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Not just any thinkpad! Stick to the X, T & to some extent P series. Avoid nvidia graphics if you can. Arch Linux (and to some extent OpenBSD) probably has th

Not just any thinkpad! Stick to the X, T & to some extent P series. Avoid nvidia graphics if you can. Arch Linux (and to some extent OpenBSD) probably has the best support/documentation/fixes for any ACPI/APM management issues you have. I have a top-end 2017 MBP and I just recently bought a brand new 7th Gen X1 Carbon for very cheaply (like $800) and it _screams_ in comparison to the Mac.

Spivak 6y ago
Avoid Nvidia Optimus (i.e. the W series). It’s so much worse than having a dedicated card because of the way it’s soldered on. It only kinda works. It still consumes power when “disabled”. You can’t use GPU passthrough. Stand-alone Nvidia GPUs are fine but on Fedora you have to do some work because the Mutter and Kwin devs are currently in a spat with Nvidia.
cpursley 6y ago
Thanks for bringing this up. Can folk's recommend specific thinkpads that play well with linux? I'm specifically interested in Ryzen versions.
- busterarm 6y ago
  The T14s might work, but IIRC most of the Ryzen models are in the E series and hardware support there is spotty.
  - DeltaWhy 6y ago
    Just got a Ryzen T14 - only had it for a few days but it's working great. Arch works well out of the box, but Debian needs a kernel and some firmware packages from sid in order to get WiFi working.
  - mikeywazowski 6y ago
    I have an E490 (i7) running PopOS and the only thing that doesn't work is the fingerprint scanner. Everything worked out of the box; I haven't had to install any drivers myself. (That I can recall, anyway. Might have been such a simple process to install any missing drivers that I've forgotten.)
- nextos 6y ago
  Some are Ubuntu certified. Those tend to work well. Also look at what Redhat or BSD developers use. Besides, try to avoid discrete GPUs if you can. An all Intel machine, or lately all AMD, usually works really well. Another good sign is the availability of EFI firmware updates that are OS independent.
- ibraheemdev 6y ago
  I recently bought a t14 with a 4750u. Ubuntu worked great out of the box, but the battery lasted about 4 hours. I don't know if it was a hardware issue, but I tried everything and couldn't get it to last more than 5 hours. Everything else was great though. I was running Rust compiles on large projects without a sound from the fan, and it stayed cool throughout. Sucks that I had to return it because of the battery.
- kcartlidge 6y ago
  I've got a Thinkpad L14 with Ryzen 7 Pro 4750U, 16GB, Radeon. I had Mint 20 running on it briefly. Everything (that I tried) worked perfectly, except that the trackpad was jumpy. Eventually got fed up with the imprecision and put Win10 back on it (I still run Mint on a Yoga S730 and have Ubuntu under WSL2 on the L14). I'm sure I'll try again at some point as it is probably a simple fix; I just couldn't spare the time to investigate. I'm assuming as this is a fairly new machine, when I try again in a few months it may work better.
  - cpursley 6y ago
    How is linux running on the Yoga S730?
pkaye 6y ago
So X1 Carbon works well with Linux?
- pxeboot 6y ago
  Zero issues for me. They even released a firmware update for the fingerprint scanner to add Linux support a few months ago. I have a 7th gen.
  - codecamper 6y ago
    ubuntu or fedora?
    - pxeboot 6y ago
      I have used Ubuntu and Arch on this laptop.
- adiM 6y ago
  Yes! After using MacBook Pro for almost a decade, I moved back to Linux for my laptop two years ago. I installed the Manjaro i3 image and I was expecting that it will take almost a week to tweak the settings so that all the hardware works and was pleasantly surprised that everything worked out of the box (everything other than fingerprint scanner but that was a known limitation).
  - zwayhowder 6y ago
    I can second this with the addendum I'm on an X1 Yoga and the touchscreen works out of the box, it took me about 2 minutes to get the screen auto-rotating as well using this script. https://gist.github.com/mortie/e725d37a71779b18e8eaaf4f8a02bf5b https://gist.github.com/mortie/e725d37a71779b18e8eaaf4f8a02b...
- busterarm 6y ago
  8th Gen might not be so hot yet from what I've heard. 7th Gen minor issues. 6th and prior are flawless.
wayne 6y ago
