5 ms·

I needed a new laptop last year. I decided to care less about my computer and so I chose not to get another Mac. Got a small Lenovo instead. Runs great with Li

I needed a new laptop last year. I decided to care less about my computer and so I chose not to get another Mac. Got a small Lenovo instead. Runs great with Linux. Does exactly everything I need it to do.

jdshaffer 4y ago
I've been pondering doing something similar myself. If you don't mind my asking, which Lenovo did you get and which Linux variant does it seem to play nice with? :-)
- harry8 4y ago
  T480s 3.5yrs old, out of warranty, ex-corporate cost me USD$430 running ubu 22.04 on a 4 core 8th gen core i5 & intel gfx is getting me 10 hours of battery life without having replaced the battery. (power settings set to Power Saver in the very obvious gui menu above shutdown). I did shove in more ram and a bigger ssd. Meh, 8G & 250G would have been enough fwiw. Gnome desktop is a thing I now find really polished and lovely to use. In all it's just a beautiful thing I'm very, very happy with. Use: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ThinkPad_T_series https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ThinkPad_T_series https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ThinkPad_X1_series https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ThinkPad_X1_series & Ebay. But it's also a very reasonable & justifiable decision to buy a new thinkpad imho. When it's a couple of years old the hardware support is usually perfect on first install - but I guess I don't use garbage like fingerprint readers so ymmv on that kind of silliness. Thinkpads, T-Series, X1 carbon are the best laptops on the market by a good margin and have been there in that spot consistently for a long time. Buy apple if you really want/need to run apple software. I'd say just about /any/ distro will place nicely with the kernel-hackers laptop of choice. I'd bet fedora, rhel/centos, debian, arch would all be just terrific if you prefer one of those (and why not?)
  - abrouwers 4y ago
    I mean, x1 carbon (new) isn't much cheaper (in fact, more expensive, at the time of my googling) than a MacBook Air. The linux ecosystem (which I love) has it's own fair share of problems - gnome vs. KDE, deb vs. rpm, X vs. Wayland, pulseaudio vs. pipewire, systemd vs. (the world). Sure, installing ubuntu and not worrying about any of it is a great option, but I think you've painted a slightly too pretty picture :-) (And, on your "kernel-hackers laptop of choice comment," it's curious that Linus released the last kernel from a MacBook device)
    - harry8 4y ago
      Huh? We've been asked for our experience and that was mine. I feel strongly that if I were using fedora or debian that experience would be strikingly similar. Gnome vs kde (and there's /plenty/ of other options) is a choice, make it. Done. No further issues. And as a happy gnome guy I'm very sure KDE is excellent and will serve well. deb vs rpm. That choice is made when you choose your distro, never to be revisited or cared about again. Likewise pulseaudio, systemd are chosen when you chose your desktop and distro respectively and you don't have to think about them on your laptop again. X vs Wayland - whatever comes with your distro you use if you're even aware of it. But yes you can complicate it all as much as suits you if you have the need or want to do so which you basically can't with apple, so... And your knowledge then translates to the pi or other SBC so that's pretty cool too. And to your servers or ones you work with for money. This is not a negative imho. Go to any kernel conference and you'll see all kinds of laptops for sure, some hilariously eccentric. Linus used a mac 15 years ago too (powerpc iirc). Yet you'll see Thinkpads are always, clearly and obviously the most commonly used by a large margin unless things have changed dramatically during pandemic times, which I kind of doubt. Anyway I bought a T480s second hand for peanuts, dumped ubu on it and have been contemplating its beauty and utility since. Apple gear is a _much_ bigger sysadmin headache for me (and it isn't close) but might be less so for you if that's what you know and understand. This is /my/ experience of it. Linux on the laptop in 2022 is flipping great. Shhhhh, don't tell.
      - LoveMortuus 4y ago
        I think ThinkPads are so commonly used because they're durable, but most of all, because their keyboards are probably one of the best among any laptops. I can vouch for Linux in laptops, I've been running Debian+xfce (recently switched to Debian+lxde, for maybe slightly less ram usage) on my Acer Aspire One for probably more then 10 years now! It's my go-to machine whenever any hardware needs testing, be it networking or just a printer.
