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I have the ThinkPad p16s AMD gen 2. What it lacks in name it makes up for with being the most headache-free computer I have ever had (including a Macbook). Ev

by tombert 8mo ago

I have the ThinkPad p16s AMD gen 2. What it lacks in name it makes up for with being the most headache-free computer I have ever had (including a Macbook). Everything works pretty well out of the box, it never really overheats, Linux support required basically no effort with NixOS, the keyboard feels pretty nice, the screen is bright and easy to read, and fortunately I bought it when RAM prices weren't insane so I got the 64GB model. I haven't tried repairing it yet but considering how well it's been working I'm not even sure I'll need ever need to. If this laptop gets stolen, I will likely just buy another ThinkPad, I'm a complete convert.

thrdbndndn 8mo ago
Majority of laptops works "pretty well out of the box".
- system2 8mo ago
  I urge you to try HP.
  - cookiengineer 8mo ago
    ^ this comment is more relevant than people might think. HP regularly deploys broken BIOS updates and literally bricks your laptops. Happened in 2023 I think 7 times that year, and one time even right in the next week. Our IT got so fed up and ditched any HP laptops because of it.
    - userbinator 8mo ago
      Never update your BIOS unless you have a specific bug that needs fixed. I remember a Thinkpad BIOS update ended up destroying both undervolting and overclocking, and required a "chip-clip" programmer to revert.
      - wtallis 8mo ago
        That advice doesn't hold up very well when in recent years we've had multiple instances of a BIOS update being necessary to deal with the problem of "the CPU gets fed too high a voltage and dies prematurely". That's happened to both Intel and AMD desktop CPUs. It's a real problem that BIOS updates for consumer systems never come with a meaningful changelog, so evaluating whether a particular update is a good idea or not is basically impossible.
        Guestmodinfo 8mo ago
        I would strongly advice against buying HP laptops if you want to install linux because MX linux worked well on mine pre-owned HP, Zorin OS worked well but somehow I could not install AntiX linux and secure boot of HP troubled me too much and I could install OpenBSD on it but each time I would restart then it would kernel panic and I would havento reinstall. Combined with a long holiday when I left it at home. Now my HP is practically bricked. It is not starting
        userbinator 8mo ago
        That advice holds up very well when taken along with "don't buy the very first major release".
      - cmckn 8mo ago
        I built a tower several years ago and it had CPU temp issues from the start. I RMA’d the cooler, reapplied the thermal paste a couple times, reassembled the whole build, etc. It wasn’t my main machine, but every time I sat down to use it the CPU would run hot and thermal-throttle. It’s an i9 with P/E cores, so I just chalked it up to Linux power management woes. A couple months ago I was on the brink of selling it for parts, but updated the BIOS as a Hail Mary. Totally fixed it. I guess I did “ have a specific bug that needs fixed”; I just didn’t know it!
      - cookiengineer 8mo ago
        People don't have a choice to update their BIOS, as updates like this are automatically installed, by both Windows and the underlying Intel ME tools. (And I'm trying to avoid talking about microcode updates, which is a whole other story of fuckups) Regarding Thinkpad BIOS: I have a Raspberry Pi Zero and a self soldered RP2040 programmer [1] in my travel kit for a reason. When travelling, a lot of the Cellebrite rootkits rely on an OEM BIOS, so they typically reflash your BIOS in the "we gonna check your laptop" phase. [1] would totally recommend serprog, it's awesome: https://codeberg.org/Riku_V/pico-serprog https://codeberg.org/Riku_V/pico-serprog
- tombert 8mo ago
  Not with Linux, typically. If you don't have drivers included in the kernel, it requires a lot of effort to get things working. I've done it many times, so now I will generally only buy laptops that have decent Linux support. [1] I've had the laptop for about two years now and it still runs just as well as the day I bought it. I'm very happy with it. [1] No I will not stick with Windows. Please feel free to read through my comment history to see why, but TL;DR I just don't like it.
  - zdragnar 8mo ago
    I've had linux on every laptop I've owned for years, and I haven't really had a problem with any of them running linux, except for display port support on a dell xps. Aside from that one dell laptop, though, I generally avoid HP and dell entirely, so perhaps that's why.
    - tombert 8mo ago
      In 2013 I bought a laptop that I kept five years that had an Nvidia Optimus. I never really figured out how to get the discrete card working consistently, and since then I haven't bought a laptop with an Nvidia card. I've had issues with wifi cards and sound drivers and the like as well, though it's going a lot better now than it was a decade ago.
      - zdragnar 8mo ago
        Weird. I must have uncommonly good fortune, as I don't think I've had Wi-Fi or sound issues for longer than that. I remember when I first tried out swaywm and having some sound issues because I also started moving to pipewore from pulseaudio, but nothing from an out of the box install of a decent distro.
