https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/p/laptops/thinkpad/thinkpadx1/thinkpad-x1-carbon-gen-10-(14-inch-intel)/21cbcto1wwus2
Physically, it's fantastic. Hats off to the engineers and designers for investing in the tactile experience. They made it lightweight but simultaneously substantial-feeling via rigidity and weight distribution. I now understand why Thinkpad keyboards are so well-regarded. Its trackpad matches Apple's, which is the highest praise I can give. The brilliant screen has an aspect ratio that's as good for building things as for consuming content. And battery life supports hours of binging netflix after compiling a bunch of code.
I've been even more pleasantly surprised by the software experience. This is a Linux workstation that "just works." Close the lid, it goes on standby - open, and it resumes instantly. Plug it into a 100Mhz ultrawide monitor via a lightning cable, and not only does it seamlessly extend the desktop at native refresh rates, but it also mounts all the devices that are connected via the monitor's integrated USB hub. I'm able to log in via my bluetooth kinesis keyboard consistently, without hassle. Updates are fast, easy, and tested on the exact hardware I'm using. I've been using it as my daily driver for a week and I've yet to dive down a rabbit-hole of outdated forum advice to get something basic to work.
Finally, and more subjectively, Fedora's out-of-the-box experience handily outshines both OSX and Windows. Window-snapping, global search, software installation via a package manager, resource efficiency, containerization support, configuration, etc.
I wanted to share here for any others who have tried, and failed, to find a legitimately better-than-Macbook development machine for the past few years.
I develop software on it no problems at all. We are way past targeting one platform. Linux can be the destination for sure but like hell I'm going to do the dev work on it. Years of attempting to run Linux on a laptop or desktop have left a very unpleasant flavour in my mouth. It might work today but it probably won't tomorrow and I'm getting too old to waste my time futzing. It has to work right now, properly, today with no risks.
Note: I have a mandated Dell Precision 7670 for some work, one of the most ridiculously stupid computers ever made and far more expensive in this config than a high end MBP M1 Max and it's absolutely a pile of shit from a hardware and software perspective. If you ran Linux on it, it'd be worse than if it ran windows on it, which is already terrible.
Apple has burned me too many times for me to feel comfortable paying them again. I much prefer choosing my hardware and software as opposed to suffering through whatever Apple says is right for me. Different strokes for different folks, I suppose.
The only problem I had was with a Qt app that would not run on it and that turned out to be a problem with Qt rather than macOS.
Then install Linux on the Macbook? Two setups ago I was running this config and it was pretty great.
I prefer developing on the Linux gaming laptop, but anything outside of web browsing and raw development (listening to music, Bluetooth, share audio on video conference, gaming, accounting / office work, etc.) is horrible compared to MBP.
The gaming laptop has an RTX 2080, but I play games on the MBP, because Steam works better. I enjoy Steam better on Linux than on Windows, but not enough to waste hours just to relax.
It was released 2 years ago.
> It has to work right now, properly, today with no risks.
There's still lots of desktop software that doesn't support AArch64, optimising for "just works" it seems a strange choice. Perhaps "just works (with a limited subset of programs)" seems more apt?
And that doesn't include some of the problems with the desktop software I've had.
On the server, zero hassle.
Initially your hardware is likely very new, so some things won't quite work out of the box.
Then, assuming you bought a popular piece of hardware, things get progressively better for you: improved driver support land in the kernel, distros get better at auto-configuring for your hardware, etc.
Finally, 3 years out, upstream development has moved on, your specific hardware configuration is no longer actively tested, and things start to break left and right.
All in all, you have a small window of optimal Linux support for your hardware.
I am actually using Linux (Mint flavor) and use it for development. My main reason is that I hate Docker in Mac: The emulation layer uses a lot of RAM and high CPU, by necessity. While having Docker in Linux is transparent and requires pretty low resources.