    - lillecarl 4y ago
      Gnome vs KDE isn't really a thing, deb vs rpm isn't a thing, X vs Wayland is only a temporary thing, Pulse vs PipeWire isn't a thing, PipeWire implements pulse apis. systemd vs $INITSYSTEM is also temporary, though on a longer timescale. We need the old generation to die before systemd is accepted by everyone. I don't mean to shit on your argument, but most things are either just preferences or progress that isn't done yet. I'm about as bleeding-edge as can be (always latest stable kernel with xanmod patches) from NixOS, using Wayland and PipeWire. The move to PipeWire made literally everything better for me (just works TM). While Wayland isn't perfect yet. Gnome or KDE is a preference, it doesn't matter much and they're cooperating on many Wayland extensions. systemd hate is either because you love the drama or you like bash scripts. I don't particularly like either, so I like systemd. A good thing people often forget with Wayland, PipeWire and systemd is that they are making our ecosystem a bit less fragmented, which I see as a great win, especially since I'm a NixOS user, my system relies heavily on systemd being declarative. My distro of choice wouldn't work as well (at all) without all "standards" (both real and implementation) that systemd and freedesktop puts forward. Back on topic, the Linux desktop is honestly quite great if you constrain yourself a bit (Run a stable distro with boring tech, no Nvidia) or live on the bleeding edge where things also work well but might require more maintenance. Lets be honest though, if I wasn't running NixOS I would probably run Ubuntu with whatever display and audio server they decided for me. And the package manager would be apt, brew, nix or flatpak depending on application. (Now it's Nix and Flatpak only).
  - jdshaffer 4y ago
    Sorry for the very late reply, but thank you so much! I'm very glad to hear you have a machine (and OS) that you are happy with. I'll definitely check it out for myself! Thanks again!
- JustSomeNobody 4y ago
  Ideapad 5 pro with an AMD proc. it's the 14" variant. I am not near it right now, so I can't give you specifically what model. Got it on sale at Costco. Running Pop_os. The newer Linux kernels have support of amd_pastate so battery life is good. Previous Mac was a 13" Macbook Pro if anyone is keeping score. Loved it, but just didn't want or need something that expensive.
nibbleshifter 4y ago
I've been instructing (extended) family members asking about laptops to just get an ex-biz lenovo (x220, x230, etc) and let me configure Linux/do upgrades on it for the last 8-9 years. It serves all their use cases, and most of them are still working fine with no real repair need. The apple branch of the family though (my in-laws) have been having hardware failures almost consistently during that time.
- ricardobayes 4y ago
  Most people care about design more than realiability
  - herbst 4y ago
    The X2 or T4 series from Lenevo are definitely state of the art in Design. Being so thin that no standard plugs fit anymore wouldn't be 'hot' among humans either.
    - ricardobayes 4y ago
      For me as an engineer yes. But for a normal person, they look too industrial.
      - ungamedplayer 4y ago
        I think the intent was to look business. If you want to see industrial check out the Panasonic toughbook and toughpad range. Makes the apple gear look and behave like flowers.
- z9znz 4y ago
  I'm too old and not of the right disposition to provide much tech support for people anymore. I did that for years, and I learned that it truly sucks to have to fk around frequently with stupid stuff (usually Windows stuff). But even Linux, using it as my own development environment, I would periodically have stupid stuff just mysteriously break and than require a lot of fiddling to get fixed. As for Apple reliability, I set my grandfather up with an iMac 11 years ago. It was still functional when I replaced it with a Chrome desktop machine last year. (Of course it was no longer supported for OS upgrades, so that was the final reason to replace it). Likewise, my girlfriend daily drives my 2014 MBP which I used and abused around the world for years. I did an Apple service center battery replacement, and otherwise it performs as new. 8 years with a laptop is pretty great, especially considering it still does everything it's supposed to. Oh, the wifi at my grandfather's house is still the original Airport I setup 11 years ago. It still does its job, without fail. I think I had to provide tech support (unplug, wait, replug) once. For low-tech family, I now recommend Chrome devices. They are about the easiest things to support, and they are fairly low priced.

