4 ms·

Use to be 100% linux person. I've gone through many thinkpads. M1 Air is so far beyond them it's not even close. Battery life is (not exaggerating) 5x or more

Use to be 100% linux person. I've gone through many thinkpads. M1 Air is so far beyond them it's not even close. Battery life is (not exaggerating) 5x or more in my experience. It's honest to god, much faster. Completely silent and cool. (one of my thinkpads almost burned me it got so hot, and the fans get so loud) I've never had a single crash, random restart, failure to sleep, failure to charge, driver problem, touchpad randomly not working, wifi failing, all of which I've had with thinkpads.

FirmwareBurner 3y ago
>driver problem, touchpad randomly not working, wifi failing, all of which I've had with thinkpads. Those are Linux driver issues, not HW issues.
- organsnyder 3y ago
  > Those are Linux issues, not HW issues. The touchpads on my wife's T470 and my T480 have very similar intermittent issues, despite her running Windows and me running Linux.
- dlivingston 3y ago
  That only matters in a technical sense -- as a consumer, I want a flawless out-of-the-box experience. I don't care if X isn't working because of Y or Z; I only care that it isn't working.
- bee_rider 3y ago
  Incompatibility is a two-sided issue, there are enough laptops out there that work perfectly fine in Linux. But a brand isn’t a technical promise, they’ll miss with some models and hit with others. People always complain about Lenovo in these threads, I think because they are held up as the “good non-Apple laptop” brand for whatever reason. I suspect this reputation makes people assume they can just grab any random model and it will work perfectly. That’s just a roll of the dice, maybe weighted in favor of working, but still random.
  - FirmwareBurner 3y ago
    >But a brand isn’t a technical promise, they’ll miss with some models and hit with others. Sure, that's why there's now a dozen Laptop brands that ship with Linux compatibility in mind.
- padjo 3y ago
  And when I can’t join a call because the Wi-Fi has stopped working I’m sure everyone will appreciate that distinction
  - FirmwareBurner 3y ago
    Did Lenovo sell you the laptop with Linux compatibility explicitly stated?
- Dylan16807 3y ago
  They are very likely hardware issues that the Linux driver is simply not working around rather than being actually wrong.
- kayodelycaon 3y ago
  If you're using Linux and there are no good, reliable drivers for your machine, it might as well be a hardware issue.
- olddustytrail 3y ago
  If you're too lazy to make a Linux driver for your hardware, it's a hardware issue.
  - FirmwareBurner 3y ago
    Maybe some HW companies don't have the budget to write drivers for the 3% userbase that is PC Linux users, especially since most commodity HW is in a constant race to the bottom in terms of pricing so profits are slim as it is. So better check for the HW you're buying it, if it's compatible with the SW you intend to use, especially now that there's almost a dozen laptop brands selling Linux-ready laptops. Like you don't buy an X-BOX hoping it will run your Nintendo games collection and the blame Mycroft when you realize it doesn't work, do you? And calling those driver devs "lazy" is a huge slap in the face, especially if you knew how overworked and underpaid people in that industry tend to be, as the profits are also very small. Not everyone is rolling in cash like Nvidia, AMD and Intel. This sub can be quite pretentious at times.
- eru 3y ago
  As a user, I don't really care about the root cause..
bee_rider 3y ago
A 5x battery life improvement seems like the baseline had some issues, unless your MacBook goes like a week without charging.
- mschuster91 3y ago
  My M2 MBA routinely goes past 10-16 hours of life time with simple coding stuff (phpstorm and PHP in Docker), and it stays comfortably cold all time. Most Windows laptops struggle to get more than 3-4 hours and will fry off your balls if used as actual laptops.
  - bee_rider 3y ago
    The poster was apparently a 100% Linux person previously, though. I’m pretty sure Windows was designed to heat up like that as a funny joke. For example on Reddit I see somebody complain that they only get 5 hours with my laptop model (zenbook flip 13) https://www.reddit.com/r/ASUS/comments/ry0nwb/the_asus_flip_13_ux363ea_oled_core_i5_intel_11th/ https://www.reddit.com/r/ASUS/comments/ry0nwb/the_asus_flip_... But it is pretty easy to get 14 in Linux I think, at least if you believe the battery indicator.
    - mschuster91 3y ago
      > I’m pretty sure Windows was designed to heat up like that as a funny joke Nah, it's common across all x86 devices. Even Apple's old lineup... which is why they went for M in the first place, Intel couldn't be arsed to deliver something power efficient.
      - bee_rider 3y ago
        I guess I find this troubling because it would seem to indicate that I spend multiple hours a day typing at a dead laptop, hallucinating that it is still working.
    - nicce 3y ago
      To be fair, Windows has better battery optimisations for new laptops. Many hardware supported sleep modes are still missing from Linux kernel, for example, when I checked last time. Huge differences come probably from the lack of user skills, less about the OS. Or just broken drivers.

