Tell HN: The ThinkPad X1 Carbon is an excellent MacBook replacement

135 points by hunterloftis 3 years ago | 210 comments

If you would like to develop outside of the Apple ecosystem, find Windows clunky, and dislike fiddling with Linux to get it to work on arbitrary hardware, consider the X1 with Fedora. I bought one at the recent Black Friday sale: $1,700 for a 12 Gen i7-1280P, 32GB, 512GB SSD. I love this machine.

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 I've been using it as my daily driver for a week and I've yet to dive down a rabbit-hole of outdated forum advice to get something basic to work.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.

gryf 3 years ago |

There is no such thing as a macbook replacement at the moment IMHO. There is literally nothing with the same quality, battery life, thermals, audio, display, keyboard and reliability on the market. Not even the most expensive machines can get anywhere near even an M1 MacBook Air on this front. The M1 MBP destroys everything else.

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.

smoldesu 3 years ago | |

Macbook hardware is great, but you could not pay me any amount to daily-drive a recent version of MacOS. Big Sur was like the Windows 8 moment for MacOS, and it just compounded on the limitations that Apple had been building up to. Even if I couldn't have my "nice things" in Linux like KDE and VS Code, I'd still be using it simply on the basis that it behaves how I expect.

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.

gryf 3 years ago | | |

What particularly did you get screwed by with Big Sur?

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.

thefz 3 years ago | | |

Same for me, I can't imagine myself doing any meaningful work on MacOS. It gets too much in the way and the user interface is distracting and slow.

marto1 3 years ago | | |

> Macbook hardware is great

Then install Linux on the Macbook? Two setups ago I was running this config and it was pretty great.

triyambakam 3 years ago | |

So you ignored everything the post had to say and instead rehashed your own bitter experiences.

sshine 3 years ago | |

I have both a gaming laptop running Linux and a 2021 M1 MBP.

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.

Grimburger 3 years ago | |

> reliability

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?

https://isapplesiliconready.com/for/unsupported

zimpenfish 3 years ago | | |

Weird that Wine is listed since I've got Wine on my M1 and it works fine running, e.g., Mineways. Maybe it's just some specific Code Weavers version? But Wine itself works fine on Apple Silicon.

hunterloftis 3 years ago | |

I have had similar experiences to you in the past, which is why I posted about the different experience I had with the latest Thinkpad X1 Carbon that comes with Fedora Linux out of the box.

ldjkfkdsjnv 3 years ago | |

I completely agree. There is literally no comparison, I cannot ever imagine going back to a windows.

acidburnNSA 3 years ago | | |

Linux laptops for development work are pretty fantastic, imho.

acidburnNSA 3 years ago | |

Have you tried a System 76 linux laptop like the lemur pro? Pretty fancy. I've had one since 2020 and love it.

https://system76.com/laptops/lemur

gryf 3 years ago | | |

No they don’t exist my side of the pond.

vim-guru 3 years ago | |

This could have been my reply. I even have the same stupid PC

qumpis 3 years ago | |

You say, talking about Linux: "It might work today but it probably won't tomorrow". Can you elaborate?

gryf 3 years ago | | |

I've had 20 years of anxiety about closing the lid, hibernating, sleeping. Numerous working configurations became non working configurations after kernel updates and distribution upgrades.

And that doesn't include some of the problems with the desktop software I've had.

On the server, zero hassle.

athrun 3 years ago | | |

Not OP, but I found there's a sort of bell curve with Linux support on laptops.

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.

xtracto 3 years ago | | |

There are plenty of online accounts of "new Linux kernel versions" affecting working software. The last one I remember seeing is Linux in a MacBookPro hardware (I think MBP 2011) that started waking up immediately after sleeping due to some USB issues. Apparently the only known way to fix that was to "downgrade the Kernel" to some other version.

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?

SamuelAdams 3 years ago |

Can you provide more details about these three things?

- 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.

therealmarv 3 years ago |

Found recently a no go for me against Linux on desktop (it's important for my workflows):

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.

kitsunesoba 3 years ago | |

Color management still has major issues on Windows too. For a while I was running a calibrated profile on my Windows desktop and it doesn't consistently apply to every app, and you need to use a third party daemon to periodically reload the profile to make sure that the apps that can use it actually do. It's a mess.

jll29 3 years ago |

I'm using an Apple MacBook Air M1 (2020) with 16 GB RAM and 1 TB SSD and a Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon with 16 GB RAM and 1 TB SSD at the same time. As an intense power user, I care less about budget and more about the quality of the machine I use.

