13 ms·

First Impressions: Lenovo T14s with Qualcomm Snapdragon ARM64 CPU

213 points by cnst 2y ago

galkk 2y ago
I love it(in context of FreeBSD): ————— What does not work: Keyboard, mouse, TB & USB-C ports, thermal/freq mgt. Conclusion: Highly recommended
- Muromec 2y ago
  I mean it's a fun computer to write drivers for. You will be that dude if you make it all work and share with community
  - jandrese 2y ago
    The post was from Poul-Henning Kamp, who writes a lot of drivers for FreeBSD. Him having this laptop is good news for future compatibility.
- cnst 2y ago
  That was a bit ironic, indeed, but at least the USB-A works! For what it's worth, the majority of mechanical RGB keyboards and mice are USB-A anyways, so, if you're fine with a very powerful machine that wouldn't have an internal keyboard support for a few weeks, sounds like a good advice anyways!
  - glitchc 2y ago
    An ARM64 is "a very powerful computer"? The whole promise with ARM is better thermals and long battery life, not screaming performance. With the thermals/cpu not working, we don't even get that.
    - viraptor 2y ago
      M4 crushing benchmarks and AWS running Graviton 2 would disagree on the idea of "whole premise".
      - ksec 2y ago
        I always knew hardware discussions on HN were below the normal standards. But sometimes I am still surprised at how low it can go.
        simfree 2y ago
        The finer grained performance per watt vs silicon cost set in the context of use case is just lost in HN hardware conversations like this that ignore total cost of ownership, vendor politics and such. Everyone is buying the tool that does the job, or building that tool if they want to make that large investment...
        llm_trw 2y ago
        There's a difference in cost per flop at home and in a data center. I'm updating my wiring and air conditioning for a 7x5090 workstation because having that power for experiments under the desk is worth the cost (and fire hazard). If I had to build 10,000 of those I'd be banned by NVidia from ever buying their hardware again.
        maayank 2y ago
        What are you doing with the workstation that it’s worth the cost?
        llm_trw 2y ago
        High dimensional computations for time series data in finance.
        maayank 2y ago
  - smolder 2y ago
    I'm unsure what RGB or a keyboard being mechanical has to do with it being USB-A, or what the relevance is, but yes, there are many USB-A peripherals available.
    - cnst 2y ago
      The point is that most of the keyboards for sale on Amazon are still USB-A, even the more fancy ones, even though Apple useds tend to portray USB-A as last-century and deprecated. USB mice is still faster and more fluid cursor movement than Bluetooth, too. Also of note, even the most premium keyboards and mice are Full Speed USB 1.1, running at up to 12Mbps. You can verify this yourself through the Apple menu, About This Mac, System Report, USB, and look for your external USB keyboard or mouse. Compare to the USB-C USB4 ports being capable of up to 40000Mbps. And, to be full-featured, they need to support up to 100W, or more, of power input, as well as output in excess of what would be required for a USB-A USB3 5000Mbps or even 10000Mbps port. Which is to say, for the cost of a single USB-C, a manufacturer can easily provide 4 or more USB-A ports, with a change to spare. That would avoid unnecessary adapters and improve compatibility. Not to mention that most of the memory sticks are still USB-A, too, and there's no Fit USB sticks for USB-C at all, only for USB-A. Which means that it's far easier to semi-permanently extend storage of a USB-A laptop than of a USB-C one, which you may want to do to try out a system without messing up with your main Windows installation. It's basically a nab against Apple's decision to remove a useful port, especially on the M4 Mac mini, where they now have USB-C ports that are not fully-featured anymore — the ports at the front have a different spec than the ones at the back, which we all remember now at the time of the announcement, but imagine dealing with it several years down the line, where you'll have to be looking up specs and troubleshooting your things not working the way you expect. They could have easily avoided it by NOT including the 2 slow USB-C ports, and including like 4 USB-A ones instead.
      - deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
    - cnst 2y ago
      > The only thing my post was addressing is that you called out RGB mechanical keyboards specifically when there are also plenty of non-RGB and non-mechanical options. It was bizarre, like this reply. The point was that even the more "premium" products are still USB-A, not USB-C. USB-A simply isn't going anywhere. Personally, I find USB-A more useful than HDMI, since HDMI is kind of inferior to USB-C in every possible way. I've tried using a 43" UHD TV as a monitor, since they're as cheap as $149.99 USD brand new, but it had noticeable delay even at 4k@60Hz, and just didn't feel right. The UHD resolution at 43" itself would actually be perfect, since 1080p at 20.5in used to be my fav a few years ago (before QHD at 23" started reaching the sub-$200 range), but, alas, the specs of a proper monitor (brightness, matte, USB-C with PD and a hub) are just better suited for a display compared to a TV, even if the resolution itself may seem ideal.
- zdw 2y ago
  Somewhat surprised that networking is not mentioned in either list. Maybe a USB to ethernet dongle was used?
  - MBCook 2y ago
    That makes sense. If you have working USB-A, then any USB ethernet adapter supported by FreeBSD should work right? That’s actually a pretty big escape hatch for early development. It explains how you’d be able to get past having a nonfunctional keyboard pretty easily, for example.
- doubled112 2y ago
  Sounds like some of the Linux phones. This is our flagship device. It doesn't have a working camera or radios, but who needs those?
  - yonatan8070 2y ago
    Every time I hear about mobile Linux releases I get excited just for the chance to get away from Android and iOS, then I get disappointed to find that the list of things that don't work includes like half the phone
    - grishka 2y ago
      I have a feeling that the Linux developer community in general just constantly prioritizes the wrong things. They love to boast about technical achievements instead of doing something that would actually enable real-world regular-usage scenarios. Not helped by the fact that stable ABIs are basically nonexistent, especially for kernel modules. Is it even possible to use Linux on desktop without ever having to edit config files or run commands in the terminal?
      - yonatan8070 2y ago
        > They love to boast about technical achievements instead of doing something that would actually enable real-world regular-usage scenarios. For mobile Linux in particular, I found that it's quite the opposite, I see projects like Phosh and KDE Plasma Mobile constantly showing UI and UX improvemnts (albeit at a slower pace than desktop projects), while basic hardware support is non-functional. Of course I'm not expecting every UX/UI dev to abandon their project to jump into low-level kernel development and bring support for more devices, but it feels like the desktop environments are developing for a device that doesn't exist. > Is it even possible to use Linux on desktop without ever having to edit config files or run commands in the terminal? On a modern Linux distro (that isn't one of the "advanced" ones), the answer is yes. If you install something like Mint or Ubuntu, you have a graphical app store and driver manager (which AFAIK you only need for NVIDIA GPUs).