I like Linux in general, but yeah, it still has A LOT of rough edges. The one that just bit me is the lack of Hibernate out of the box (it's 2022 ... come on!). And the process to enable hibernate is so fucking long: * create large swap, * edit some random files, * restart some random service. are they kidding me?
- trackpad - your two sentences are very vague. Can you navigate with two fingers in a web browser? How is text selection? Or selecting a sentence out of a long paragraph, etc? In my experience nothing matches Apple in terms of precision and accuracy, but maybe Lenovo finally caught up recently.
- screen: I use the built in display quite a lot. The color on a MacBook Pro is really nice. How does the Lenovo compare?
- battery life: how many hours do you actually get? Your description is vauge and can be anything from 3 hours to 40 hours.
> Can you navigate with two fingers in a web browser?
On Firefox, two fingers to the left does previous, two fingers to the right does next (if you are not in a horizontally scrollable area, in which case it scrolls). Two fingers to the top or the bottom scrolls (pixel perfect). Kinetic scroll works. Pinch to zoom works (at long last!! I think it started working a year ago or something).
> How is text selection? Or selecting a sentence out of a long paragraph, etc?
I select whatever I want to select with ease. I go to the first word I want to select, double-tap, move to the last word. The text autoscrolls if I go to an edge if it's a long chunk of text. Triple tap to select entire paragraphs. D&D works quite well too.
I'm very happy with the precision with both my HP Elitebook 840 G6 and My Carbon X1. They both have a huge, reliable touchpad. I've never tried a Mac seriously though.
> how many hours do you actually get?
10-11h if I pay attention. 6-7h easily. (i7 and 32G of RAM). I hope it will improve.
The touchscreen on both machines is surprisingly usable and useful. Both machine are quiet, and they are totally silent if I'm just typing or browsing the web. The fans can spin up during a video call or compile something for a long time, but that can be prevented if needed by forcing the powersave mode using KDE's UI for this.
It’s stunning how far apple is ahead of the pack right now, I really hope the others catch up
I've never used a laptop with Linux that could stay unplugged for more than 3 hours, using a tlp configuration as well. (ignoring any laptop that can have an XXL battery which sticks out of it's standard frame).
The default trackpoint accel is a bit much for me, so I just have this set to run on login:
> xinput set-prop 'TPPS/2 Elan TrackPoint' 'libinput Accel Speed' -0.55
May I please ask, are you on Wayland or X11?
In my experience that variable makes the biggest difference in touchpad behavior on Linux.
I use the LG Gram 2022. The trackpad is nothing short of Amazing on Linux -- everything you expect works 2/3/4 finger gestures, panning; the scrolling however can use some tuning on Gnome.
Can you navigate with two fingers in a web browser? Yes. I've also been underwhelmed by non-Apple touchpads until using this. I'm not sure how much of the experience is hardware and how much is Fedora 36.
How is text selection? Identical to my Macbook: move to start of selection with pointer finger, press on touchpad with thumb, move to end of selection with pointer, release thumb.
Screen: I'm not sure exactly how to answer this; I have several Macbooks and I agree their screens are nice. I like the Thinkpad's screen more for development (it seems to be less glossy/give better contrast independent of external light) whereas I think the Macbook screens look better at broader angles (for example, a couple of people watching a movie, looking at the screen diagonally).
Battery life: I'll have to run it off charger for more than a day to see when it finally dies. So far I spent one day roaming around without connecting it, during which it was under constant use: programming during the day and streaming at night. Something on the order of 8 hours.
This frustration once led me to search for turning off the acceleration setting, which, last I searched, wasn't easily tweakable.
Anyone shares similar feeling when it comes to the trackpad?
HDR, wider color space (P3 etc) + color management for all that things are not really supported in current Wayland desktops.
https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/wayland/wayland-protocols/-/m...
It will probably change next year (and the desktop software like players etc. need to catch up too) but monitors supporting these standards are existing for many years now. There is only Mac and Windows (Windows is even better with broader HW support actually) in this niche.