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.

davidcollantes 3 years ago |

I can't speak for others, but for me it is 80% macOS (and its seamless synergy with everything Apple I own), and 20% hardware, what keeps me on Apple.

kitsunesoba 3 years ago |

I own a first gen ThinkPad X1 Nano and while it's a great laptop in many regards (super lightweight and tiny, great screen, has support for proper S3 sleep, and generally good in respects that x86 laptops often aren't), its CPU undermines it entirely.

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.

Eldandan 3 years ago | |

The X1 Nano is my dream device with the form factor, keyboard, trackpoint, and 16:10 hd+ ips display all rolled into an incredibly portable package. I used mine from gen 1 release until this summer. I now have an m2 macbook air as daily driver because of hardware and power efficiency / optimization / integration and fanless design.

One day I hope Lenovo will figure it out, and I'll easily leave the macbook behind.

goosedragons 3 years ago | |

Maybe give one of the AMD versions a try if you can? My P14s Gen 2 AMD with a Ryzen 5 5650U has been very quiet even running multiple monitors, temps have been low generally in mid-30s/low 40s unless I really push it. Supports S3 sleep too.

kitsunesoba 3 years ago | | |

Yeah, maybe. The main issue there is that I was buying for it specifically being a good laptop, with portability taking a front seat, without gimmicks that add fragility like a hybrid hinge. The X1 Nano (aside from CPU) excels at this, whereas P series for example makes compromises for better power, which I don't need. If I want power my well cooled 5950X/3080Ti tower offers that in quantities far greater than any laptop could deliver.

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.

dlevine 3 years ago |

Honestly, the X1 Carbon is a nice laptop. And even if you don't want to run Linux as your main OS, Windows 11 really isn't bad. With WSL2, you can use have all of the benefits of Linux for development while being able to run whatever Windows apps you want, and it really was pretty easy to setup. You can even run VS Code on Windows and edit files in your Linux container. I had a period last year and this year where I was consulting, and used my Ryzen Desktop as my main work machine.

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.

christkv 3 years ago |

I’m really looking at the framework laptops as well for my next laptop. The ability to fix and upgrade it as well as what seems like good build quality is enticing.

spiffytech 3 years ago | |

I got one last month and I'm very happy with it. Linux still has a a graphics issue with 12th-gen Intel, but the hardware has been great.

christkv 3 years ago | | |

How’s the keyboard ?

postit 3 years ago |

A long time linux user, turned to mac user, back to linux and now back to mac again disagrees with you.

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.

sofixa 3 years ago | |

The thing is though, when there is an issue on macOS (like it complaining a USB peripheral is using too much power and it has been suspended, of course without saying which USB peripheral, or the iPad you want to extend your screen to not showing), there's usually not much you can do. The OS is pretty closed down, very specific and the majority of materials online are on the "try turning it off and on again" level. With Linux distros there might be more to debug, but at least you can debug.

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.

fsflover 3 years ago | |

I downvoted you, because your comment doesn't bring anything to the conversation. Vague "silly problems" occur on every device, even on my microwave.

postit 3 years ago | | |

Just because you downvoted my comment doesn't mean it's not valid. Downvotes are a subjective measure of agreement and they do not necessarily reflect the accuracy or usefulness of a comment. Others may find value in my personal experience with Linux and Mac, and it's not up to you to decide whether my comment is relevant or not.

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.

spullara 3 years ago |

The M1 has completely and utterly outclassed Intel/AMD and there is no way I would buy one now except for games and ML workloads that need NVIDIA cards.

hunterloftis 3 years ago | |

I agree the M1 is great hardware.

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.

spullara 3 years ago | | |

And 0% of its silence while doing all that. Also, I would check real benchmarks. I have seen much bigger differences.

mikece 3 years ago |

Can it drive a pair of 4K monitors? The only reason I've not bought one of the HP DevOne units -- https://hpdevone.com/ -- is the lack of support to drive external 4K monitors.

goosedragons 3 years ago | |

Lenovo's tech specs for the Gen 10 Carbon say it's capable of driving 3 external monitors, 5K on the TB ports, 4K on HDMI. So dual 4K is doable.

thefz 3 years ago | |

Usually if you check the CPU specs on the Intel website, the integrated graphics part in the details will tell you max resolution/refresh.

roland35 3 years ago | |

mine seems to drive both 4k monitors just fine! I use a Tunderbolt Caldigit dock. Windows 10

fsflover 3 years ago | |

Purism Librem 14 can.

aborsy 3 years ago |

What is currently the best lightweight Linux laptop on market? I hear mixed reviews on System76 construction quality.