- yapyap 2y ago
  What is a TB?
  - useless_foghorn 2y ago
    Thunderbolt port
    - hulitu 2y ago
      Are there any uses for this today ?
  - koziserek 2y ago
    Tuberculosis
- mst 2y ago
  If you prefer your usual (external) keyboard and mouse, which plenty of people (myself included) do, the rest of the list is kinda 'meh' as restrictions go. Honestly when my current Helix 2 finally starts to die on me I'll be looking for a tablet or hybrid replacement since I neither want nor need an attached keyboard+mouse anyway, in my normal usage they're mostly just something that takes up desk space. Obviously there are also plenty of people with preferences entirely incompatible with this approach, but so it goes.
raegis 2y ago
Ubuntu has an experimental installation image for this laptop at https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/ubuntu-24-10-concept-snapdragon-x-elite/48800 https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/ubuntu-24-10-concept-snapdrag... . Everything works except for audio and screen brightness control (I saw a patch for audio upcoming on LKML. I don't know about the brightness control, but it is stuck on high. Nevertheless, it still reports 12+ hours of battery with a bright screen.). It is a nice laptop, if you like the Lenovo T series.
- fulafel 2y ago
  Is this "by Ubuntu" or a third party project?
  - wizzard0 2y ago
    well the poster looks to have an ubuntu flair on its profile pic
  - raegis 2y ago
    It is packaged by Ubuntu. Linaro is doing the work with Qualcomm. https://www.linaro.org/blog/qualcomm-and-linaro-enable-latest-flagship-snapdragon-compute-soc/ https://www.linaro.org/blog/qualcomm-and-linaro-enable-lates...
wslh 2y ago
I always ask about battery consumption... Apple seems to be on another galaxy right now. I decided to stop waiting and installed Parallels to run Ubuntu there... I really wish the best for Asahi Linux.
- winocm 2y ago
  The M3 Max laptops can cross-build FreeBSD at a fraction of the time of the ThinkPad, being at around 791 seconds for `make -j17` versus the T14s being at 3210 seconds (with `make -j12`) according to the post above. No idea about power consumptions. It still scares me.
  - redundantly 2y ago
    Do you have more details or a source on this? I'd like to learn more about the build process and timings.
    - winocm 2y ago
      Sure. I basically did the following on trunk: $ CPP=/usr/bin/clang MAKEOBJDIRPREFIX=/private/var/tmp/obj ./tools/build/make.py TARGET=arm64 TARGET_ARCH=aarch64 --host-compiler-type clang --debug -j17 --clean buildworld You probably can follow build(5) from FreeBSD hosts instead. NetBSD is similar, but you need to edit `tools/llvm/Makefile` and make sure that you use the following target for `support-modules` instead: support-modules: module-test.cpp Makefile - if ${HOST_CXX} -stdlib=libc++ -c -fmodules -fcxx-modules -fmodules-cache-path=./module.cache \ - ${.CURDIR}/module-test.cpp 3> /dev/null 2>&1; then \ - echo HOST_SUPPORTS_MODULES=yes > ${.TARGET}; \ - else \ - echo HOST_SUPPORTS_MODULES=no > ${.TARGET}; \ - fi + # Just don't use modules pre for C++20 targets. Some compilers cannot support them. + echo HOST_SUPPORTS_MODULES=no > ${.TARGET}; You can further speed up NetBSD builds by editing `share/mk/bsd.sys.mk` and removing the workaround for SunPro's cc. The repeated invocation of /bin/mv for each object file really does add up. I have not tried cross builds of OpenBSD from other operating systems.
brynet 2y ago
OpenBSD has support for a number of Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite machines. A bit more works on the T14s Gen 6 too, such as the keyboard! ;-) https://marc.info/?l=openbsd-cvs&m=172925590407875&w=2 https://marc.info/?l=openbsd-cvs&m=172925590407875&w=2
0xbadcafebee 2y ago
I upgraded from a 10-year-old Lenovo to a MacBook Pro M1 w/Asahi Linux for a while recently. It convinced me that we're not ready for ARM Linux desktops for general-purpose, regular-person use. Besides all the crappy Linux desktop software today (I have been trying multiple recent distros out on multiple new laptops... all the Linux desktop stuff now is buggy, features are gone that were there 10 years ago... it's annoying as hell). The ARM experience is one of being a second-class citizen. A ton of apps are released as AppImages or Snaps/Flatpaks. But they have to be built for both X86_64 and ARM64, and extremely few are built for the latter. Even when they are built for it, they have their own bugs to be worked around, and there's fewer users, so you wait longer for a bugfix. The end result is you have fewer choices, compatibility and support. I love the idea of an ARM desktop. But it's going to cause fragmentation of available developer (and corporate/3rd-party) resources. ARM devices individually are even more unique than X86_64 gear is, so each one requires more integration. I'm sticking to X86_64 so I don't have to deal with another set of problems.
- raegis 2y ago
  One hopeful note: the developers for the Snapdragon X Elite are active on the kernel mailing list, and they are supplying patches for specific laptops, including the T14s. Now I run Debian, so i don't use AppImages or Snaps or Flatpaks, but I expect to have a fully functional T14s Gen 6 running Trixie when it is released as stable next year, assuming Trixie uses kernel 6.12 or (hopefully) 6.13.
  - SG- 2y ago
    they also butchered their entire dev kit rollouts and didn't launch with any sort of (promised) Linux support, I'm pretty sure time wise macran had Linux booting on M1s faster than Qualcom got any sort of Linux movement going on their own hardware.
- flkiwi 2y ago
  Counterpoint: I've been on an M2 Macbook running NixOS-via-Asahi-installer for about a year, and I've run into maybe 2 applications that I cannot find in the Nix repos or flathub. I have a stable, fast, long-lasting machine running Hyprland and all the productivity software I've needed. I'm currently missing an internal microphone and, I believe, Thunderbolt (USB-C works fine) but this machine is faster than and as stable as it was when it had macOS on it. I am as general purpose, regular person as you're going to find, in this world at least. I stare at a sentence like "In a functional programming language, everything is a function" and just blink. But a few months of blood and suffering to learn Nix/NixOS and I am managing the family's computers from a single repository and working faster than ever.
nextos 2y ago
> So when my regular HW-pusher had a T14s G6 with Qualcomm Snapdragon ARM64 CPU, for only EUR1000 + VAT, and I couldn't resist. I wonder where Poul-Henning, who is based in Denmark, got that price. Perhaps he managed to get US pricing. Lenovo EU are notorious for charging a ton of money for new models with limited supply. And poor after-market support, as everything is outsourced.