I ordered myself the MacBook at work and privately purchased the X1 to put Ubuntu Linux on it (curious about the M1 and having had a great experience with each of a range of past ThinkPads - X61s, X220, X230, T41).
Both machines are very light, and not very rugged (for ruggedness, go for a Dell Latitude E6400 XFR or E7450). Both fell one time each, the X1 had no visible marks, but the MacBook Air now has a visible dent just above the logo. Thankfully, both machines remain fully operable.
The X1 is great for Linux, and that's my preferred platform. I'm biased towards that because it's not proprietary, but not out of purely ideological reasons, I just want to make sure the platform continues to exist. Thankfully, the Mac also has a Unix under the hood, alas often things are in weird locations or not installed at all, so I feel less "at home" on MacOS X. Also, having been a dual Linux/Mac OS X user since 2008, I find the usability of Mac OS is decaying - many things are hidden in non-obvious places. For example, it's not helpful if scrollbars are hidden and you have to exactly hover over where they ought to be in order to make them visible first - when you are on a call and need to pull up some data quickly, this is distracting. The Mac has longer battery life, and is often superior when discovering a WiFi network nearby; it's audio also works flawlessly. In contrast, on the X1 under Linux, occasionally the headset plugged in isn't instantly recognized without some fiddling.
Both machines are very fast, with the M1 being without equal. I notice it mostly when installing/updating new software, as heavy compute jobs are usually done on clusters or in the cloud nowadays.
I end up using the Mac mostly for e-mail, making slides and going on Zoom calls, whereas any development work tends to happen more on the X1.
Neither is a perfect machine. I'd love to have a Mac with a proper keyboard, or a ThinkPad with an M1 chip, and the former would be more of an improvement than the latter because CPU speed isn't the bottleneck for my laptop usage profile. For the time being, I shall continue to carry two laptops.
The performance per watt is insane, and given the ML/AI thing has blown up recently, I'm happy to have the neural engine.
The Apple screen is likely still much better ( colors, variable refresh rate ), the trackpad and it's integration.
And now we have the M1, sorry but I don't want to know on the hardware front unless Intel get anywhere near it.
There was a time when I felt like what Windows had going on with Windows 7 was much better than what Apple had going on and I spent a few years primarily using a PC.
However, I’ve been back on Mac for years, and I feel like “advertisements in the start menu” indicates that Windows is going down a dark path.
I do have to keep a second PC around to use Windows as a lot of our engineering software is Windows specific, but I do most everything on the Mac.
Got so fed up I deleted windows and run Linux... it's working OK. It's not Mac OS X, but at least it doesn't crash.
I tried, I really tried.
With how diversity and customization are such highly vaunted qualities of Linux desktops, it's disappointing that the most fleshed out DEs are all built around a Win9X-type paradigm, with the only outlier being GNOME which is what one might get if they tried to turn iPadOS into a desktop OS. Where's the DEs inspired by macOS?
Even though it's built with the lowest spec Tiger Lake CPU that was offered at that point in time, it can't keep its fan off doing anything more intensive than web browsing. Even plugging in a rather pedestrian 2560x1440 60hz monitor is enough to keep its fan running. The CPU also sucks more power than it should given its performance, even in "Power Saving" mode under Windows 10/11 and Fedora.
I wish so much that in place of its Intel CPU there was an M1. That alone would increase its appeal dramatically. The ARM-based Thinkpads Lenovo now offers are a nice step in that direction but sadly their performance trails far enough behind the two year old M1 that it isn't an ace in the hole either.
Honestly depending on how things go I might just trade the Nano in for an Air at some point and do Windows Things™ through a Parallels VM running Windows for ARM or even just an RDP session to my custom build tower.
One day I hope Lenovo will figure it out, and I'll easily leave the macbook behind.
X1 series is sadly Intel exclusive though, with the closest thing with AMD being X13, but that isn't quite the same. There's also the Z series but those are weird to say the least and decidedly "un-thinkpaddish". Might just have to settle for X13.