huddert 8mo ago
Why are they so allergic to >60hz displays though? There is zero chance that I'm buying a laptop with a slideshow display like that in current year.
- nine_k 8mo ago
  Are you a gamer? Otherwise it's really not easy to notice a "slideshow" at 60 Hz.
  - iso-logi 8mo ago
    Moving the mouse around at anything below 90Hz is pretty rough.
  - huddert 8mo ago
    No. I guess everyone has different levels of sensitivity to refresh rates. It is immediately noticeable and very distracting to me when using a 60hz display. It's not acceptable on a high-end laptop nowadays (120hz minimum). Imagine the reduction in headaches, fatigue and nausea if we stopped tolerating this penny-pinching.
    - hermanzegerman 8mo ago
      I think you are the outlier with Headaches, Fatigue and Nausea from using a 60hz Display
- tombert 8mo ago
  I've never had an issue with 60hz. 30hz is unusable but 60hz has always been good enough for me; the Sega Genesis and SNES had 60hz and that's always been good enough for me.
  - huddert 8mo ago
    [flagged]
    - 8mo ago
Cyph0n 8mo ago
> Linux support required basically no effort with NixOS My main requirement for a next laptop is running NixOS (coming from Macbook land). It’s probably this or one of the new XPS models, but not clear what NixOS support looks like there.
- tombert 8mo ago
  There's actually a compatibility listing and the hacks required to make them work! https://github.com/NixOS/nixos-hardware https://github.com/NixOS/nixos-hardware In the case of my ThinkPad, you can see there is literally no extra work required: https://github.com/NixOS/nixos-hardware/blob/master/lenovo/thinkpad/p16s/amd/gen2/default.nix https://github.com/NixOS/nixos-hardware/blob/master/lenovo/t... Still, doesn't mean you shouldn't look into other brands, obviously. Take a look at that repo to see if there's obvious compatibility stuff.
vbezhenar 8mo ago
I own T14s Gen4 Intel and Linux support is perfect, even fingerprint reader works. Zero complaints. I'm mostly using it in clamshell mode connected via USB-C to display with backwards charging, it all just works! I'm also using secureboot with my keys, I cleared all MS keys and it didn't brick the laptop. My only grievance is a bit buggy firmware. When I turn laptop on or reboot, speakers will randomly be muted (not a problem after OS boots, but for example in UEFI it'll either beep or not beep and that's random). UEFI interface was a bit buggy regarding mouse control, for example I've used to touch and drag things in boot order, but it didn't work and I have to actually press touchbar button down and keeping it like that move cursor. But touch drag works in other places. Not a big issue bit the first time I encountered it, I spent good few minutes trying to make sense of it, as I thought it just does not allow me to reorder boot entries or something like that. But these are small issues and once you've installed OS, you never deal with that. Oh, and another complaint is that their BIOS update procedure is super weird. I have to find computer with Windows, download some exe, unpack things, find some BAT file and write to USB drive things, then boot from it. Theoretically they publish stuff to fwupd but I don't like this service. My best BIOS update experience was on Asus PC. I just put some bin file onto FAT32 USB drive, entered UEFI configuration, chose "update", selected that file and that's about it. Super easy, every manufacturer must implement this workflow. Anyway I'm satistfied owner and my next laptop will likely be Thinkpad. Mostly because its stellar Linux support, but also because I didn't have any major issues with my current laptop.
- amluto 8mo ago
  What’s wrong with fwupd? I’ll admit that that the CLI is not exactly awesome, but it seems like a fairly clean implementation of the actual UEFI spec for updates.
  - vbezhenar 8mo ago
    I disabled possibility of updates in my BIOS, so I must first enter BIOS, enable updates in BIOS, then I have to tinker with my boot configuration as I'm using secureboot with custom keys and no bootloader, I also need to allow changing UEFI boot variables, well, lots of things I just don't want to do for my setup. A lot of moving parts with zero sense over something as simple as update from the USB drive. Basically right now my setup is super simple and restricted and I have to make it significantly more complicated and insecure to allow fwupd to work.
emeril 8mo ago
my dell is hot garbage from work
Teknomadix 8mo ago
Second that. Both AMD p16 and p14 are amazing NixOS machines.
MattPalmer1086 8mo ago
I have the same model, it's a nice machine!
saratogacx 8mo ago
I just got an L13 which is a convertible form factor with every feature they offered (like cell modem, dual cameras, smart card reader, stylus, etc). Tossed Kubuntu on it and every single piece of hardware was found and worked right out of the box. The hardware linux support has been fantastic.
cmxch 8mo ago
For me, that’s the older(?) T15g Gen2. Maxed out a reasonable i7 /4k screen/16GB 3080 mobile configuration when SSDs and memory were dirt cheap. Feels like the old A31p in practical grunt but thinner and easier to maintain.

