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I also have a t480, mines running Ubuntu but unfortunately I’m giving it up for a new MacBook Air. The touchpads on the thinkpads are beyond horrible after usi

I also have a t480, mines running Ubuntu but unfortunately I’m giving it up for a new MacBook Air. The touchpads on the thinkpads are beyond horrible after using macs for many years, it’s finally too annoying for me to keep going :(

bayindirh 7y ago
I have an HP EliteBook 850 G2 and a MacBook Pro. I don't find the trackpoint and trackpad on my HP to be off-putting TBH. Yes, it lacks many gestures but, KDE has ample replacements for these gestures I think.
holtalanm 7y ago
in the non-mac world, ThinkPads have some of the best touchpads, too. The closest to a mac touchpad I have seen so far has been the Dell XPS touchpad, which imo is hands-down the best touchpad experience on a non-mac machine.
- jandrese 7y ago
  The only issue I have with the trackpads on Linux is palm rejection not working. This is an annoyingly common problem unfortunately, so you rest your wrist for just a second while typing and the cursor jumps to some random point on the screen and clicks.
  - floatboth 7y ago
    Recent libinput's palm rejection works fine for me. Though I've had to test that deliberately… on the Pixelbook, my wrists are always on the rubber wrist rest thingies and never on the touchpad.
- johnward 7y ago
  Haven't had a thinkpad for a few years. Are they still dimpled? edit: doesn't look like it
wldlyinaccurate 7y ago
If you want to stick with Linux, I can vouch for Dell's XPS range. I've been running Ubuntu and Arch on various generations of XPS 13 for about 8 years now with minimal issues. Honestly, my work-issued Macbooks have been more problematic than my XPS laptops. It definitely helps that Dell actively support Ubuntu and provide kernel patches.
- blackearl 7y ago
  The new dev edition comes with ubuntu out of the box I believe
- alias_neo 7y ago
  Later models have some issues, my personal 2019 XPS13 has lots of graphical glitching issues on 19.10, My colleagues with 2019 XPS 15s on 18.04 have various display and performance issues while my 2017 XPS 15 is just fine on 18.04. I'm hoping 20.04 will be a smoother experience once it's released (we only run LTSs on development machines at work). One of my new team members couldn't get her brand new XPS15 to output to a 4K TV (1080p internal disolay) on 18.04 yesterday. The screen would just constantly flash on and off. We had to settle for her using 1080 for presentations etc on the office TVs as no combination of proprietary drivers or Nvidia on/off resolved it.
- weystrom 7y ago
  Can't wait for 9300 developer edition, going to pick it up hopefully very soon.
- petepete 7y ago
  I just switched from an older XPS13 to a 2019 ThinkPad X1 Carbon. With Fedora, everything (except the fingerprint reader) just worked, even firmware updates. No configuration, no messing around, the entire process was flawless. I don't care for the fingerprint reader, and the USB-C dock uses DisplayLink, which is beyond awful.
- jhallenworld 7y ago
  If you want something cheap: For Linux 18.04 / Windows 10 dual boot, I just bought an HP 15-cs2073cl: $450 refurb from Microcenter. Everything works and I think the price is pretty good for a Core-i7 / 16 GB / 1920 / 1TB laptop. Here's a link, but I see the price already gone up a little: https://www.microcenter.com/product/612786/hp-pavilion-15-cs2073cl-156-laptop-computer-refurbished---blue https://www.microcenter.com/product/612786/hp-pavilion-15-cs... It has a slot for an M.2 card that does not interfere with the rotating SATA drive, so I'm about to try that. I'd like to have both installed. SSD is nice for Linux but is absolutely required for Windows. One nice thing about Dell XPS: they have the Thunderbolt port. I theorize that this is potentially very useful for a corner case that I have: you can add a PCIe box and add a parallel printer port card that accepts ancient security dongles required by certain engineering software that I invested in the past.
Aperocky 7y ago
I have a new macbook air, no complaints except that the keyboard is still butterfly. They DO jam. If I were in your shoe, I'd wait for a longer traveling version of the keyboard that's not butterfly.
- fjp 7y ago
  I'm doing exactly this - excited about the speed and screens on the new ones, but waiting for the longer travel keyboard to come back. I can get along with my 2015 for now, but I really miss the Retina display and it is pretty slow for doing heavier stuff.
  - Aperocky 7y ago
    I have an older macbook air, The new ones even with the faulty keyboard is a lot better considering the increased trackpad size, the screen alone is probably worth it. I thought I was fine with the old screen turns out I was just used to it, the new one is such an upgrade, the tradeoff being that the processor power is about the same. Which don't matter to me that much as it's mostly text editing for me.
protanopia 7y ago
Try disabling the trackpad and then just use the trackpoint.
- snazz 7y ago