- cnst 2y ago
  He's running a business, so, perhaps he got some kind of business pricing?
- Loic 2y ago
  As I was working in Denmark, we had a lot of Lenovo resellers providing better offers than the normal list prices. This was a couple of years ago, maybe this is still the case.
- jeroenhd 2y ago
  I just checked and the laptop can be had for $1036 USD or €1809 (includes 21% VAT), and the configurator doesn't even allow adding more than the soldered-on base 16GB of RAM. You can save yourself €500 and get 768GB of additional SSD storage by going HP, or save yourself €400 and get a 32GB model. What an absolute shitshow. I'm surprised Lenovo sells laptops in Europe with these prices.
  - throwaway519 2y ago
    Or fly to the US, get a hotel and meal for two for the night, and fly back with change for just one laptop purchase. When VAT incentivises people to essentially take their holidays outside the EU - not even incentivises, subsidises(!) - VAT's too high.
    - olddustytrail 2y ago
      Oh FFS! Round up the US cost, converted to Euros, to 1000. What's 21% on top of that? I refuse to believe that's a difficult calculation for anyone. The additional cost is obviously not just from VAT.
alganet 2y ago
The Vivobook ARM from Asus also seems very decent, and it has a numpad. Where I live, the T14s is also sold with 64GB memory. It's the cheapest VRAM around (although support for it is lacking everywhere).
incompatible 2y ago
I'm a bit puzzled about their weird naming. "T14s Gen 6" when apparently "T14s Gen 5" was Intel based. Surely changing the entire CPU architecture deserves a new model name?
- sigio 2y ago
  T14(s) Gen5 were also available in AMD versions, so I guess there will be T14(s)-Gen6's in Intel/AMD/Qualcomm versions (Typing this on a T14-Gen5-AMD, under linux, which is still not really stable with the amdgpu driver crashing at least weekly)
  - justmarc 2y ago
    What sort of crash are you experiencing? You should bring your dist fully up to date, and also make sure you have the latest amdgup firmware files (most likely not yet available in your dist) https://gitlab.com/kernel-firmware/linux-firmware/-/commit/919f79f9fb5536c1928a15ac82a2e53183b213cf https://gitlab.com/kernel-firmware/linux-firmware/-/commit/9...
- arp242 2y ago
  There's the "T14s Gen 6 (AMD)", "T14s Gen 6 (Intel)", and "T14s Gen 6 (Snapdragon)". I'm not naming them either ... just telling you how it works.
- slyn 2y ago
  How about the Microsoft Surface Pro 9 being x86 while the Surface Pro 9 with 5g being ARM. My conspiracy theory is they did it on purpose to submarine ARM into enterprise environments
- numpad0 2y ago
  Actual model numbers of T14s Gen 6(AMD) and Gen 6(Snapdragon) are respectively 21M1 and 21N1, they still use IBM inherited "Machine Type-Model" system. Looks like this is now expanded into a 4-3-3 digits alphanumeric sequence like "21N1001PUS". In case anyone needed cues to tackle these confusions... 1: https://psref.lenovo.com/Product/ThinkPad/ThinkPad_T14s_Gen_6_Snapdragon?tab=model https://psref.lenovo.com/Product/ThinkPad/ThinkPad_T14s_Gen_...
arp242 2y ago
> What does not work: Keyboard, mouse, TB & USB-C ports, thermal/freq mgt. So, eh, yeah. Basically useless as a laptop. Is the "Conclusion: Highly recommended" at the end sarcasm?
- rvnx 2y ago
  Even with the correct drivers, the touchpad/trackpad is not functioning properly on Windows. The Lenovo's "touch" input feels like you are using a HTC Dream. Great for nostalgia, but would prefer the multi-touch of an iPhone.
- lawik 2y ago
  No, I think it is the optimism of someone who writes drivers when they need them. Bit of a fixer-upper.
- mst 2y ago
  A lot of people use a laptop with an external keyboard and mouse because they're sufficiently picky about their keyboard and mouse to be happy to deal with the additional hassle. I use the top half of a Helix 2 with a Thinkpad Tablet 2 Bluetooth Keyboard because I'm one of the three people in the world who actively likes the optical trackpoint. If you almost always use the machine on a desk rather than literally on your lap (for which I use the same keyboard paired with an 8" tablet) it's not even -much- additional hassle. So maybe it wouldn't work for you, but "basically useless" is silly.
  - arp242 2y ago
    I said "Basically useless as a laptop", not "useless".
    - mst 2y ago
      I think generally people who carry an external keyboard and mouse around along with their laptop still think they're using it 'as a laptop.' Most laptops IME mostly get used on a desk whether with additional paraphernalia or not; 'laptop' gets used to describe the class of machine more than whether it's touching your legs or not. If you meant literal in-lap use it probably would've been better to specify it, and if you didn't mean 'useless' entirely it would probably have been worth clarifying that since your questioning whether the recommendation was sarcasm rather suggested you -did- mean useless entirely. Language is a pain, sadly, but I don't think lojban is going to win any time soon.
andrewstuart 2y ago
Linus tech tips reviewed these or something similar. Short story: good but compatibility issues.
steve-chavez 2y ago
I also got one of these. AFAICT for Linux, we need to wait for kernel 6.12, which is still at the rc stage but should be ready at the end of this month. As a NixOS user, I'm keeping track of this repo [1] for support. [1]: https://github.com/kuruczgy/x1e-nixos-config https://github.com/kuruczgy/x1e-nixos-config
- MBCook 2y ago
  What makes 6.12 the necessary version for this machine?
  - binkHN 2y ago
    I have to imagine there's a whole bunch of patches in that tree for this chipset.
yapyap 2y ago
> capture the boot messages with my mobile phone's camera. ha dont we all
eBombzor 2y ago
Not buying anything Lenovo made ever again. T14 G1 was the worst computer I've ever had the displeasure of using. Extremely spotty USB C connection, throttling to 0.2 Ghz for no reason with no fix, and just terribly slow all around. Shame since I loved the T450s dearly.
- binkHN 2y ago
  I have a P14s G4 AMD that I am very pleased with. My only issue is the Qualcomm-made Wi-Fi that still doesn't work properly after a year because Qualcomm engineers can't figure out how to write a driver.
  - bobmcnamara 2y ago
    Amen. I rewrote part of their camera stack once to find that they hadn't managed cache coherence for the MIPI DMA, and didn't connect the coherency domains to handle it in hardware. Ticket probably still not being worked in their support portal. Very rarely I see a little horizontal strip of corruption in my camera photos and roll my eyes.
- rustcleaner 2y ago
  Been mostly happy with P16 Gen 2 for Qubes OS. Flat button mouse design is a downgrade compared to X1 Extreme Gen 3 (more raised).
- yonatan8070 2y ago
  I've been running Fedora 40 (and recently 41) on my P14s G5 Intel at work, absolutely great machine.
  - leeman2016 2y ago
    Is it the core ultra 155H? How is it efficiency/heat and performance wise? Was planning on getting one.
    - yonatan8070 2y ago
jazzyjackson 2y ago
I sent mine back. I thought the NPU would help with local LLM but there nothing to utilize it yet, lmstudio has it on the roadmap but it was a bit of a letdown. M1 MacBook was 30 times faster at generating tokens. Happy with my gen 11 x1 carbon (the one before they put the power button on the outside edge like a tablet ?!?)