If I were looking to use something other than Macs (which I'm not), there are more good options now than there have ever been. Even though everything is still compared to the benchmark of Mac Laptops, which isn't an accident.
Has there been any instance of you preferring a dedicated Linux box to WSL2?
USB passthrough isn't yet supported, so it's necessary to make use of something like VirtualHere[1] or some another TCPIP tunneling daemon running on the windows depending on what you're trying to do.
There seems to sometimes be issues with resuming from S0ix sleep where the VM process is still "running" but it gets stuck in a state where new processes just will not spawn. It's been a while since I messed with it, but my "solution" was disabling a VM security measure, launching Process Hacker 2 as admin, searching for "lxss" in the process list and terminating the corresponding svchost.
The actual linux kernel running inside WSL2 is interesting, it's microsofts own custom kernel[2] with some magic sauce for making everything play nice. Unfortunately, it (still?) lacks a fully-functional SystemD so making some programs work can be a chore. Also all the kernel modules compiled in, and it doesn't allow loading them dynamically with modprobe. There are some alternative kernels out there that solve some of these issues, though I haven't bothered to try any since whenever I run into these sorts of issues it's less of a hassle to just switch to a dedicated linux box.
For all of the issues that come with Windows 11, having WSLg make running graphical programs "just work" out of the box with rock-solid copy/paste, alt+tab, etc., really makes it a joy to work with.
However, it slows down if you do any type of cross-os file system communication. So you need an IDE that knows how to work around this (eg: VSCode with WSL2 plugin runs a server in the VM to avoid cross-os fs comm)
For example, USBIP is great in many situations, and MS has worked to make it robust, but what I really need is the ability to assign a hardware device directly to the WSL VM - this is possible with Hyper-V, but WSL2’s hyper-v.
Until something like this is possible, for me it’s simpler to have a tiny linux box under my desktop and just use that.
- there's a showstopping memory leak in WSL2 that absolutely destroys your computer in terms of CPU and RAM usage, and makes your WSL machines completely unresponsive whenever you spin up a bunch of Docker containers
- the PATH passthrough feature of WSL2 sometimes causes ‘.’ (the CWD) to get added to the user's PATH if your login shell is Fish (????)
- `systemctl status` is broken with WSL for systemd 251 and newer
- enabling systemd support (and using syschemd to run systemd-based distros without leveraging Microsoft's support for it) causes issues where launching WSL in an unprivileged instance of Windows Terminal means you can't access WSL in elevated Windows Terminal Windows and vice-versa
- using hardware PGP tokens or other smartcards sucks ass, because forwarding your GPG agent to WSL guests is a huge pain (apparently WSLg runs its own `ssh-agent` process, and I don't know whether it has access to USB devices¸but I'd bet not)
- WSLg has random and repeated crashes which spam you with popups for some distros sometimes, and it can only be resolved by shutting down ALL of your WSL VMs
- WSLg's RDP crap gives you the wrong cursor (and one that's way too small)
- WSLg's window management doesn't show mouse cursor changes correctly, so you have to *guess* when your cursor is in the right place to resize a window
- resizing windows with Super+Click or Alt+Click doesn't work (either ‘natively’ to the WSL2 VM or via, e.g., AltSnap)
- sizing and moving WSLg windows sometimes breaks completely. I think somewhere in the stack there's confusion about the positions of windows, which may be related to multimonitor setups
- window maximization for WSLg apps doesn't work right when you have more than one monitor
- OpenGL acceleration randomly decides it won't work for unknown periods of time with WSLg
- basically any VPN completely fucking breaks networking inside WSL, so have fun using it at work
- random crashes and freezes (not super frequent), so sometimes you come back to your machine after the weekend and none of your WSL sessions are usable and you can't open new ones
- the `wsl.exe` has some weird encoding issue or doesn't respect the encoding set for the terminal emulator. Piping `wsl --help` into a pager doesn't work right (either natively on the system or from inside an instance via interop)