by tombert 8mo ago

thrdbndndn 8mo ago

Majority of laptops works "pretty well out of the box".

system2 8mo ago
I urge you to try HP.
- cookiengineer 8mo ago
  ^ this comment is more relevant than people might think. HP regularly deploys broken BIOS updates and literally bricks your laptops. Happened in 2023 I think 7 times that year, and one time even right in the next week. Our IT got so fed up and ditched any HP laptops because of it.
  - userbinator 8mo ago
    Never update your BIOS unless you have a specific bug that needs fixed. I remember a Thinkpad BIOS update ended up destroying both undervolting and overclocking, and required a "chip-clip" programmer to revert.
    - wtallis 8mo ago
      That advice doesn't hold up very well when in recent years we've had multiple instances of a BIOS update being necessary to deal with the problem of "the CPU gets fed too high a voltage and dies prematurely". That's happened to both Intel and AMD desktop CPUs. It's a real problem that BIOS updates for consumer systems never come with a meaningful changelog, so evaluating whether a particular update is a good idea or not is basically impossible.
      - Guestmodinfo 8mo ago
        I would strongly advice against buying HP laptops if you want to install linux because MX linux worked well on mine pre-owned HP, Zorin OS worked well but somehow I could not install AntiX linux and secure boot of HP troubled me too much and I could install OpenBSD on it but each time I would restart then it would kernel panic and I would havento reinstall. Combined with a long holiday when I left it at home. Now my HP is practically bricked. It is not starting
      - userbinator 8mo ago
        That advice holds up very well when taken along with "don't buy the very first major release".
    - cmckn 8mo ago
      I built a tower several years ago and it had CPU temp issues from the start. I RMA’d the cooler, reapplied the thermal paste a couple times, reassembled the whole build, etc. It wasn’t my main machine, but every time I sat down to use it the CPU would run hot and thermal-throttle. It’s an i9 with P/E cores, so I just chalked it up to Linux power management woes. A couple months ago I was on the brink of selling it for parts, but updated the BIOS as a Hail Mary. Totally fixed it. I guess I did “ have a specific bug that needs fixed”; I just didn’t know it!
    - cookiengineer 8mo ago
      People don't have a choice to update their BIOS, as updates like this are automatically installed, by both Windows and the underlying Intel ME tools. (And I'm trying to avoid talking about microcode updates, which is a whole other story of fuckups) Regarding Thinkpad BIOS: I have a Raspberry Pi Zero and a self soldered RP2040 programmer [1] in my travel kit for a reason. When travelling, a lot of the Cellebrite rootkits rely on an OEM BIOS, so they typically reflash your BIOS in the "we gonna check your laptop" phase. [1] would totally recommend serprog, it's awesome: https://codeberg.org/Riku_V/pico-serprog https://codeberg.org/Riku_V/pico-serprog
tombert 8mo ago
Not with Linux, typically. If you don't have drivers included in the kernel, it requires a lot of effort to get things working. I've done it many times, so now I will generally only buy laptops that have decent Linux support. [1] I've had the laptop for about two years now and it still runs just as well as the day I bought it. I'm very happy with it. [1] No I will not stick with Windows. Please feel free to read through my comment history to see why, but TL;DR I just don't like it.
- zdragnar 8mo ago
  I've had linux on every laptop I've owned for years, and I haven't really had a problem with any of them running linux, except for display port support on a dell xps. Aside from that one dell laptop, though, I generally avoid HP and dell entirely, so perhaps that's why.
  - tombert 8mo ago
    In 2013 I bought a laptop that I kept five years that had an Nvidia Optimus. I never really figured out how to get the discrete card working consistently, and since then I haven't bought a laptop with an Nvidia card. I've had issues with wifi cards and sound drivers and the like as well, though it's going a lot better now than it was a decade ago.
    - zdragnar 8mo ago
      Weird. I must have uncommonly good fortune, as I don't think I've had Wi-Fi or sound issues for longer than that. I remember when I first tried out swaywm and having some sound issues because I also started moving to pipewore from pulseaudio, but nothing from an out of the box install of a decent distro.

huddert 8mo ago

Why are they so allergic to >60hz displays though? There is zero chance that I'm buying a laptop with a slideshow display like that in current year.