- pjmlp 2y ago
  It is used transparently by applications when they make use of DirectML.
- woadwarrior01 2y ago
  I just got NPU based LLM inference working locally on Snapdragon X Elite with small (3B and 8B) models, but it’s not quite production ready yet. I know all llama.cpp wrappers claim to have it on their roadmap, but the fact of the matter is that they have no clue about how to implement it. > M1 MacBook was 30 times faster at generating tokens. Apples and oranges (pardon the pun). llama.cpp (and in turn LMStudio) use Metal GPU acceleration on Apple Silicon, while they currently only do CPU inference on Snapdragon. It’s possible to use the Adreno GPU for LLM inference (I demoed this at the Snapdragon Summit), which performs better.
- badgersnake 2y ago
  Power button on the edge is epically stupid. Every time I pick it up to walk out of a meeting I turn the damn thing off.
WhereIsTheTruth 2y ago
Sounds like an AD more than a review, weird
consumerx 2y ago
15+ years of mac user here, just swapped to a Lenovo X1 Gen12 running Ubuntu and it's so smooth.
- leeman2016 2y ago
  Which processor? There U or the H?
  - consumerx 2y ago
    Intel Core 7 Ultra 155U. 32 GB RAM. Ubuntu 22.04.
- fb03 2y ago
  can you tell me about the battery life? I seriously need a new laptop to run linux and I need decent battery life. Don't want to buy a Mac just to have more than 3 hours of battery life
  - consumerx 2y ago
    On "Battery Saver" and low brightness you can get up to 8h - 10h, easy.
da_rob 2y ago
OpenBSD support is quite a bit further: https://roblillack.net/openbsd-arm64-on-the-thinkpad-t14s https://roblillack.net/openbsd-arm64-on-the-thinkpad-t14s
bpfrh 2y ago
imho the biggest problem with all the new snapdragon laptops is that all ram is soldered on, because the new chips don't support slotted ram.
- joecool1029 2y ago
  There's another way, Lenovo just chose not to for this model: https://www.ifixit.com/News/95078/lpcamm2-memory-is-finally-here https://www.ifixit.com/News/95078/lpcamm2-memory-is-finally-...
- deng 2y ago
  I find this to be less and less of an issue, because RAM has gotten so cheap that you can pretty much just max it out when buying. At the moment, going from 32GB to 64GB incurs a 193$ markup for this laptop, which I think is entirely reasonable for a machine like this (although, honestly, I'm usually not even close to reach 32GB in my normal work). The only notable exception here is Apple with their absolutely bonkers RAM upgrade prices, which is why I would never buy a Macbook. EDIT: I just HAD to look, MacBook Pro(ha!) by default with 16GB unified memory, it will set you back 400$ to go to 32GB, so more than 4x what Lenovo takes (64GB not even possible, of course).
  - mavamaarten 2y ago
    You say ram has gotten cheap, and then $193 for 32GB is fine with you? You can easily get 64GB for that price when buying separate modules. I still think it would be beneficial for us to keep memory swappable at all costs. And if the connector is the problem, they should address that, rather than just accepting these tactics that _enable_ manufacturers in setting their own prices. I'm not saying they all do this, but there's plenty of them and Apple is the perfect example like you say.
    - deng 2y ago
      We wanted longer battery life, so they run RAM at lower voltages now, which makes it necessary to minimize paths as much as possible. It's not some conspiracy. And they are working on a connector, see the LPCAMM2 link in the other post, so maybe you can wait it out if you feel that strongly.
gigatexal 2y ago
Meh. Until support reaches full feature parity with x86 I’ll just keep running Linux in a VM on my m3 max MacBook. I do want an arm64 Linux or BSD laptop with the same ease of use and support as x86 though it’ll take time.
- fb03 2y ago
  Can you tell me about your Linux on Mac setup? Here's my situation: At home, I develop on a very beefy x86_64 desktop machine running Ubuntu. When travelling overseas for work, I have an x86_64 laptop which provides me decent performance but only lasts 3 hours or so. All my colleagues are rocking Macbooks which last a whole day and I can't even take a piss without thinking about a power outlet. What is the battery life for a setup where you only use the outside world Mac as a shell for a Linux VM? Can you run X11 applications remotely with `ssh -X`? I sincerely HATE the whole Mac OS ecosystem but right now, they are the best in terms of battery life for a mobile device, and I need that. Thank you for any information you can provide!
  - gigatexal 2y ago
    So you’re probably not going to like the solution but it involves even more money! Parallels for Mac I’m Subscribed to and then run Fedora with i3 and it’s graphically accelerated and really really fast and I just use it like I would anything else except now I have the option to use macOS. What you’re going to hate even more is I’m finding myself just trying to make macOS more like i3 finding tools that try and get there. Yabai and others. In the end I am almost entirely in. Terminal with tmux and have a safari or chrome window open for docs and slack for all the work distractions.
    - gigatexal 2y ago
      Battery life in this setup is probably 80-85% of what I get in macOS and that’s already amazing but I have a m3 max one and that is overkill and likely kills battery life just itself. I couldn’t for the life of me get ssh -X working on macOS so I went the full os route :shrug_emoji:
Sakos 2y ago
> Those of you how know me, know that I am not a big fan of the X86 architecture, which I think is a bad mess, mangled by market power considerations, rather than the CPU architecture this world actually needs, in particular in terms of performance/energy ratio. Meanwhile, ARM is a complete disaster, a mess and mangled by profit considerations when looking at the complete lack of platform standardisation and issues around compatibility. Issues which require significant engineering effort to bring a single ARM device in line with any random x86-based device that came out this year.
DeathArrow 2y ago
It's a good thing Snapdragon laptops standardized on using EFI instead of stuff like U-Boot.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
irusensei 2y ago
> mangled by market power considerations, rather than the CPU architecture this world actually needs Why are CPUs being built if not for the market? Who are they building CPUs for? And who decided what kind of CPU the world needs? I like the idea of alternative architectures as any other geek but this lately kind of thinking that permeates the subject comes out as academic arrogance.
fb03 2y ago
What laptop do I get right now to run Linux with decent battery life? My dream would be a Mac-like 14 hour battery life experience running Ubuntu. I don't want to buy a Mac or be tied to their walled garden, it's literally my last resort - but I do need a laptop with better battery life than x86_64's with 3 hour battery life in a good day.
- CoolCold 2y ago
  no idea on Linux, but I've seen some benchmark reported up to crazy 28h long on Windows, and ~ 22h more like average across several models