- case sensitivity differences across filesystems sometimes breaks git repos, depending on which side of the OS divide they live on and where/how you cloned them
- access to the Windows filesystem from WSL is so slow that it can take literally multiple seconds for a basic git prompt to draw
- access to the Windows filesystem from WSL is so slow and so limited because of Windows behavior with file locking that sometimes you run into locking issues where running git commands from WSL is just broken
- when your virtual disk, which is sparsely allocated, fills up, it takes up additional space on your machine forever, unless you intervene. Enjoy permanently losing dozens or hundreds of GBs of disk just for experimenting with Docker, until you shut your WSL VM down, locate the disk somewhere in $env:LOCALAPPDATA, and shrink it manually
- for some absolutely unfathomable reason, WSL2's new built-in systemd support completely breaks TRAMP sudoedit in Emacs (just hangs, no log output that I could generate). the old, third-party syschemd hack for running systemd does not produce this mysterious issue. (this one was quite a puzzle)
- unusable Linux binaries located on your Windows PATH from Docker GUIs like Rancher Desktop, Docker Desktop, or Portainer can cause your in-WSL Docker client to think it should use them for password management, making it impossible to use `docker login`
And of course, you have to deal with the usual Windows bullshit. I have to manually kill `dwm.exe` every day because after being logged in for a day or two, window management causes a form of input lag that renders the mouse completely unusable if I don't.
I feel like the people who claim that don't understand why people go with either linux or macOS
> If I were looking to use something other than Macs (which I'm not), there are more good options now than there have ever been. Even though everything is still compared to the benchmark of Mac Laptops, which isn't an accident.
That's a very opinionated point of view
The amount of time and energy I had spend fixing silly problems and integrations could've be better used somewhere.
In contrast with mac, I open it and do work and close it knowing it won't explode next time I open it.
PS: If anyone has any ideas about my USB device, I'm all ears. A colleague advised the system report from the Apple menu, but it's a snapshot in time, so useless for my problem.
While it's true that every device can have problems, my experience with Linux was that the problems I encountered were frequent and time-consuming to fix. In contrast, my experience with Mac has been much smoother and I have had fewer issues to deal with.
However, the feeling of speed is made up of much more than just the hardware's capabilities. The OS you use, the toolchain you have access to, impacts your experience as well.
This X1 matches 92% of a 2022 MB Air's single-core performance and 94% of its multi-core performance (https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/19092431). I'm happy to wait an extra 100ms for something to compile in order to have a nicer daily experience of the machine and operating system.
I run Ubuntu or Fedora on my laptops and desktops.
I was looking into MacBook Air, for battery life, weight and keyboard, but don’t want this MacOS black box.
How is Linux on a MacBook Air?
I've had a few freezes on my recently-purchased 12th gen running NixOS, but I've juste applied the documented workarounds for the issue and am waiting to see if those resolve it.
Other than that, it's been a surprisingly solid experience. Sleep on lid close, wake on open, Bluetooth just recognized my ear buds, fingerprint scanner just worked after I enabled it... not a bad setup.
In my experience, older (pre-T2 and Apple silicon) models are relatively easy to get working.
I'm currently running Linux Mint 21 on an Air 2017 that was excruciatingly slow when running mac OS, and it got a lot snappier on linux. The drive is still slow, and I'd love to replace it, but the adapter that supposedly lets you connect an M2 NVMe to that silly we're-so-so-special-and-you-can't-have-an-M2 port didn't work with the spare drive I had on hand.
Oh, and due to restrictive licensing (on Apple or Broadcom's part) the wifi drivers and webcam firmware can't be included in the Mint installation media, so I had to bluetooth tether my mac to my phone to download and install the correct wifi drivers, and also had to download and install the webcam firmware manually.
But I do agree they are the best option if you hate or can’t pay or aren’t allowed to use apple products.