jdshaffer 4y ago

I've been pondering doing something similar myself. If you don't mind my asking, which Lenovo did you get and which Linux variant does it seem to play nice with? :-)

harry8 4y ago
T480s 3.5yrs old, out of warranty, ex-corporate cost me USD$430 running ubu 22.04 on a 4 core 8th gen core i5 & intel gfx is getting me 10 hours of battery life without having replaced the battery. (power settings set to Power Saver in the very obvious gui menu above shutdown). I did shove in more ram and a bigger ssd. Meh, 8G & 250G would have been enough fwiw. Gnome desktop is a thing I now find really polished and lovely to use. In all it's just a beautiful thing I'm very, very happy with. Use: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ThinkPad_T_series https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ThinkPad_T_series https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ThinkPad_X1_series https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ThinkPad_X1_series & Ebay. But it's also a very reasonable & justifiable decision to buy a new thinkpad imho. When it's a couple of years old the hardware support is usually perfect on first install - but I guess I don't use garbage like fingerprint readers so ymmv on that kind of silliness. Thinkpads, T-Series, X1 carbon are the best laptops on the market by a good margin and have been there in that spot consistently for a long time. Buy apple if you really want/need to run apple software. I'd say just about /any/ distro will place nicely with the kernel-hackers laptop of choice. I'd bet fedora, rhel/centos, debian, arch would all be just terrific if you prefer one of those (and why not?)
- abrouwers 4y ago
  I mean, x1 carbon (new) isn't much cheaper (in fact, more expensive, at the time of my googling) than a MacBook Air. The linux ecosystem (which I love) has it's own fair share of problems - gnome vs. KDE, deb vs. rpm, X vs. Wayland, pulseaudio vs. pipewire, systemd vs. (the world). Sure, installing ubuntu and not worrying about any of it is a great option, but I think you've painted a slightly too pretty picture :-) (And, on your "kernel-hackers laptop of choice comment," it's curious that Linus released the last kernel from a MacBook device)
  - harry8 4y ago
    Huh? We've been asked for our experience and that was mine. I feel strongly that if I were using fedora or debian that experience would be strikingly similar. Gnome vs kde (and there's /plenty/ of other options) is a choice, make it. Done. No further issues. And as a happy gnome guy I'm very sure KDE is excellent and will serve well. deb vs rpm. That choice is made when you choose your distro, never to be revisited or cared about again. Likewise pulseaudio, systemd are chosen when you chose your desktop and distro respectively and you don't have to think about them on your laptop again. X vs Wayland - whatever comes with your distro you use if you're even aware of it. But yes you can complicate it all as much as suits you if you have the need or want to do so which you basically can't with apple, so... And your knowledge then translates to the pi or other SBC so that's pretty cool too. And to your servers or ones you work with for money. This is not a negative imho. Go to any kernel conference and you'll see all kinds of laptops for sure, some hilariously eccentric. Linus used a mac 15 years ago too (powerpc iirc). Yet you'll see Thinkpads are always, clearly and obviously the most commonly used by a large margin unless things have changed dramatically during pandemic times, which I kind of doubt. Anyway I bought a T480s second hand for peanuts, dumped ubu on it and have been contemplating its beauty and utility since. Apple gear is a _much_ bigger sysadmin headache for me (and it isn't close) but might be less so for you if that's what you know and understand. This is /my/ experience of it. Linux on the laptop in 2022 is flipping great. Shhhhh, don't tell.
    - LoveMortuus 4y ago
      I think ThinkPads are so commonly used because they're durable, but most of all, because their keyboards are probably one of the best among any laptops. I can vouch for Linux in laptops, I've been running Debian+xfce (recently switched to Debian+lxde, for maybe slightly less ram usage) on my Acer Aspire One for probably more then 10 years now! It's my go-to machine whenever any hardware needs testing, be it networking or just a printer.
  - lillecarl 4y ago
    Gnome vs KDE isn't really a thing, deb vs rpm isn't a thing, X vs Wayland is only a temporary thing, Pulse vs PipeWire isn't a thing, PipeWire implements pulse apis. systemd vs $INITSYSTEM is also temporary, though on a longer timescale. We need the old generation to die before systemd is accepted by everyone. I don't mean to shit on your argument, but most things are either just preferences or progress that isn't done yet. I'm about as bleeding-edge as can be (always latest stable kernel with xanmod patches) from NixOS, using Wayland and PipeWire. The move to PipeWire made literally everything better for me (just works TM). While Wayland isn't perfect yet. Gnome or KDE is a preference, it doesn't matter much and they're cooperating on many Wayland extensions. systemd hate is either because you love the drama or you like bash scripts. I don't particularly like either, so I like systemd. A good thing people often forget with Wayland, PipeWire and systemd is that they are making our ecosystem a bit less fragmented, which I see as a great win, especially since I'm a NixOS user, my system relies heavily on systemd being declarative. My distro of choice wouldn't work as well (at all) without all "standards" (both real and implementation) that systemd and freedesktop puts forward. Back on topic, the Linux desktop is honestly quite great if you constrain yourself a bit (Run a stable distro with boring tech, no Nvidia) or live on the bleeding edge where things also work well but might require more maintenance. Lets be honest though, if I wasn't running NixOS I would probably run Ubuntu with whatever display and audio server they decided for me. And the package manager would be apt, brew, nix or flatpak depending on application. (Now it's Nix and Flatpak only).
- jdshaffer 4y ago
  Sorry for the very late reply, but thank you so much! I'm very glad to hear you have a machine (and OS) that you are happy with. I'll definitely check it out for myself! Thanks again!
JustSomeNobody 4y ago
Ideapad 5 pro with an AMD proc. it's the 14" variant. I am not near it right now, so I can't give you specifically what model. Got it on sale at Costco. Running Pop_os. The newer Linux kernels have support of amd_pastate so battery life is good. Previous Mac was a 13" Macbook Pro if anyone is keeping score. Loved it, but just didn't want or need something that expensive.