213 points by cnst 2y ago

I love it(in context of FreeBSD): ————— What does not work: Keyboard, mouse, TB & USB-C ports, thermal/freq mgt. Conclusion: Highly recommended

Muromec 2y ago
I mean it's a fun computer to write drivers for. You will be that dude if you make it all work and share with community
- jandrese 2y ago
  The post was from Poul-Henning Kamp, who writes a lot of drivers for FreeBSD. Him having this laptop is good news for future compatibility.
cnst 2y ago
That was a bit ironic, indeed, but at least the USB-A works! For what it's worth, the majority of mechanical RGB keyboards and mice are USB-A anyways, so, if you're fine with a very powerful machine that wouldn't have an internal keyboard support for a few weeks, sounds like a good advice anyways!
- glitchc 2y ago
  An ARM64 is "a very powerful computer"? The whole promise with ARM is better thermals and long battery life, not screaming performance. With the thermals/cpu not working, we don't even get that.
  - viraptor 2y ago
    M4 crushing benchmarks and AWS running Graviton 2 would disagree on the idea of "whole premise".
    - ksec 2y ago
      I always knew hardware discussions on HN were below the normal standards. But sometimes I am still surprised at how low it can go.
      - simfree 2y ago
        The finer grained performance per watt vs silicon cost set in the context of use case is just lost in HN hardware conversations like this that ignore total cost of ownership, vendor politics and such. Everyone is buying the tool that does the job, or building that tool if they want to make that large investment...
        llm_trw 2y ago
        There's a difference in cost per flop at home and in a data center. I'm updating my wiring and air conditioning for a 7x5090 workstation because having that power for experiments under the desk is worth the cost (and fire hazard). If I had to build 10,000 of those I'd be banned by NVidia from ever buying their hardware again.
        maayank 2y ago
        What are you doing with the workstation that it’s worth the cost?
        llm_trw 2y ago
        High dimensional computations for time series data in finance.
        maayank 2y ago
- smolder 2y ago
  I'm unsure what RGB or a keyboard being mechanical has to do with it being USB-A, or what the relevance is, but yes, there are many USB-A peripherals available.
  - cnst 2y ago
    The point is that most of the keyboards for sale on Amazon are still USB-A, even the more fancy ones, even though Apple useds tend to portray USB-A as last-century and deprecated. USB mice is still faster and more fluid cursor movement than Bluetooth, too. Also of note, even the most premium keyboards and mice are Full Speed USB 1.1, running at up to 12Mbps. You can verify this yourself through the Apple menu, About This Mac, System Report, USB, and look for your external USB keyboard or mouse. Compare to the USB-C USB4 ports being capable of up to 40000Mbps. And, to be full-featured, they need to support up to 100W, or more, of power input, as well as output in excess of what would be required for a USB-A USB3 5000Mbps or even 10000Mbps port. Which is to say, for the cost of a single USB-C, a manufacturer can easily provide 4 or more USB-A ports, with a change to spare. That would avoid unnecessary adapters and improve compatibility. Not to mention that most of the memory sticks are still USB-A, too, and there's no Fit USB sticks for USB-C at all, only for USB-A. Which means that it's far easier to semi-permanently extend storage of a USB-A laptop than of a USB-C one, which you may want to do to try out a system without messing up with your main Windows installation. It's basically a nab against Apple's decision to remove a useful port, especially on the M4 Mac mini, where they now have USB-C ports that are not fully-featured anymore — the ports at the front have a different spec than the ones at the back, which we all remember now at the time of the announcement, but imagine dealing with it several years down the line, where you'll have to be looking up specs and troubleshooting your things not working the way you expect. They could have easily avoided it by NOT including the 2 slow USB-C ports, and including like 4 USB-A ones instead.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
  - cnst 2y ago
    > The only thing my post was addressing is that you called out RGB mechanical keyboards specifically when there are also plenty of non-RGB and non-mechanical options. It was bizarre, like this reply. The point was that even the more "premium" products are still USB-A, not USB-C. USB-A simply isn't going anywhere. Personally, I find USB-A more useful than HDMI, since HDMI is kind of inferior to USB-C in every possible way. I've tried using a 43" UHD TV as a monitor, since they're as cheap as $149.99 USD brand new, but it had noticeable delay even at 4k@60Hz, and just didn't feel right. The UHD resolution at 43" itself would actually be perfect, since 1080p at 20.5in used to be my fav a few years ago (before QHD at 23" started reaching the sub-$200 range), but, alas, the specs of a proper monitor (brightness, matte, USB-C with PD and a hub) are just better suited for a display compared to a TV, even if the resolution itself may seem ideal.
zdw 2y ago
Somewhat surprised that networking is not mentioned in either list. Maybe a USB to ethernet dongle was used?
- MBCook 2y ago
  That makes sense. If you have working USB-A, then any USB ethernet adapter supported by FreeBSD should work right? That’s actually a pretty big escape hatch for early development. It explains how you’d be able to get past having a nonfunctional keyboard pretty easily, for example.
doubled112 2y ago
Sounds like some of the Linux phones. This is our flagship device. It doesn't have a working camera or radios, but who needs those?
- yonatan8070 2y ago
  Every time I hear about mobile Linux releases I get excited just for the chance to get away from Android and iOS, then I get disappointed to find that the list of things that don't work includes like half the phone
  - grishka 2y ago
    I have a feeling that the Linux developer community in general just constantly prioritizes the wrong things. They love to boast about technical achievements instead of doing something that would actually enable real-world regular-usage scenarios. Not helped by the fact that stable ABIs are basically nonexistent, especially for kernel modules. Is it even possible to use Linux on desktop without ever having to edit config files or run commands in the terminal?
    - yonatan8070 2y ago
      > They love to boast about technical achievements instead of doing something that would actually enable real-world regular-usage scenarios. For mobile Linux in particular, I found that it's quite the opposite, I see projects like Phosh and KDE Plasma Mobile constantly showing UI and UX improvemnts (albeit at a slower pace than desktop projects), while basic hardware support is non-functional. Of course I'm not expecting every UX/UI dev to abandon their project to jump into low-level kernel development and bring support for more devices, but it feels like the desktop environments are developing for a device that doesn't exist. > Is it even possible to use Linux on desktop without ever having to edit config files or run commands in the terminal? On a modern Linux distro (that isn't one of the "advanced" ones), the answer is yes. If you install something like Mint or Ubuntu, you have a graphical app store and driver manager (which AFAIK you only need for NVIDIA GPUs).
yapyap 2y ago
What is a TB?
- useless_foghorn 2y ago
  Thunderbolt port
  - hulitu 2y ago
    Are there any uses for this today ?
- koziserek 2y ago
  Tuberculosis
mst 2y ago
If you prefer your usual (external) keyboard and mouse, which plenty of people (myself included) do, the rest of the list is kinda 'meh' as restrictions go. Honestly when my current Helix 2 finally starts to die on me I'll be looking for a tablet or hybrid replacement since I neither want nor need an attached keyboard+mouse anyway, in my normal usage they're mostly just something that takes up desk space. Obviously there are also plenty of people with preferences entirely incompatible with this approach, but so it goes.