  I do this, but I can see how many people would have a hard time giving up the touchpad. The gestures are nice and I do have more control on a good touchpad. However, for my use case not having to move off home row beats touchpad gestures.
- hdkwowjdj 7y ago
  Then you still don't have a good trackpad. Besides, the trackpoint is drifting across all models. I like to use it, but it's beyond my imagination why people think this is the best a manufacturer could do.
- ahnick 7y ago
  I have this exact model and have attempted to use trackpoint under Ubuntu and it is just slow and I'm constantly overshooting my target. I'm so much better with the trackpad that I really wonder how people that use trackpoint swear by it. I must be missing something.
  - michalf6 7y ago
    Increase the sensitivity to max and try to guide it using just light touches. It's supposed to be relaxing on the fingers, if there's any finger strain, your sensitivity is too low.
    - ahnick 7y ago
      Okay, increasing the sensitivity definitely helped with the slowness, but I'm still overshooting a lot. Maybe one day I'll get there. :)
- abhijat 7y ago
  I've been using the trackpoint for so long that the trackpad seems hard to use to me. I always disable the trackpad but I fear someday thinkpads might drop the trackpoint altogether as I don't see many people using them.
ajford 7y ago
Huh... I have the exact opposite feeling. I've used a MBPr for work the last two years, and I absolutely hate it. I've pushed to get a good solid Lenovo, but that's been repeatedly rejected as they like the convenience of the whole office using OSX and Apple hardware. I've felt the touchpad wasn't sensitive enough and the click action was way too feeble. Combined with the mushy feeling of the keyboard and the atrocious user experience of the OS, I can barely stand using it each day.
- Aperocky 7y ago
  I agree mostly on the hardware complaints ( I have the same and I use a mechanic keyboard and standalone trackpad), but not sure about atrocious user experience of the OS. One of the biggest plus of mac is that it's terminal is posix.
  - ajford 7y ago
    In my opinion, that's the only positive to using OSX. Wish they didn't use an old as hell version of Bash. For my Linux work, I code to Bash 4, and I've been bit a few times when my scripts won't run on my laptop due that. The need for 3rd party software (spectacles) to allow me to use hot-keys to shift windows around (native feature in Windows, Linux, and iirc even the windows manager in Sun V when I used it for a short time). Same story to alter the behavior of alt-tab. I also can't prevent windows from stealing focus if some random app decides it wants to pop up something (again native option in every other OS I've used). That's apparently been an active complaint on the internet for somewhere close to a decade from what I've seen during my fruitless searches for a solution. I've had numerous issues related to the App store randomly signing out, which may not be an issue to normal users, but in my case the office uses a shared app store account to handle App Store purchases, so that was exceedingly irritating but probably a "it's just you" type of complaint. And none of that even touches the debacle that is Catalina. I ended up completely re-installing the OS, as a vast majority of software I needed wasn't compatible due to the deprecation of 32-bit support. All in all, I personally hate the OS and can't stand it. I'm currently looking for a new role, and can't deny I'm giddy at the chance to get away from it. And honestly, I'd probably turn down a position if it came with the requirement to use OSX again. However, I do recognize this is my experience and others really do enjoy OSX. But to each his own.
umanwizard 7y ago
If we don't count the keyboard issues, no laptop on the market is as nice to use as an MBP. If I had one with a physical escape key, I could probably make the statement without even that reservation. But if you prefer Ubuntu to macOS for whatever reason, I've found the Dell XPS line to be good enough to be tolerable.
- cobar 7y ago
  It's possible to map the Caps Lock key to Escape as long as you don't need Caps Lock functionality.
  - revicon 7y ago
    That got remapped to control a long time ago for me. Will never be able to have it be anything else now.
- revicon 7y ago
  > If I had one with a physical escape key This is why I bought a Macbook Air, they still have a physical escape key and my vim muscle movements will not allow me to remap that key anywhere else. BTW The 16inch Macbook Pros also have a physical escape key now, to the left of the touchbar.
- erikbye 7y ago
  I vastly prefer my SB2 to every MBP I have used. Great typing experience, less problems with throttling, more versatile.
rbanffy 7y ago
The 16 Pro has a much less butterflyish keyboard. But, then, the newer T490's can have up to 64 gigs of RAM, SATA and an M2 ssd

bayindirh 7y ago

I have an HP EliteBook 850 G2 and a MacBook Pro. I don't find the trackpoint and trackpad on my HP to be off-putting TBH. Yes, it lacks many gestures but, KDE has ample replacements for these gestures I think.