nine_k 8mo ago
Are you a gamer? Otherwise it's really not easy to notice a "slideshow" at 60 Hz.
- iso-logi 8mo ago
  Moving the mouse around at anything below 90Hz is pretty rough.
- huddert 8mo ago
  No. I guess everyone has different levels of sensitivity to refresh rates. It is immediately noticeable and very distracting to me when using a 60hz display. It's not acceptable on a high-end laptop nowadays (120hz minimum). Imagine the reduction in headaches, fatigue and nausea if we stopped tolerating this penny-pinching.
  - hermanzegerman 8mo ago
    I think you are the outlier with Headaches, Fatigue and Nausea from using a 60hz Display
tombert 8mo ago
I've never had an issue with 60hz. 30hz is unusable but 60hz has always been good enough for me; the Sega Genesis and SNES had 60hz and that's always been good enough for me.
- huddert 8mo ago
  [flagged]
  - 8mo ago

Cyph0n 8mo ago

> Linux support required basically no effort with NixOS My main requirement for a next laptop is running NixOS (coming from Macbook land). It’s probably this or one of the new XPS models, but not clear what NixOS support looks like there.

tombert 8mo ago
There's actually a compatibility listing and the hacks required to make them work! https://github.com/NixOS/nixos-hardware https://github.com/NixOS/nixos-hardware In the case of my ThinkPad, you can see there is literally no extra work required: https://github.com/NixOS/nixos-hardware/blob/master/lenovo/thinkpad/p16s/amd/gen2/default.nix https://github.com/NixOS/nixos-hardware/blob/master/lenovo/t... Still, doesn't mean you shouldn't look into other brands, obviously. Take a look at that repo to see if there's obvious compatibility stuff.

vbezhenar 8mo ago

I own T14s Gen4 Intel and Linux support is perfect, even fingerprint reader works. Zero complaints. I'm mostly using it in clamshell mode connected via USB-C to display with backwards charging, it all just works! I'm also using secureboot with my keys, I cleared all MS keys and it didn't brick the laptop. My only grievance is a bit buggy firmware. When I turn laptop on or reboot, speakers will randomly be muted (not a problem after OS boots, but for example in UEFI it'll either beep or not beep and that's random). UEFI interface was a bit buggy regarding mouse control, for example I've used to touch and drag things in boot order, but it didn't work and I have to actually press touchbar button down and keeping it like that move cursor. But touch drag works in other places. Not a big issue bit the first time I encountered it, I spent good few minutes trying to make sense of it, as I thought it just does not allow me to reorder boot entries or something like that. But these are small issues and once you've installed OS, you never deal with that. Oh, and another complaint is that their BIOS update procedure is super weird. I have to find computer with Windows, download some exe, unpack things, find some BAT file and write to USB drive things, then boot from it. Theoretically they publish stuff to fwupd but I don't like this service. My best BIOS update experience was on Asus PC. I just put some bin file onto FAT32 USB drive, entered UEFI configuration, chose "update", selected that file and that's about it. Super easy, every manufacturer must implement this workflow. Anyway I'm satistfied owner and my next laptop will likely be Thinkpad. Mostly because its stellar Linux support, but also because I didn't have any major issues with my current laptop.

amluto 8mo ago
What’s wrong with fwupd? I’ll admit that that the CLI is not exactly awesome, but it seems like a fairly clean implementation of the actual UEFI spec for updates.
- vbezhenar 8mo ago
  I disabled possibility of updates in my BIOS, so I must first enter BIOS, enable updates in BIOS, then I have to tinker with my boot configuration as I'm using secureboot with custom keys and no bootloader, I also need to allow changing UEFI boot variables, well, lots of things I just don't want to do for my setup. A lot of moving parts with zero sense over something as simple as update from the USB drive. Basically right now my setup is super simple and restricted and I have to make it significantly more complicated and insecure to allow fwupd to work.

emeril 8mo ago

my dell is hot garbage from work

Teknomadix 8mo ago

Second that. Both AMD p16 and p14 are amazing NixOS machines.

MattPalmer1086 8mo ago

I have the same model, it's a nice machine!

saratogacx 8mo ago

I just got an L13 which is a convertible form factor with every feature they offered (like cell modem, dual cameras, smart card reader, stylus, etc). Tossed Kubuntu on it and every single piece of hardware was found and worked right out of the box. The hardware linux support has been fantastic.

cmxch 8mo ago

For me, that’s the older(?) T15g Gen2. Maxed out a reasonable i7 /4k screen/16GB 3080 mobile configuration when SSDs and memory were dirt cheap. Feels like the old A31p in practical grunt but thinner and easier to maintain.