I setup a Thinkpad X-series with OpenBSD a few months ago and the hardware support was stellar. I researched ahead of time (lots of googling and reading HN and Reddit threads) and it seemed like the OpenBSD devs were using a handful of Thinkpad models so those worked perfectly. I've mostly used it to surf the web (Firefox) and code (Vim). No one would say it's as seamless as using a Macbook, but being able to tinker with and customize everything has been half the fun.
- busterarm 6y ago
  I have a 7th Gen X1 Carbon & a Thinkpad X270 running OpenBSD and they're both flawless (bluetooth, hyperthreading, fingerprint reader all disabled). Being limited to 802.11n networking is fine.
  - dfgdghdf 6y ago
    I think we have different definitions of "flawless"
    - busterarm 6y ago
      All of the things that I don't have (except for 802.11ac) are things I would be turning off anyway and would buy the laptop without them if I could.
- 1over137 6y ago
  Is there a good resource for Thinkpads for sale in 2020 that work well with OpenBSD/FreeBSD/linux? A lot of the suggested models I find are from several years ago.
totony 6y ago
Thinkpads all have soldered ram which is a pratice I can't support, is there a model I missed that has ram slots?
- novok 6y ago
  I think soldered storage is the thing that matters more. RAM does not retain state, storage does.
  - totony 6y ago
    Except having a lot of RAM is vital for some workloads (like compilation, virtualization/containers). Sometimes you may think you're okay with 16GB or RAM, until you need one or two 8GB VM working and a local DB
- jamesponddotco 6y ago
  The T models without the S usually have no soldered RAM, or only one soldered slot. The ThinkPad T480, for example, has two upgradable RAM slots and one or two NVMe slots. Heck, even the Wi-Fi card is removable. When talking about ThinkPads, I always recommend going with the T line and skipping anything with S at the end.
  - totony 6y ago
    Oh you're right, they seem to only have 1 slot soldered. They should advertise that more on their website. Seeing 8GB (soldered) + 1 expansion would be clearer
    - nix23 6y ago
      It's still BS, if you have a dual-channel CPU you are restricted to just upgrade the additional slot to the soldered one like 8GB+8GB and same speed.
    - jamesponddotco 6y ago
      Until the T495, which was the last generation before the T14 came along, it used to be that the T with an S at the end would have one soldered RAM stick and one available to upgrade, while the T without the S would have both available, hence why the T without the S was my recommended model. I would always recommend buying used with the minimal amount of RAM for cheap, and then upgrading everything manually, from RAM to NVMe to Wi-Fi card. With the T14, however, it seems Lenovo fucked up big time. No more extra removable battery, no more empty RAM slots. The one soldered does seem to be 3200MHz, so Ryzen benefits greatly once you fill the second RAM slot with another 3200MHz stick — since Ryzen, and especially the integrated graphics, love dual channel fast memory —, but if you choose wrong when you buy, you are stuck. That sucks and does create a problem for my future self. Right now I have a T495 and my wife has a T480 with an extra big battery, and we were going to upgrade both to the T14 for Ryzen 4000, but soldered RAM is a travesty. I wonder where we are going to go now. I mostly use desktop workstations because working from home for 11 years now, I learned that workstations help with work discipline, but a laptop always end up being needed. I hate Dell with a passion, the Asus Zephyrus G14 suffers from the same issues as the ThinkPad T14, and HP uses ugly fonts in their keyboards, which bugs me. The Pinebook Pro is nice, but mine hasn't arrived. Maybe the Slimbook from that German KDE shop? Hopefully it ships to Brazil.
lokedhs 6y ago
I'm using a T490, and with one exception everything has worked perfectly. Things like Thunderbolt connecting to a docking station with multiple monitors just works out of the box. That's not to say that it's been perfect. The touchpad on this thing isn't great. I've had issues with sporadic jumping of the pointer when touching it with two fingers. I replaced the touchpad which did not have any effect. The funny thing is that the problem has been slowing going away over the months. I have never tested it on Windows, so I wouldn't know if there is a hardware problem. The reason I was mentioning this is because I wanted to give some credit to Lenovo support. I fully expected them to tell me to test on Windows before replacing the touchpad but they were happy to tell me they supported Linux and me showing the issue in Arch Linux was enough for them to replace it.

