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I had a ThinkPad T14 AMD, which is Linux-certified by Lenovo. If you are used to the warts of Linux on laptops, it is quite ok. However, coming from MacBooks, t

I had a ThinkPad T14 AMD, which is Linux-certified by Lenovo. If you are used to the warts of Linux on laptops, it is quite ok. However, coming from MacBooks, the experience was comparatively bad. Pros: - The CPU fan on the Ryzen 7 Pro 4750U is not very loud. - You can easily add more memory (bumped up mine to 32GB RAM). - You can easily replace the SSD (replaced mine by 1TB) and there is M.2 slot for WWAN which can also be used for an SSD. - Having a variety of ports is nicer than 2/4x USB-C + a stereo jack. - Performance is good. Single core performance is of course worse than the M1, but having 8 high performance cores plus hyperthreading compensates a lot, especially for development. Cons: - I enabled S3 sleep (Linux compatibility), but the laptops drains the batteries like crazy in sleep. 1-2 days in a backpack and it's dead. To make it worse, Lenovo's own charger couldn't revive it. I had to borrow a MacBook Pro USB-C charger to get a reasonable charge again, after which the Lenovo charger would work again. - Battery life on Linux is ok-ish (typically 6 hours with light use), but nowhere near an M1 Mac (or even an Intel Mac). - Suspend/resume continues to have issues on Linux. Sometimes, the screen does not wake up. Especially after plugging or unplugging a DisplayPort alt-mode USB-C cable. Usually moving the TrackPoint fixes this. Every few resumes, the TrackPad and the left button of the TrackPoint do not work anymore. Only switching off the machine fixes this. With a reboot, the TrackPoint still doesn't work. - Suspend/resume has an issue in Windows, where resuming often results in an unusable TrackPad that continuously clicks. This is solved by disabling fast boot (or whatever it is called in Windows), after that suspend/resume works fine in Windows. - The 14" 1080p screen is only well-readable with 125% or 150% scaling. Unfortunately, GNOME support for fractional scaling is not great (even with Wayland). XWayland applications are blurred, there are several open issues about this in the Mutter/gnome-shell issue tracker, but no solution. The only way to have a usable display is to set font zooming to 125%-150% and hope that you have an external screen where that scaling is also acceptable. - The fingerprint scanner results a lot of false negatives on Linux (works fine on Windows). - The speakers are much worse than modern MacBooks. - I bought a Lenovo USB-C Gen 2 Dock. However, 4k@60Hz does not work on Linux through the Dock. The proper dock configuration is to use 2 lanes for USB 3.1 Gen 2 and 2 lanes for DP Alt with HBR3 (to have enough bandwidth for 4k@60Hz). However, Linux doesn't configure the 2 DP Alt lanes to use HBR3 and can only use 4k@30Hz [1]. Of course, the Dock works fine with Windows. There is an issue about this in the AMD DRM bug tracker, but it has been inactive for months. I wanted to like Linux on the ThinkPad and it certainly has a lot going for it, but it still has many paper cuts. Since I use a laptop quite intensively for work, I decided to sell it after ~7 months and buy a MacBook again. [1] https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/drm/amd/-/issues/1317 https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/drm/amd/-/issues/1317

f6v 5y ago
> I enabled S3 sleep (Linux compatibility), but the laptops drains the batteries like crazy in sleep. 1-2 days in a backpack and it's dead. 84hrs off power and 45% remaining on MBA. I can't go back. > - Battery life on Linux is ok-ish (typically 6 hours with light use), but nowhere near an M1 Mac (or even an Intel Mac). To be fair, my 2019 Intel MBP barely survived 6 hours.
- sketch242 5y ago
  The battery drain while in sleep is my only real complaint about my X13 AMD. That and sometimes things get weird with volume controls when plugging and unplugging headphones (never had that issue with any of my Intel Thinkpads). Other than that, it's by far the best laptop I've ever had, including a 2020 MBP.
tannhaeuser 5y ago
Nice detailed Linux-on-ThinkPad review. As a counter-point, my almost two year old ThinkPad E495 (Ryzen 3 so not nearly as high-end as yours) keeps on chugging on 20.04 with absolutely no hardware/driver problems whatsoever, including power management. It sure helps that the thing doesn't even have a fingerprint scanner. No match to the XPS I had before (at twice the price) in terms of display and keyboard, though. And lack of keyboard lighting sure sucks. But then, Dell doesn't do AMD so you need a dysfunctional setup with Nvidia/optimus to get half-decent graphics.
thevagrant 5y ago
I don't have the same laptop but regarding hibernate/sleep; In the end I configured my linux machine to shutdown and never use hibernate or sleep. It made the experience a lot more reliable. A longer boot time beats having intermittent trouble on wake. I've only ever had reliable sleep/resume using a mac.

f6v 5y ago

> I enabled S3 sleep (Linux compatibility), but the laptops drains the batteries like crazy in sleep. 1-2 days in a backpack and it's dead. 84hrs off power and 45% remaining on MBA. I can't go back. > - Battery life on Linux is ok-ish (typically 6 hours with light use), but nowhere near an M1 Mac (or even an Intel Mac). To be fair, my 2019 Intel MBP barely survived 6 hours.

sketch242 5y ago
The battery drain while in sleep is my only real complaint about my X13 AMD. That and sometimes things get weird with volume controls when plugging and unplugging headphones (never had that issue with any of my Intel Thinkpads). Other than that, it's by far the best laptop I've ever had, including a 2020 MBP.

tannhaeuser 5y ago

Nice detailed Linux-on-ThinkPad review. As a counter-point, my almost two year old ThinkPad E495 (Ryzen 3 so not nearly as high-end as yours) keeps on chugging on 20.04 with absolutely no hardware/driver problems whatsoever, including power management. It sure helps that the thing doesn't even have a fingerprint scanner. No match to the XPS I had before (at twice the price) in terms of display and keyboard, though. And lack of keyboard lighting sure sucks. But then, Dell doesn't do AMD so you need a dysfunctional setup with Nvidia/optimus to get half-decent graphics.

thevagrant 5y ago

I don't have the same laptop but regarding hibernate/sleep; In the end I configured my linux machine to shutdown and never use hibernate or sleep. It made the experience a lot more reliable. A longer boot time beats having intermittent trouble on wake. I've only ever had reliable sleep/resume using a mac.