Why do people still recommend Thinkpads for Linux when there are Linux-oriented manufacturers now?

Zatujit , 10 months ago

Cost? Framework is not really “Linux oriented”.

Double_A , 10 months ago

Cost and availability.

Most of those laptops cost over 1000€ if not even closer to 2000. And they don’t seem to ship to all countries.

While you can get a good used Thinkpad for 500€ everywhere in the world.

drwho , 10 months ago

And that’s with shipping included.

Cpo , 10 months ago

And the CPU + RAM upgrade.

Venutianxspring , 10 months ago

They can be found cheap as shit. I got a great t480 for less than $150 and another $50 I upgraded my RAM and battery. It’s a really nice laptop and only cost me a couple hundred.

LemonGrease , 10 months ago

Funny red nipple

spauldo , 10 months ago

“Clit mouse,” per xkcd. And it’s a major reason why I buy them.

freagle , 10 months ago

Exactly. Track point is the number one reason

Shinji_Ikari , 10 months ago

I literally spent my hard earned bucks on a Tex Shinobi from one guy in Taiwan just so I could get the trackpoint for the desktop with a mechanical form factor without having to source a 30 year old Model M.

It’s my favorite keyboard ever btw. Don’t sleep on the Tex keyboards.

TheButtonJustSpins , 10 months ago

That looks super old school.

Shinji_Ikari , 10 months ago

The layout is based on an old thinkpad layout which is cool. I never use the number pad either so it’s perfect for me. The palm rests are so comfortable as well.

01189998819991197253 , 10 months ago

I mean… It didn’t NOT persuade me…

argv_minus_one , 10 months ago

Also, why the hell would anyone ever recommend Lenovo for anything after the Superfish scandal?

yum13241 , 10 months ago

Superfish would only function on Winblows however.

argv_minus_one , 10 months ago

True, but you know what they say. “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.” Maybe the last malicious firmware only does its evil thing if you’re running Windows, but what about the next malicious firmware? After such a grave betrayal, no one should trust Lenovo ever again. Not as long as other options exist.

yum13241 , 10 months ago

Not to mention that Lenovo doesn’t make money on dinosaur ThinkPads anymore.

01189998819991197253 , 10 months ago

Superfish TL;DR

Kind of reminds me of Verizon’s App Manager.

yoz , 10 months ago

Avoid purism at all costs. Watch Louis Rossman video on Purism mobile.

icdl , 10 months ago

I’ve gotten a lenovo legion 5 for something around 1600$, with a 3070 rtx on it. Before that I had another legion as well, with 2060. I’ve gotten intel both times, my friend got the amd one. Why? They are a bit cheaper than the competition and I don’t really understand why asus version of essentially the same hardware costs more. Why not a linux oriented company instead of lenovo? Well linux isn’t as out of reach as it was 10 or even 5 years ago. Almost every driver you need is available even if you do a clean arch install out of the box. So why get a device that you can’t easily sell later on, won’t get god warranty services overseas and might be hard to repair in a pinch?

All this to say, get whatever you like. I think even on a macbook you can get a perfectly fine linux setup. I hate it when people assume linux needs to run on something specific and is out of reach. Get what you like at whatever price range you want, you’d be hard pressed to run into an issue installing and using linux on it.

I’ve gamed, developed web and android apps, patched kernel on asus rog series, lenovo legion series, some random msi model and a base configuration acer model. Almost zero problems.

Quackdoc , 10 months ago

I literally threw a ThinkPad at a brick wall in rage a long time ago and it was fine a t-42 iirc. reccomended them ever since

owatnext , 10 months ago

I dropped my T420s down the steps by accident. No issues, but the disc drive managed to fly out haha.

ggnoredo , 10 months ago

None of them are available in my country

S_H_K , 10 months ago

I yearn for a starfighter and they send to my country but my government has an astronomical tax on anything priced over 200 dollars.

Tankiedesantski , 10 months ago

Even if they’ll sell one to you internationally, you’re probably shit out of luck if something breaks and needs to be fixed under warranty.

circuitfarmer , 10 months ago

Cost.

Older Thinkpads remain extremely capable and (crucially) highly repairable. The T series in particular is also better built (read: more solid chassis) than many others, including some on this list.