raegis 2y ago

Ubuntu has an experimental installation image for this laptop at https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/ubuntu-24-10-concept-snapdragon-x-elite/48800 https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/ubuntu-24-10-concept-snapdrag... . Everything works except for audio and screen brightness control (I saw a patch for audio upcoming on LKML. I don't know about the brightness control, but it is stuck on high. Nevertheless, it still reports 12+ hours of battery with a bright screen.). It is a nice laptop, if you like the Lenovo T series.

fulafel 2y ago
Is this "by Ubuntu" or a third party project?
- wizzard0 2y ago
  well the poster looks to have an ubuntu flair on its profile pic
- raegis 2y ago
  It is packaged by Ubuntu. Linaro is doing the work with Qualcomm. https://www.linaro.org/blog/qualcomm-and-linaro-enable-latest-flagship-snapdragon-compute-soc/ https://www.linaro.org/blog/qualcomm-and-linaro-enable-lates...

wslh 2y ago

I always ask about battery consumption... Apple seems to be on another galaxy right now. I decided to stop waiting and installed Parallels to run Ubuntu there... I really wish the best for Asahi Linux.

winocm 2y ago
The M3 Max laptops can cross-build FreeBSD at a fraction of the time of the ThinkPad, being at around 791 seconds for `make -j17` versus the T14s being at 3210 seconds (with `make -j12`) according to the post above. No idea about power consumptions. It still scares me.
- redundantly 2y ago
  Do you have more details or a source on this? I'd like to learn more about the build process and timings.
  - winocm 2y ago
    Sure. I basically did the following on trunk: $ CPP=/usr/bin/clang MAKEOBJDIRPREFIX=/private/var/tmp/obj ./tools/build/make.py TARGET=arm64 TARGET_ARCH=aarch64 --host-compiler-type clang --debug -j17 --clean buildworld You probably can follow build(5) from FreeBSD hosts instead. NetBSD is similar, but you need to edit `tools/llvm/Makefile` and make sure that you use the following target for `support-modules` instead: support-modules: module-test.cpp Makefile - if ${HOST_CXX} -stdlib=libc++ -c -fmodules -fcxx-modules -fmodules-cache-path=./module.cache \ - ${.CURDIR}/module-test.cpp 3> /dev/null 2>&1; then \ - echo HOST_SUPPORTS_MODULES=yes > ${.TARGET}; \ - else \ - echo HOST_SUPPORTS_MODULES=no > ${.TARGET}; \ - fi + # Just don't use modules pre for C++20 targets. Some compilers cannot support them. + echo HOST_SUPPORTS_MODULES=no > ${.TARGET}; You can further speed up NetBSD builds by editing `share/mk/bsd.sys.mk` and removing the workaround for SunPro's cc. The repeated invocation of /bin/mv for each object file really does add up. I have not tried cross builds of OpenBSD from other operating systems.

brynet 2y ago

OpenBSD has support for a number of Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite machines. A bit more works on the T14s Gen 6 too, such as the keyboard! ;-) https://marc.info/?l=openbsd-cvs&m=172925590407875&w=2 https://marc.info/?l=openbsd-cvs&m=172925590407875&w=2

0xbadcafebee 2y ago

I upgraded from a 10-year-old Lenovo to a MacBook Pro M1 w/Asahi Linux for a while recently. It convinced me that we're not ready for ARM Linux desktops for general-purpose, regular-person use. Besides all the crappy Linux desktop software today (I have been trying multiple recent distros out on multiple new laptops... all the Linux desktop stuff now is buggy, features are gone that were there 10 years ago... it's annoying as hell). The ARM experience is one of being a second-class citizen. A ton of apps are released as AppImages or Snaps/Flatpaks. But they have to be built for both X86_64 and ARM64, and extremely few are built for the latter. Even when they are built for it, they have their own bugs to be worked around, and there's fewer users, so you wait longer for a bugfix. The end result is you have fewer choices, compatibility and support. I love the idea of an ARM desktop. But it's going to cause fragmentation of available developer (and corporate/3rd-party) resources. ARM devices individually are even more unique than X86_64 gear is, so each one requires more integration. I'm sticking to X86_64 so I don't have to deal with another set of problems.

raegis 2y ago
One hopeful note: the developers for the Snapdragon X Elite are active on the kernel mailing list, and they are supplying patches for specific laptops, including the T14s. Now I run Debian, so i don't use AppImages or Snaps or Flatpaks, but I expect to have a fully functional T14s Gen 6 running Trixie when it is released as stable next year, assuming Trixie uses kernel 6.12 or (hopefully) 6.13.
- SG- 2y ago
  they also butchered their entire dev kit rollouts and didn't launch with any sort of (promised) Linux support, I'm pretty sure time wise macran had Linux booting on M1s faster than Qualcom got any sort of Linux movement going on their own hardware.
flkiwi 2y ago
Counterpoint: I've been on an M2 Macbook running NixOS-via-Asahi-installer for about a year, and I've run into maybe 2 applications that I cannot find in the Nix repos or flathub. I have a stable, fast, long-lasting machine running Hyprland and all the productivity software I've needed. I'm currently missing an internal microphone and, I believe, Thunderbolt (USB-C works fine) but this machine is faster than and as stable as it was when it had macOS on it. I am as general purpose, regular person as you're going to find, in this world at least. I stare at a sentence like "In a functional programming language, everything is a function" and just blink. But a few months of blood and suffering to learn Nix/NixOS and I am managing the family's computers from a single repository and working faster than ever.

nextos 2y ago

> So when my regular HW-pusher had a T14s G6 with Qualcomm Snapdragon ARM64 CPU, for only EUR1000 + VAT, and I couldn't resist. I wonder where Poul-Henning, who is based in Denmark, got that price. Perhaps he managed to get US pricing. Lenovo EU are notorious for charging a ton of money for new models with limited supply. And poor after-market support, as everything is outsourced.