That’s not to mention the performance and heating issues that plague every high-end Windows laptop (i.e. the Dell offers 4k screens and above, such as the XPS 17”, but they suffer from thermal issues, suspend issues, and atrocious sound—not to mention being heavy and cumbersome).
Speaking from experience, having used Linux on a laptop as a primary development machine on-and-off for years, you’ll spend many hours of your life trying to fix trackpad issues, suspend and hibernate problems, fan issues, graphic driver hell, boot issues after kernel upgrades, Bluetooth and Wi-Fi “quirks”, etc. And that’s on Dell’s XPS line, not some oddball laptop.
Let me know when there’s a manufacturer that produces laptops with Apple’s XDR screen quality, similar performance, thermals, sound, build quality, reliability, etc., and with the ability to run Linux natively. Competition would be fantastic. Realistically, I don’t see it happening anytime soon.
I do, however, miss the keyboard and “nub”.
Through a roughly 5 year period of trying various models they were consistently pretty reliable, and very easy to run Debian or Ubuntu on (our standard linux OS), through multiple OS versions too.
The screens and trackpads definitely weren't Apple quality. Not bad, but switching between my Carbon and my Macbook was pretty jarring. That said, it paired up immediately with my Logitech mouse (MX Master) that I got for it, and it was easy to get the driver to show things like mouse battery in the linux menubar, something macOS won't do for you.
Generally everything just worked out of the box, including things like USB-C charging, which was great to share chargers with the Macbooks.
The biggest issue we consistently faced was TPM support. At least once a year a kernel upgrade would totally bork a couple of machines as the TPM got reset of corrupted, meaning the machines would need to be wiped and rebuilt. After the first people would update and get broken we'd just warn the team to be careful around those updates.
The Macbook is of course an amazing device, build quality is great and if you're a fan of MacOS it's the perfect machine. It has a humongous battery as well (almost 100 Wh I think), which really gives it an edge over the T14 (50 Wh), especially since the base power draw is lower (7W vs. 11 W), which itself is ridiculous given the larger screen size. That said the T14 is the perfect Linux machine, everything works out of the box without issues, even the touchscreen and the fingerprint reader. There is still a minor issue when suspending/waking up (touchpad reactivity will degrade), but I hope there will be a fix soon.
> Integrated Intel® Iris® Xe Graphics
No Nvidia, nice, may work with OpenBSD
> 8 GB LPDDR5-6400MHz (Soldered)
Why Soldered Memory, not good. And who sells 8gb memory with a serious look :)
> 256 GB SSD M.2 2280 PCIe TLC Opal
Fine by me
> Intel® Wi-Fi 6E AX211 2x2 AX vPro® & Bluetooth® 5.1
Should be fine
> 14" WUXGA (1920 x 1200)
Edit, not bad I think - seems even better than 16:9, more vertical resolution, nice.
All in all, sorry, I will pass due to the Soldered Memory. But looks like a nice machine that could be used with a BSD
LPDDR5 does not exist in DIMM for technical reasons. Laptops with discrete RAM sticks use slower and more power hungry regular DDR5. There are pros and cons both ways.
The specs are configurable, OP just linked to a specific configuration. Though the soldered memory is an unfortunate compromise to the conventional ThinkPad experience.
The T series thinkpads usually have a soldered module and SODIMM slot, if you prefer that route. And of course there is the Framework with two SODIMM slots.
And as far as who sells 8 GB RAM laptops seriously... Lots of vendors, including Apple (and they charge $200 to upgrade that to 16 GB). Frankly I think 8 GB is fine for a lot of use cases, although maybe not in 5 years or so.
Carbon is a great material though - apple needs to stop with aluminum.