Spivak 6y ago

Avoid Nvidia Optimus (i.e. the W series). It’s so much worse than having a dedicated card because of the way it’s soldered on. It only kinda works. It still consumes power when “disabled”. You can’t use GPU passthrough. Stand-alone Nvidia GPUs are fine but on Fedora you have to do some work because the Mutter and Kwin devs are currently in a spat with Nvidia.

cpursley 6y ago

Thanks for bringing this up. Can folk's recommend specific thinkpads that play well with linux? I'm specifically interested in Ryzen versions.

busterarm 6y ago
The T14s might work, but IIRC most of the Ryzen models are in the E series and hardware support there is spotty.
- DeltaWhy 6y ago
  Just got a Ryzen T14 - only had it for a few days but it's working great. Arch works well out of the box, but Debian needs a kernel and some firmware packages from sid in order to get WiFi working.
- mikeywazowski 6y ago
  I have an E490 (i7) running PopOS and the only thing that doesn't work is the fingerprint scanner. Everything worked out of the box; I haven't had to install any drivers myself. (That I can recall, anyway. Might have been such a simple process to install any missing drivers that I've forgotten.)
nextos 6y ago
Some are Ubuntu certified. Those tend to work well. Also look at what Redhat or BSD developers use. Besides, try to avoid discrete GPUs if you can. An all Intel machine, or lately all AMD, usually works really well. Another good sign is the availability of EFI firmware updates that are OS independent.
ibraheemdev 6y ago
I recently bought a t14 with a 4750u. Ubuntu worked great out of the box, but the battery lasted about 4 hours. I don't know if it was a hardware issue, but I tried everything and couldn't get it to last more than 5 hours. Everything else was great though. I was running Rust compiles on large projects without a sound from the fan, and it stayed cool throughout. Sucks that I had to return it because of the battery.
kcartlidge 6y ago
I've got a Thinkpad L14 with Ryzen 7 Pro 4750U, 16GB, Radeon. I had Mint 20 running on it briefly. Everything (that I tried) worked perfectly, except that the trackpad was jumpy. Eventually got fed up with the imprecision and put Win10 back on it (I still run Mint on a Yoga S730 and have Ubuntu under WSL2 on the L14). I'm sure I'll try again at some point as it is probably a simple fix; I just couldn't spare the time to investigate. I'm assuming as this is a fairly new machine, when I try again in a few months it may work better.
- cpursley 6y ago
  How is linux running on the Yoga S730?

pkaye 6y ago

So X1 Carbon works well with Linux?

pxeboot 6y ago
Zero issues for me. They even released a firmware update for the fingerprint scanner to add Linux support a few months ago. I have a 7th gen.
- codecamper 6y ago
  ubuntu or fedora?
  - pxeboot 6y ago
    I have used Ubuntu and Arch on this laptop.
adiM 6y ago
Yes! After using MacBook Pro for almost a decade, I moved back to Linux for my laptop two years ago. I installed the Manjaro i3 image and I was expecting that it will take almost a week to tweak the settings so that all the hardware works and was pleasantly surprised that everything worked out of the box (everything other than fingerprint scanner but that was a known limitation).
- zwayhowder 6y ago
  I can second this with the addendum I'm on an X1 Yoga and the touchscreen works out of the box, it took me about 2 minutes to get the screen auto-rotating as well using this script. https://gist.github.com/mortie/e725d37a71779b18e8eaaf4f8a02bf5b https://gist.github.com/mortie/e725d37a71779b18e8eaaf4f8a02b...
busterarm 6y ago
8th Gen might not be so hot yet from what I've heard. 7th Gen minor issues. 6th and prior are flawless.