cnst 2y ago
He's running a business, so, perhaps he got some kind of business pricing?
Loic 2y ago
As I was working in Denmark, we had a lot of Lenovo resellers providing better offers than the normal list prices. This was a couple of years ago, maybe this is still the case.
jeroenhd 2y ago
I just checked and the laptop can be had for $1036 USD or €1809 (includes 21% VAT), and the configurator doesn't even allow adding more than the soldered-on base 16GB of RAM. You can save yourself €500 and get 768GB of additional SSD storage by going HP, or save yourself €400 and get a 32GB model. What an absolute shitshow. I'm surprised Lenovo sells laptops in Europe with these prices.
- throwaway519 2y ago
  Or fly to the US, get a hotel and meal for two for the night, and fly back with change for just one laptop purchase. When VAT incentivises people to essentially take their holidays outside the EU - not even incentivises, subsidises(!) - VAT's too high.
  - olddustytrail 2y ago
    Oh FFS! Round up the US cost, converted to Euros, to 1000. What's 21% on top of that? I refuse to believe that's a difficult calculation for anyone. The additional cost is obviously not just from VAT.

alganet 2y ago

The Vivobook ARM from Asus also seems very decent, and it has a numpad. Where I live, the T14s is also sold with 64GB memory. It's the cheapest VRAM around (although support for it is lacking everywhere).

incompatible 2y ago

I'm a bit puzzled about their weird naming. "T14s Gen 6" when apparently "T14s Gen 5" was Intel based. Surely changing the entire CPU architecture deserves a new model name?

sigio 2y ago
T14(s) Gen5 were also available in AMD versions, so I guess there will be T14(s)-Gen6's in Intel/AMD/Qualcomm versions (Typing this on a T14-Gen5-AMD, under linux, which is still not really stable with the amdgpu driver crashing at least weekly)
- justmarc 2y ago
  What sort of crash are you experiencing? You should bring your dist fully up to date, and also make sure you have the latest amdgup firmware files (most likely not yet available in your dist) https://gitlab.com/kernel-firmware/linux-firmware/-/commit/919f79f9fb5536c1928a15ac82a2e53183b213cf https://gitlab.com/kernel-firmware/linux-firmware/-/commit/9...
arp242 2y ago
There's the "T14s Gen 6 (AMD)", "T14s Gen 6 (Intel)", and "T14s Gen 6 (Snapdragon)". I'm not naming them either ... just telling you how it works.
slyn 2y ago
How about the Microsoft Surface Pro 9 being x86 while the Surface Pro 9 with 5g being ARM. My conspiracy theory is they did it on purpose to submarine ARM into enterprise environments
numpad0 2y ago
Actual model numbers of T14s Gen 6(AMD) and Gen 6(Snapdragon) are respectively 21M1 and 21N1, they still use IBM inherited "Machine Type-Model" system. Looks like this is now expanded into a 4-3-3 digits alphanumeric sequence like "21N1001PUS". In case anyone needed cues to tackle these confusions... 1: https://psref.lenovo.com/Product/ThinkPad/ThinkPad_T14s_Gen_6_Snapdragon?tab=model https://psref.lenovo.com/Product/ThinkPad/ThinkPad_T14s_Gen_...

arp242 2y ago

> What does not work: Keyboard, mouse, TB & USB-C ports, thermal/freq mgt. So, eh, yeah. Basically useless as a laptop. Is the "Conclusion: Highly recommended" at the end sarcasm?

rvnx 2y ago
Even with the correct drivers, the touchpad/trackpad is not functioning properly on Windows. The Lenovo's "touch" input feels like you are using a HTC Dream. Great for nostalgia, but would prefer the multi-touch of an iPhone.
lawik 2y ago
No, I think it is the optimism of someone who writes drivers when they need them. Bit of a fixer-upper.
mst 2y ago
A lot of people use a laptop with an external keyboard and mouse because they're sufficiently picky about their keyboard and mouse to be happy to deal with the additional hassle. I use the top half of a Helix 2 with a Thinkpad Tablet 2 Bluetooth Keyboard because I'm one of the three people in the world who actively likes the optical trackpoint. If you almost always use the machine on a desk rather than literally on your lap (for which I use the same keyboard paired with an 8" tablet) it's not even -much- additional hassle. So maybe it wouldn't work for you, but "basically useless" is silly.
- arp242 2y ago
  I said "Basically useless as a laptop", not "useless".
  - mst 2y ago
    I think generally people who carry an external keyboard and mouse around along with their laptop still think they're using it 'as a laptop.' Most laptops IME mostly get used on a desk whether with additional paraphernalia or not; 'laptop' gets used to describe the class of machine more than whether it's touching your legs or not. If you meant literal in-lap use it probably would've been better to specify it, and if you didn't mean 'useless' entirely it would probably have been worth clarifying that since your questioning whether the recommendation was sarcasm rather suggested you -did- mean useless entirely. Language is a pain, sadly, but I don't think lojban is going to win any time soon.

andrewstuart 2y ago

Linus tech tips reviewed these or something similar. Short story: good but compatibility issues.

steve-chavez 2y ago

I also got one of these. AFAICT for Linux, we need to wait for kernel 6.12, which is still at the rc stage but should be ready at the end of this month. As a NixOS user, I'm keeping track of this repo [1] for support. [1]: https://github.com/kuruczgy/x1e-nixos-config https://github.com/kuruczgy/x1e-nixos-config

MBCook 2y ago
What makes 6.12 the necessary version for this machine?
- binkHN 2y ago
  I have to imagine there's a whole bunch of patches in that tree for this chipset.

yapyap 2y ago

> capture the boot messages with my mobile phone's camera. ha dont we all

eBombzor 2y ago

Not buying anything Lenovo made ever again. T14 G1 was the worst computer I've ever had the displeasure of using. Extremely spotty USB C connection, throttling to 0.2 Ghz for no reason with no fix, and just terribly slow all around. Shame since I loved the T450s dearly.

binkHN 2y ago
I have a P14s G4 AMD that I am very pleased with. My only issue is the Qualcomm-made Wi-Fi that still doesn't work properly after a year because Qualcomm engineers can't figure out how to write a driver.
- bobmcnamara 2y ago
  Amen. I rewrote part of their camera stack once to find that they hadn't managed cache coherence for the MIPI DMA, and didn't connect the coherency domains to handle it in hardware. Ticket probably still not being worked in their support portal. Very rarely I see a little horizontal strip of corruption in my camera photos and roll my eyes.
rustcleaner 2y ago
Been mostly happy with P16 Gen 2 for Qubes OS. Flat button mouse design is a downgrade compared to X1 Extreme Gen 3 (more raised).
yonatan8070 2y ago
I've been running Fedora 40 (and recently 41) on my P14s G5 Intel at work, absolutely great machine.
- leeman2016 2y ago
  Is it the core ultra 155H? How is it efficiency/heat and performance wise? Was planning on getting one.
  - yonatan8070 2y ago

jazzyjackson 2y ago

I sent mine back. I thought the NPU would help with local LLM but there nothing to utilize it yet, lmstudio has it on the roadmap but it was a bit of a letdown. M1 MacBook was 30 times faster at generating tokens. Happy with my gen 11 x1 carbon (the one before they put the power button on the outside edge like a tablet ?!?)