The keyboard is very (VERY!) wonky, got two replacements, it's systemic. The touchpad dies every 2-3 weeks, Lenovo service has been great, getting me a new one within 2-3 days every time, I gave up on replacing it after two months, and just use ... sorry ... a magic trackpad. The middle of it started bubbling up about 3 months in - leaving about a 3-5mm gap when closing the lid. Not that the lid ever closed tightly anyway. Don't even get my started on battery life. It doesn't exist.
Switched from using Fedora to PopOS. Which - for me - is an even better experience.
And just to be clear: It's the hardware that's crap, not the software. And: I have been a ThinkPad user for the last 30 years. Still have my 700C, and all the models inbetween.
And while X series Thinkpads are solid workhorses with reliable warranty, this is not true. I'm not even talking about that Lenovo/the whole segment still doesn't have a competitor for the original M1 with battery life/performance. But due to old rotten deals they are only offered with Intel CPUs that have terrible thermals, throttling, and have shaky Arc GPU drivers. I can't even choose them with the better AMD options out of the already uncompetitive x86 options. There are other lines like the Yoga 7 Gen 7 (that is more aimed at the macbook crowd) but those lack the business features that would put them somewhat in line with value.
Most serious non-Apple laptop makers are in a Catch-22 with their lucrative Intel exclusivity contracts.
I also really like the M1 Macbook hardware a lot and think that's a sweet experience!
One thing of interest that I am noticing in the comments is certain comments coming off as "absolute truth" in regard to the experience with their preferred OS and hardware vs a less preferred alternative. I find it useful to chill out and realize that everyone will find things they like more about the OS and ecosystem they have chosen.
All OS-es have awesome strengths and frustrating weaknesses and I find it annoying when anyone tries to argue otherwise. Let people enjoy their chosen paradise!
@hunterloftis what ultrawide monitor do you use?
I own an X1 Carbon Gen 10, i7-1260P, 2TB, 32GB RAM with OLED screen and WWAN modem with Ubuntu 22.04. The webcam and the WWAN modem are still not supported under Linux.
I want to buy a Lenovo ThinkVision P40w-20 5K ultrawide monitor, but after googling I see that many people having problem with Ubuntu 22.04/Wayland.
Maybe it's working with Fedora, but not with Ubuntu?
What's the resolution of your UW monitor, and does the Intel integrated graphics fast enough for it?
https://displaysolutions.samsung.com/monitor/detail/1280/C34...
It's 3440x1440, and yes the Intel driver under Fedora drives it flicker-free at 100 Hz.
-Recent X1s have switched to a higher TDP Intel processor (p instead of u series?), so I imagine performance has improved at the expense of more fan noise.
- I went with the matt 2k screen, which doesn't have the brightness of a macbook screen.
Thinkpads are often up to 30% off on lenovos website, but it seems that they don't discount the configurable options any more, which rules out getting a good price for a 32GB config.
Just to clarify here, I got a 32GB model at 51% off (that "sale" is now at 49%).
Another consideration was having a company that cares about Linux running flawlessly, and Red Hat gives their employees Thinkpads. That dogfooding means that if I'm having a problem, it's likely some Red Hat employee is having the same problem, so it ought to be fixed soon :)
ARM Macintosh Book has better battery life, but it does not run usefully run Linux (yet).
The hardware is definitely not Apple level, but it's good, and for those of us for whom Apple software/ecosystem for various reasons are not a fit, the combination of Fedora and Thinkpad is something to be grateful for.
As much as I support the motivation behind System76 and Framework- and I own products from both- the quality is not (yet) professional tier. Fedora + Thinkpad is.
Here's the script: https://github.com/luisgerhorst/fancontrol-tpx1c9
Nice, but not world-shattering. Also noisy. Would not use it instead of a MacBook Air, let alone a Pro.
- mbp isn't dead (yet)
- x1 is made in china, human rights issues
- x1 is less repairable than other thinkpad models such as t14 or p14 (which are still made in china, however)
- now there is linux support for mbp for dual booting
I was under the impression that most MBP are made in China?
afaik they all are, but this was a purchase from several years ago
Future gens of mbp might not be made in China (but afaik they still are)
And with me so will probably go my company's fleet as well. Thinkpads are still the best corporate series I've seen (including Macbooks) but the value for money just isnt there any more: what's the point of squeezing out depreciation as far as you can when you are starting at 2x the price/benefit?