wayne 6y ago

I setup a Thinkpad X-series with OpenBSD a few months ago and the hardware support was stellar. I researched ahead of time (lots of googling and reading HN and Reddit threads) and it seemed like the OpenBSD devs were using a handful of Thinkpad models so those worked perfectly. I've mostly used it to surf the web (Firefox) and code (Vim). No one would say it's as seamless as using a Macbook, but being able to tinker with and customize everything has been half the fun.

busterarm 6y ago
I have a 7th Gen X1 Carbon & a Thinkpad X270 running OpenBSD and they're both flawless (bluetooth, hyperthreading, fingerprint reader all disabled). Being limited to 802.11n networking is fine.
- dfgdghdf 6y ago
  I think we have different definitions of "flawless"
  - busterarm 6y ago
    All of the things that I don't have (except for 802.11ac) are things I would be turning off anyway and would buy the laptop without them if I could.
1over137 6y ago
Is there a good resource for Thinkpads for sale in 2020 that work well with OpenBSD/FreeBSD/linux? A lot of the suggested models I find are from several years ago.

totony 6y ago

Thinkpads all have soldered ram which is a pratice I can't support, is there a model I missed that has ram slots?

novok 6y ago
I think soldered storage is the thing that matters more. RAM does not retain state, storage does.
- totony 6y ago
  Except having a lot of RAM is vital for some workloads (like compilation, virtualization/containers). Sometimes you may think you're okay with 16GB or RAM, until you need one or two 8GB VM working and a local DB
jamesponddotco 6y ago
The T models without the S usually have no soldered RAM, or only one soldered slot. The ThinkPad T480, for example, has two upgradable RAM slots and one or two NVMe slots. Heck, even the Wi-Fi card is removable. When talking about ThinkPads, I always recommend going with the T line and skipping anything with S at the end.
- totony 6y ago
  Oh you're right, they seem to only have 1 slot soldered. They should advertise that more on their website. Seeing 8GB (soldered) + 1 expansion would be clearer
  - nix23 6y ago
    It's still BS, if you have a dual-channel CPU you are restricted to just upgrade the additional slot to the soldered one like 8GB+8GB and same speed.
  - jamesponddotco 6y ago
    Until the T495, which was the last generation before the T14 came along, it used to be that the T with an S at the end would have one soldered RAM stick and one available to upgrade, while the T without the S would have both available, hence why the T without the S was my recommended model. I would always recommend buying used with the minimal amount of RAM for cheap, and then upgrading everything manually, from RAM to NVMe to Wi-Fi card. With the T14, however, it seems Lenovo fucked up big time. No more extra removable battery, no more empty RAM slots. The one soldered does seem to be 3200MHz, so Ryzen benefits greatly once you fill the second RAM slot with another 3200MHz stick — since Ryzen, and especially the integrated graphics, love dual channel fast memory —, but if you choose wrong when you buy, you are stuck. That sucks and does create a problem for my future self. Right now I have a T495 and my wife has a T480 with an extra big battery, and we were going to upgrade both to the T14 for Ryzen 4000, but soldered RAM is a travesty. I wonder where we are going to go now. I mostly use desktop workstations because working from home for 11 years now, I learned that workstations help with work discipline, but a laptop always end up being needed. I hate Dell with a passion, the Asus Zephyrus G14 suffers from the same issues as the ThinkPad T14, and HP uses ugly fonts in their keyboards, which bugs me. The Pinebook Pro is nice, but mine hasn't arrived. Maybe the Slimbook from that German KDE shop? Hopefully it ships to Brazil.

lokedhs 6y ago

I'm using a T490, and with one exception everything has worked perfectly. Things like Thunderbolt connecting to a docking station with multiple monitors just works out of the box. That's not to say that it's been perfect. The touchpad on this thing isn't great. I've had issues with sporadic jumping of the pointer when touching it with two fingers. I replaced the touchpad which did not have any effect. The funny thing is that the problem has been slowing going away over the months. I have never tested it on Windows, so I wouldn't know if there is a hardware problem. The reason I was mentioning this is because I wanted to give some credit to Lenovo support. I fully expected them to tell me to test on Windows before replacing the touchpad but they were happy to tell me they supported Linux and me showing the issue in Arch Linux was enough for them to replace it.