nibbleshifter 4y ago

I've been instructing (extended) family members asking about laptops to just get an ex-biz lenovo (x220, x230, etc) and let me configure Linux/do upgrades on it for the last 8-9 years. It serves all their use cases, and most of them are still working fine with no real repair need. The apple branch of the family though (my in-laws) have been having hardware failures almost consistently during that time.

ricardobayes 4y ago
Most people care about design more than realiability
- herbst 4y ago
  The X2 or T4 series from Lenevo are definitely state of the art in Design. Being so thin that no standard plugs fit anymore wouldn't be 'hot' among humans either.
  - ricardobayes 4y ago
    For me as an engineer yes. But for a normal person, they look too industrial.
    - ungamedplayer 4y ago
      I think the intent was to look business. If you want to see industrial check out the Panasonic toughbook and toughpad range. Makes the apple gear look and behave like flowers.
z9znz 4y ago
I'm too old and not of the right disposition to provide much tech support for people anymore. I did that for years, and I learned that it truly sucks to have to fk around frequently with stupid stuff (usually Windows stuff). But even Linux, using it as my own development environment, I would periodically have stupid stuff just mysteriously break and than require a lot of fiddling to get fixed. As for Apple reliability, I set my grandfather up with an iMac 11 years ago. It was still functional when I replaced it with a Chrome desktop machine last year. (Of course it was no longer supported for OS upgrades, so that was the final reason to replace it). Likewise, my girlfriend daily drives my 2014 MBP which I used and abused around the world for years. I did an Apple service center battery replacement, and otherwise it performs as new. 8 years with a laptop is pretty great, especially considering it still does everything it's supposed to. Oh, the wifi at my grandfather's house is still the original Airport I setup 11 years ago. It still does its job, without fail. I think I had to provide tech support (unplug, wait, replug) once. For low-tech family, I now recommend Chrome devices. They are about the easiest things to support, and they are fairly low priced.