How long does the battery last?
Using Ubuntu, does hibernation work?
As a final tip, the touchpad might be good, but imho the real benefit of the thinkpad line is the TrackPoint. You can do basic mousing without moving your hands.
I haven't spent more than 8-10 hours off of a charger, so I don't know what the death point is for the battery. At least a full day working & streaming.
I use Fedora, not Ubuntu, so I can't speak to Ubuntu's hibernation. Power management works seamlessly on Fedora: connecting/disconnecting battery, opening/closing lid when connecting/not, timing out to sleep, awaking on keypress or lid open, etc etc. All the annoying combinations that, previously, I've had issues with on Linux devices.
Thanks for the trackpoint tip! I do want to try to acclimate to it because that sounds like a nice workflow. It's hard to break muscle memory, though.
That i7-1280P only has 6 performance cores on "Intel 7", when the Ryzen 7 PRO 6850U as in the Gen3 X13 ThinkPad has 8 performance cores on "TSMC 6nm-FinFet".
Using the same hardware that Lenovo ships with linux out-of-the-box, as well as the same hardware that Red Hat employees use, is worth more to me than a couple of extra performance cores. CPUs have been "fast enough" for my use cases for years.
* Just because the node is slightly newer/better doesn't necessarily translate to overall better battery life. AFAIK 12th gen Intel is very competitive with even the newest AMD chips.
* Possibly a price premium on the AMD models? I'm not sure.
* The AMD models sometimes come with realtek WiFi chips with poor Linux support, so you might have to swap for a mediatek/qcom/Intel chip which is better supported. Extra 20 bucks and the hassle of having to pop it open. Also I think you might have to fiddle with the BIOS to disable the WiFi card whitelist, but I'm not sure on this specific thinkpad style/gen/model.
Neither would let me re-enable S3.
Again, unlike my other devices, the Lenovos become almost useless if the internal display breaks. They require intervention on boot (internal disp only) if you use an unofficial power supply.
This isnt even counting battery life, the M1 performance, trackpad quality, trackpad click mechanism, trackpad size, on and on, etc. Keyboard deck flex. The list goes on. Complete stockholm syndrome vibes.
there is a simpsons episode where homer designs a car. it has a lot of cup holders and is very expensive. this is a lot like macos, and even more like the linux setups people struggle to get to work after migrating off mac.
architectural tip: fewer cupholders.
This is terribly inadequate as a MacBook replacement. It's noticeably slower than any Apple Silicon machine, it has terrible battery life, the screen has the same absurdly-wide aspect ratio common to so many PC laptops, which makes them useless for so much real work, and the heat management is a complete joke. Fan runs, loudly, if you even breathe on the machine.
And of course, the trackpad is vastly inferior to Apple's.
...but the Gen 10 X1 with out-of-the-box Fedora, the topic of this post, was released just a few months ago.
> It's noticeably slower than any Apple Silicon machine
Given how fast it feels, this claim sounded unlikely, so I just ran Geekbench 5, yielding 1769 (single) and 8385 (multi-core):
https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/19092431
The 2022 MacBook Air gets 1932 and 8919, respectively, so the X1 matches 92% of its single-core performance and 94% of its multi-core performance. You and I may have different definitions of "noticeably slower" and "terribly inadequate."
> Fan runs, loudly, if you even breathe on the machine
Ironically, the first time I've heard the fans is running geekbench just now, and even then they were quiet.
Given all this, I think it's unlikely we're talking about the same machine.
I don't think that's right - pretty sure that the X1 Carbon has a 16:10 screen rather than the typical 16:9 one.
But the heat issues and the terrible fan noise would be disqualifying for me.