holtalanm 7y ago

in the non-mac world, ThinkPads have some of the best touchpads, too. The closest to a mac touchpad I have seen so far has been the Dell XPS touchpad, which imo is hands-down the best touchpad experience on a non-mac machine.

jandrese 7y ago
The only issue I have with the trackpads on Linux is palm rejection not working. This is an annoyingly common problem unfortunately, so you rest your wrist for just a second while typing and the cursor jumps to some random point on the screen and clicks.
- floatboth 7y ago
  Recent libinput's palm rejection works fine for me. Though I've had to test that deliberately… on the Pixelbook, my wrists are always on the rubber wrist rest thingies and never on the touchpad.
johnward 7y ago
Haven't had a thinkpad for a few years. Are they still dimpled? edit: doesn't look like it

wldlyinaccurate 7y ago

If you want to stick with Linux, I can vouch for Dell's XPS range. I've been running Ubuntu and Arch on various generations of XPS 13 for about 8 years now with minimal issues. Honestly, my work-issued Macbooks have been more problematic than my XPS laptops. It definitely helps that Dell actively support Ubuntu and provide kernel patches.

blackearl 7y ago
The new dev edition comes with ubuntu out of the box I believe
alias_neo 7y ago
Later models have some issues, my personal 2019 XPS13 has lots of graphical glitching issues on 19.10, My colleagues with 2019 XPS 15s on 18.04 have various display and performance issues while my 2017 XPS 15 is just fine on 18.04. I'm hoping 20.04 will be a smoother experience once it's released (we only run LTSs on development machines at work). One of my new team members couldn't get her brand new XPS15 to output to a 4K TV (1080p internal disolay) on 18.04 yesterday. The screen would just constantly flash on and off. We had to settle for her using 1080 for presentations etc on the office TVs as no combination of proprietary drivers or Nvidia on/off resolved it.
weystrom 7y ago
Can't wait for 9300 developer edition, going to pick it up hopefully very soon.
petepete 7y ago
I just switched from an older XPS13 to a 2019 ThinkPad X1 Carbon. With Fedora, everything (except the fingerprint reader) just worked, even firmware updates. No configuration, no messing around, the entire process was flawless. I don't care for the fingerprint reader, and the USB-C dock uses DisplayLink, which is beyond awful.
jhallenworld 7y ago
If you want something cheap: For Linux 18.04 / Windows 10 dual boot, I just bought an HP 15-cs2073cl: $450 refurb from Microcenter. Everything works and I think the price is pretty good for a Core-i7 / 16 GB / 1920 / 1TB laptop. Here's a link, but I see the price already gone up a little: https://www.microcenter.com/product/612786/hp-pavilion-15-cs2073cl-156-laptop-computer-refurbished---blue https://www.microcenter.com/product/612786/hp-pavilion-15-cs... It has a slot for an M.2 card that does not interfere with the rotating SATA drive, so I'm about to try that. I'd like to have both installed. SSD is nice for Linux but is absolutely required for Windows. One nice thing about Dell XPS: they have the Thunderbolt port. I theorize that this is potentially very useful for a corner case that I have: you can add a PCIe box and add a parallel printer port card that accepts ancient security dongles required by certain engineering software that I invested in the past.

Aperocky 7y ago

I have a new macbook air, no complaints except that the keyboard is still butterfly. They DO jam. If I were in your shoe, I'd wait for a longer traveling version of the keyboard that's not butterfly.

fjp 7y ago
I'm doing exactly this - excited about the speed and screens on the new ones, but waiting for the longer travel keyboard to come back. I can get along with my 2015 for now, but I really miss the Retina display and it is pretty slow for doing heavier stuff.
- Aperocky 7y ago
  I have an older macbook air, The new ones even with the faulty keyboard is a lot better considering the increased trackpad size, the screen alone is probably worth it. I thought I was fine with the old screen turns out I was just used to it, the new one is such an upgrade, the tradeoff being that the processor power is about the same. Which don't matter to me that much as it's mostly text editing for me.

