/Lenovo freely shared, with step-by-step instructions for disassembly and reassembly. (Though I understand sending a new unit back, and also not wanting to possibly void warranty.)
ekianjo 7y ago
I have purchased 4 lenovo laptops from different generations from x220 to t440p and they have always been rock solid build wise over several years of use. I replaced recently my cpu fan on the x220 but it was the oldest model from the bunch and now it works perfect again.

CoolGuySteve 7y ago

In terms of hardware support, the ArchLinux people seem to be doing more than anyone to document and tweak whatever laptop I look up. Kudos to them for doing so.

godzillabrennus 7y ago
I’m a big fan of the ElementaryOS approach to user interface consistency. I hope they start being an option at build from System76.
- sammorrowdrums 7y ago
  Well Cassidy, one of the ElementaryOS founders worked on Pop!_OS too and I haven't tried it, but I'd hope that it therefore has some of his UX pizzaz! https://cassidyjames.com/resume/ https://cassidyjames.com/resume/ Having used ElementaryOS for two years I had thought that if my next laptop was a System76 I'd give Pop a go. I do hope they become the Mac of Linux.
allset_ 7y ago
I haven't used Arch in quite a while but their wiki is great and generally isn't specific to Arch.