It doesn’t make a lot of sense to support these alternatives given the absolute shock difference in cost. $300 bucks for a used T series gets you a lot from a customizability, repairability, and reliability standpoint.

eldavi , 10 months ago

It doesn’t make a lot of sense to support these alternatives given the absolute shock difference in cost. $300 bucks for a used T series gets you a lot from a customizability, repairability, and reliability standpoint.

1. bios updates leaves you at the mercy of the manufacturer;
2. not every bios and distro works w lenovo’s bios update utility;
3. and your battery life & performance has a big dependency on your bios so using something that it’s not designed to handle (eg anything that’s not windows) will result in less than optimal results. 3.5) same goes for hardware eg nvidia

circuitfarmer , 10 months ago

I’ve had 4-5 such systems running Linux and never experienced any issues with BIOS.

Obviously you shouldn’t get a model using nvidia if you want to run Linux on it (unless you are aware of the extra time it takes to set up and the other pitfalls). I do actually have a T440p with a 730m in it – and it’s fine, I just run the open-source driver.

xcxcb , 10 months ago

This is just fear mongering and wrong.

miss_brainfart , 10 months ago

If you’re a FOSS enthusiast, might as well buy one of the models that are supported by Libreboot

eruchitanda , 10 months ago

It saddens me to say this, but don’t buy from Purism. My Librem 5, after 2 years, still didn’t arrive.

vim_b , 10 months ago

I opted for the Fir model, knowing version 2 would probably be 5–7 years away. My wife joked that we would have a school-age child before I got it… except it’s slowly becoming not a joke (and we didn’t even have kids when I preordered).

skankhunt42 , 10 months ago

100% don’t buy from Purism. I had their laptop. Librem 14? 15? And I gave it away to a friend after about a year. I had so many problems with it.

I had pre-ordered the phone but I asked for a refund just a month or so before everyone started saying they stopped giving refunds.

I have 4 pinephones, while they’re not daily driver ready, they’re awesome little devices and I’ve written a couple things for them. I also have 0 complaints about my system 76 laptop.

treadful , 10 months ago

I got a Librem 13. Wasn’t worth it.

BobbyBandwidth , 10 months ago

Linux is DIY by nature. Buying a fancy, brand new laptop is not.

Not saying you can’t do both. I’m just saying the Linux ethos lends to more crafty people.

raven , 10 months ago

Do any of these have:

• As nice a keyboard, that I don’t have to worry about spilling a cup of coffee on.
• Track point or similar.
• Ability to survive a fall down a flight of stairs.
• 4:3 or 16:10 aspect ratio.
• Ports.
  While being built with repairability in mind?

I day dream about stuffing the guts of a modern laptop inside with a USB hub and an enormous battery, but that’s a huge undertaking.

M68040 , 10 months ago

I’ve always kinda wondered what System76’s stuff is like. Battery life’d be the main priority for my use case. (I really like my M2 Air for this)

jg1i , 10 months ago

I bought a Framework once. The build quality was better than System76, but not great. However, Framework is not a Linux laptop. They designed it for Windows and only afterwards they were surprised to find that people wanted it for Linux.

A lot of Linux laptops don’t have HiDPI displays because they’re not really compatible.

Example Framework: community.frame.work/t/…/8301

For years people have been trying to work around Framework’s poor display choice. And they’re still trying.

If you have a regular DPI display, you get to avoid a whole class of bugs and issues.

If you wanna have a good time with Linux, you need some mechanical sympathy.

Btw, tbh, brb, I’ve had good success with the Dell XPS 13 and the Lenovo X1 Carbon. System76 build quality was meh.

treadful , 10 months ago

I did the OG Framework’s DIY build. By far the best laptop build quality I’ve used. I’m a little partial because I love that the hardware is accessible. Clearly marked screws! Unlike my Lenovo X1 Carbon’s that are just single boards (but I still really like them).

Complaining they chose HiDPI display is pretty funny though. My X1 Carbon 7th gen has a HiDPI screen, and I had to go through all the same UI scaling issues. Each toolkit had to be scaled differently. Chrome of course did their own thing. It was a PITA, but hardly because of the screen’s hardware pixel density.

And to add, my Purism was trash and literally fell apart within months.

Gecko , 10 months ago

As someone running a Framework 13 with Fedora 38 with 1.5 fractional scaling using Wayland I cannot say I experienced the same issue. Everything kinda just worked out of the box.

Personally I couldn’t go back from HiDPI screens. The lower resolution just makes stuff look blurry IMO.