pjmlp 2y ago
It is used transparently by applications when they make use of DirectML.
woadwarrior01 2y ago
I just got NPU based LLM inference working locally on Snapdragon X Elite with small (3B and 8B) models, but it’s not quite production ready yet. I know all llama.cpp wrappers claim to have it on their roadmap, but the fact of the matter is that they have no clue about how to implement it. > M1 MacBook was 30 times faster at generating tokens. Apples and oranges (pardon the pun). llama.cpp (and in turn LMStudio) use Metal GPU acceleration on Apple Silicon, while they currently only do CPU inference on Snapdragon. It’s possible to use the Adreno GPU for LLM inference (I demoed this at the Snapdragon Summit), which performs better.
badgersnake 2y ago
Power button on the edge is epically stupid. Every time I pick it up to walk out of a meeting I turn the damn thing off.

WhereIsTheTruth 2y ago

Sounds like an AD more than a review, weird

consumerx 2y ago

15+ years of mac user here, just swapped to a Lenovo X1 Gen12 running Ubuntu and it's so smooth.

leeman2016 2y ago
Which processor? There U or the H?
- consumerx 2y ago
  Intel Core 7 Ultra 155U. 32 GB RAM. Ubuntu 22.04.
fb03 2y ago
can you tell me about the battery life? I seriously need a new laptop to run linux and I need decent battery life. Don't want to buy a Mac just to have more than 3 hours of battery life
- consumerx 2y ago
  On "Battery Saver" and low brightness you can get up to 8h - 10h, easy.

da_rob 2y ago

OpenBSD support is quite a bit further: https://roblillack.net/openbsd-arm64-on-the-thinkpad-t14s https://roblillack.net/openbsd-arm64-on-the-thinkpad-t14s

bpfrh 2y ago

imho the biggest problem with all the new snapdragon laptops is that all ram is soldered on, because the new chips don't support slotted ram.

joecool1029 2y ago
There's another way, Lenovo just chose not to for this model: https://www.ifixit.com/News/95078/lpcamm2-memory-is-finally-here https://www.ifixit.com/News/95078/lpcamm2-memory-is-finally-...
deng 2y ago
I find this to be less and less of an issue, because RAM has gotten so cheap that you can pretty much just max it out when buying. At the moment, going from 32GB to 64GB incurs a 193$ markup for this laptop, which I think is entirely reasonable for a machine like this (although, honestly, I'm usually not even close to reach 32GB in my normal work). The only notable exception here is Apple with their absolutely bonkers RAM upgrade prices, which is why I would never buy a Macbook. EDIT: I just HAD to look, MacBook Pro(ha!) by default with 16GB unified memory, it will set you back 400$ to go to 32GB, so more than 4x what Lenovo takes (64GB not even possible, of course).
- mavamaarten 2y ago
  You say ram has gotten cheap, and then $193 for 32GB is fine with you? You can easily get 64GB for that price when buying separate modules. I still think it would be beneficial for us to keep memory swappable at all costs. And if the connector is the problem, they should address that, rather than just accepting these tactics that _enable_ manufacturers in setting their own prices. I'm not saying they all do this, but there's plenty of them and Apple is the perfect example like you say.
  - deng 2y ago
    We wanted longer battery life, so they run RAM at lower voltages now, which makes it necessary to minimize paths as much as possible. It's not some conspiracy. And they are working on a connector, see the LPCAMM2 link in the other post, so maybe you can wait it out if you feel that strongly.

gigatexal 2y ago

Meh. Until support reaches full feature parity with x86 I’ll just keep running Linux in a VM on my m3 max MacBook. I do want an arm64 Linux or BSD laptop with the same ease of use and support as x86 though it’ll take time.

fb03 2y ago
Can you tell me about your Linux on Mac setup? Here's my situation: At home, I develop on a very beefy x86_64 desktop machine running Ubuntu. When travelling overseas for work, I have an x86_64 laptop which provides me decent performance but only lasts 3 hours or so. All my colleagues are rocking Macbooks which last a whole day and I can't even take a piss without thinking about a power outlet. What is the battery life for a setup where you only use the outside world Mac as a shell for a Linux VM? Can you run X11 applications remotely with `ssh -X`? I sincerely HATE the whole Mac OS ecosystem but right now, they are the best in terms of battery life for a mobile device, and I need that. Thank you for any information you can provide!
- gigatexal 2y ago
  So you’re probably not going to like the solution but it involves even more money! Parallels for Mac I’m Subscribed to and then run Fedora with i3 and it’s graphically accelerated and really really fast and I just use it like I would anything else except now I have the option to use macOS. What you’re going to hate even more is I’m finding myself just trying to make macOS more like i3 finding tools that try and get there. Yabai and others. In the end I am almost entirely in. Terminal with tmux and have a safari or chrome window open for docs and slack for all the work distractions.
  - gigatexal 2y ago
    Battery life in this setup is probably 80-85% of what I get in macOS and that’s already amazing but I have a m3 max one and that is overkill and likely kills battery life just itself. I couldn’t for the life of me get ssh -X working on macOS so I went the full os route :shrug_emoji:

Sakos 2y ago

> Those of you how know me, know that I am not a big fan of the X86 architecture, which I think is a bad mess, mangled by market power considerations, rather than the CPU architecture this world actually needs, in particular in terms of performance/energy ratio. Meanwhile, ARM is a complete disaster, a mess and mangled by profit considerations when looking at the complete lack of platform standardisation and issues around compatibility. Issues which require significant engineering effort to bring a single ARM device in line with any random x86-based device that came out this year.

DeathArrow 2y ago

It's a good thing Snapdragon laptops standardized on using EFI instead of stuff like U-Boot.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

irusensei 2y ago

> mangled by market power considerations, rather than the CPU architecture this world actually needs Why are CPUs being built if not for the market? Who are they building CPUs for? And who decided what kind of CPU the world needs? I like the idea of alternative architectures as any other geek but this lately kind of thinking that permeates the subject comes out as academic arrogance.

fb03 2y ago

What laptop do I get right now to run Linux with decent battery life? My dream would be a Mac-like 14 hour battery life experience running Ubuntu. I don't want to buy a Mac or be tied to their walled garden, it's literally my last resort - but I do need a laptop with better battery life than x86_64's with 3 hour battery life in a good day.

CoolCold 2y ago
no idea on Linux, but I've seen some benchmark reported up to crazy 28h long on Windows, and ~ 22h more like average across several models