protanopia 7y ago

Try disabling the trackpad and then just use the trackpoint.

snazz 7y ago
I do this, but I can see how many people would have a hard time giving up the touchpad. The gestures are nice and I do have more control on a good touchpad. However, for my use case not having to move off home row beats touchpad gestures.
hdkwowjdj 7y ago
Then you still don't have a good trackpad. Besides, the trackpoint is drifting across all models. I like to use it, but it's beyond my imagination why people think this is the best a manufacturer could do.
ahnick 7y ago
I have this exact model and have attempted to use trackpoint under Ubuntu and it is just slow and I'm constantly overshooting my target. I'm so much better with the trackpad that I really wonder how people that use trackpoint swear by it. I must be missing something.
- michalf6 7y ago
  Increase the sensitivity to max and try to guide it using just light touches. It's supposed to be relaxing on the fingers, if there's any finger strain, your sensitivity is too low.
  - ahnick 7y ago
    Okay, increasing the sensitivity definitely helped with the slowness, but I'm still overshooting a lot. Maybe one day I'll get there. :)
abhijat 7y ago
I've been using the trackpoint for so long that the trackpad seems hard to use to me. I always disable the trackpad but I fear someday thinkpads might drop the trackpoint altogether as I don't see many people using them.

ajford 7y ago

Huh... I have the exact opposite feeling. I've used a MBPr for work the last two years, and I absolutely hate it. I've pushed to get a good solid Lenovo, but that's been repeatedly rejected as they like the convenience of the whole office using OSX and Apple hardware. I've felt the touchpad wasn't sensitive enough and the click action was way too feeble. Combined with the mushy feeling of the keyboard and the atrocious user experience of the OS, I can barely stand using it each day.

Aperocky 7y ago
I agree mostly on the hardware complaints ( I have the same and I use a mechanic keyboard and standalone trackpad), but not sure about atrocious user experience of the OS. One of the biggest plus of mac is that it's terminal is posix.
- ajford 7y ago
  In my opinion, that's the only positive to using OSX. Wish they didn't use an old as hell version of Bash. For my Linux work, I code to Bash 4, and I've been bit a few times when my scripts won't run on my laptop due that. The need for 3rd party software (spectacles) to allow me to use hot-keys to shift windows around (native feature in Windows, Linux, and iirc even the windows manager in Sun V when I used it for a short time). Same story to alter the behavior of alt-tab. I also can't prevent windows from stealing focus if some random app decides it wants to pop up something (again native option in every other OS I've used). That's apparently been an active complaint on the internet for somewhere close to a decade from what I've seen during my fruitless searches for a solution. I've had numerous issues related to the App store randomly signing out, which may not be an issue to normal users, but in my case the office uses a shared app store account to handle App Store purchases, so that was exceedingly irritating but probably a "it's just you" type of complaint. And none of that even touches the debacle that is Catalina. I ended up completely re-installing the OS, as a vast majority of software I needed wasn't compatible due to the deprecation of 32-bit support. All in all, I personally hate the OS and can't stand it. I'm currently looking for a new role, and can't deny I'm giddy at the chance to get away from it. And honestly, I'd probably turn down a position if it came with the requirement to use OSX again. However, I do recognize this is my experience and others really do enjoy OSX. But to each his own.

umanwizard 7y ago

If we don't count the keyboard issues, no laptop on the market is as nice to use as an MBP. If I had one with a physical escape key, I could probably make the statement without even that reservation. But if you prefer Ubuntu to macOS for whatever reason, I've found the Dell XPS line to be good enough to be tolerable.

cobar 7y ago
It's possible to map the Caps Lock key to Escape as long as you don't need Caps Lock functionality.
- revicon 7y ago
  That got remapped to control a long time ago for me. Will never be able to have it be anything else now.
revicon 7y ago
> If I had one with a physical escape key This is why I bought a Macbook Air, they still have a physical escape key and my vim muscle movements will not allow me to remap that key anywhere else. BTW The 16inch Macbook Pros also have a physical escape key now, to the left of the touchbar.
erikbye 7y ago
I vastly prefer my SB2 to every MBP I have used. Great typing experience, less problems with throttling, more versatile.

rbanffy 7y ago

The 16 Pro has a much less butterflyish keyboard. But, then, the newer T490's can have up to 64 gigs of RAM, SATA and an M2 ssd