FirmwareBurner 3y ago

>driver problem, touchpad randomly not working, wifi failing, all of which I've had with thinkpads. Those are Linux driver issues, not HW issues.

organsnyder 3y ago
> Those are Linux issues, not HW issues. The touchpads on my wife's T470 and my T480 have very similar intermittent issues, despite her running Windows and me running Linux.
dlivingston 3y ago
That only matters in a technical sense -- as a consumer, I want a flawless out-of-the-box experience. I don't care if X isn't working because of Y or Z; I only care that it isn't working.
bee_rider 3y ago
Incompatibility is a two-sided issue, there are enough laptops out there that work perfectly fine in Linux. But a brand isn’t a technical promise, they’ll miss with some models and hit with others. People always complain about Lenovo in these threads, I think because they are held up as the “good non-Apple laptop” brand for whatever reason. I suspect this reputation makes people assume they can just grab any random model and it will work perfectly. That’s just a roll of the dice, maybe weighted in favor of working, but still random.
- FirmwareBurner 3y ago
  >But a brand isn’t a technical promise, they’ll miss with some models and hit with others. Sure, that's why there's now a dozen Laptop brands that ship with Linux compatibility in mind.
padjo 3y ago
And when I can’t join a call because the Wi-Fi has stopped working I’m sure everyone will appreciate that distinction
- FirmwareBurner 3y ago
  Did Lenovo sell you the laptop with Linux compatibility explicitly stated?
Dylan16807 3y ago
They are very likely hardware issues that the Linux driver is simply not working around rather than being actually wrong.
kayodelycaon 3y ago
If you're using Linux and there are no good, reliable drivers for your machine, it might as well be a hardware issue.
olddustytrail 3y ago
If you're too lazy to make a Linux driver for your hardware, it's a hardware issue.
- FirmwareBurner 3y ago
  Maybe some HW companies don't have the budget to write drivers for the 3% userbase that is PC Linux users, especially since most commodity HW is in a constant race to the bottom in terms of pricing so profits are slim as it is. So better check for the HW you're buying it, if it's compatible with the SW you intend to use, especially now that there's almost a dozen laptop brands selling Linux-ready laptops. Like you don't buy an X-BOX hoping it will run your Nintendo games collection and the blame Mycroft when you realize it doesn't work, do you? And calling those driver devs "lazy" is a huge slap in the face, especially if you knew how overworked and underpaid people in that industry tend to be, as the profits are also very small. Not everyone is rolling in cash like Nvidia, AMD and Intel. This sub can be quite pretentious at times.
eru 3y ago
As a user, I don't really care about the root cause..

bee_rider 3y ago

A 5x battery life improvement seems like the baseline had some issues, unless your MacBook goes like a week without charging.

mschuster91 3y ago
My M2 MBA routinely goes past 10-16 hours of life time with simple coding stuff (phpstorm and PHP in Docker), and it stays comfortably cold all time. Most Windows laptops struggle to get more than 3-4 hours and will fry off your balls if used as actual laptops.
- bee_rider 3y ago
  The poster was apparently a 100% Linux person previously, though. I’m pretty sure Windows was designed to heat up like that as a funny joke. For example on Reddit I see somebody complain that they only get 5 hours with my laptop model (zenbook flip 13) https://www.reddit.com/r/ASUS/comments/ry0nwb/the_asus_flip_13_ux363ea_oled_core_i5_intel_11th/ https://www.reddit.com/r/ASUS/comments/ry0nwb/the_asus_flip_... But it is pretty easy to get 14 in Linux I think, at least if you believe the battery indicator.
  - mschuster91 3y ago
    > I’m pretty sure Windows was designed to heat up like that as a funny joke Nah, it's common across all x86 devices. Even Apple's old lineup... which is why they went for M in the first place, Intel couldn't be arsed to deliver something power efficient.
    - bee_rider 3y ago
      I guess I find this troubling because it would seem to indicate that I spend multiple hours a day typing at a dead laptop, hallucinating that it is still working.
  - nicce 3y ago
    To be fair, Windows has better battery optimisations for new laptops. Many hardware supported sleep modes are still missing from Linux kernel, for example, when I checked last time. Huge differences come probably from the lack of user skills, less about the OS. Or just broken drivers.