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?

NateEag 3 years ago | |

The Framework isn't bad.

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.

bakoo 3 years ago | |

> How is Linux on a MacBook Air?

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.

ArcMex 3 years ago | |

Regarding Apple Silicon, last I checked Asahi Linux had made some significant strides but with drivers YMMV. Might be worth looking into if you’re serious about running Linux on Apple Silicon. As for Intel, I’m not too sure. About as mature as it’s been for a while now, I reckon.

hawk_ 3 years ago | |

LG Gram series has a few light ones, have been using linux mint xfce4 on one for daily dev.

ghaff 3 years ago | |

The Lenovos tend to be pretty good for Fedora. (They're the standard systems that Red Hat gives associates for Linux.) Dell XPS 13 seem like nice systems as well and can ship with Ubuntu.

midrus 3 years ago |

I’ve used thinkpads (and the X1 in particular) for many years. And I do think they’re the best option you have outside of the apple ecosystem. But they are far, far, far of being an excellent replacement for MacBooks. Specially after the new Apple silicon has shown up. The deep OS integration, power saving, performance, seamless upgrades of OS, build materials quality, trackpad, audio quality, etc, etc is far ahead on MacBooks.

But I do agree they are the best option if you hate or can’t pay or aren’t allowed to use apple products.

qubitcoder 3 years ago |

Unfortunately, while I loved and used ThinkPads for many years, the lack of a 4k or similar hi-DPI screen immediately makes this a non-starter. As does the pitifully poor brightness and color coverage. I’ve never understood how developers could work on a low quality screen after seeing (or using) the first MacBook Pro with a “retina” screen.

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”.

hnbear 3 years ago |

In a previous role at a Macbook only shop one team requiring linux machines got X1 Carbons as they best linux machine generally available and easily supportable.

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.

ThePhysicist 3 years ago |

I'm using both a 16'' Macbook Pro (M1) and a 14' Lenovo T14 (Gen 3), the former mostly for work and the latter for personal computing using Linux (Kubuntu). Both machines are great, the new T14 was the first laptop I was happy to replace my T460p with. I tried a few of the earlier Lenovo models but they were terrible and hardly offered any performance improvements over my 5 year old model.

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.

jmclnx 3 years ago |

Lets see:

> 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

nicolaslem 3 years ago | |

> Why Soldered Memory, not good.

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.

richbell 3 years ago | |

> All in all, sorry, I will pass due to the Soldered Memory

The specs are configurable, OP just linked to a specific configuration. Though the soldered memory is an unfortunate compromise to the conventional ThinkPad experience.

CameronNemo 3 years ago | | |

I don't think that any configuration has SO-DIMM RAM, you need to go to the T series for that.

CameronNemo 3 years ago | |

The X1 line is supposed to be an ultrabook style laptop i.e. as thin as possible. Hence the soldered RAM. Furthermore power consumption with socketed RAM is higher.

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.

jhickok 3 years ago | |

I don't mind soldered memory but it's hard to imagine buying a new laptop in 2022 with a mere 8gb if it's going to be soldered.

jocaal 3 years ago | |

When did memory become that fast? did I miss 2ghz of progress?

benced 3 years ago |

I had one and quite liked it (gen 6 I think?). One caveat is that my E key broke and I swapped it. However, I noted the date and from the relative frequency of how often E is used (most common letter) vs A (second most common letter), I was able to accurately predict the month my A key would break. That’s… not great.

Carbon is a great material though - apple needs to stop with aluminum.

not_me_ever 3 years ago |

I own the 16", i9 (>$5000) version of this, and I must say: a) It's one of the best PC notebooks I ever owned. b) It's a piece of crap.

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.

hunterloftis 3 years ago | |

That sounds rough! I would probably look into getting a full replacement (possibly with a different model) from Lenovo, given such persistent "lemon" issues.

sagarm 3 years ago | |

Sure your battery isn't swelling? The poor battery life and fact that the middle is bubbling...

poisonborz 3 years ago |

I'm happy that OP is happy, but he points out to the most highly regarded model of the most beloved non-Apple laptop brand as a great alternative...

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.

heywoodlh 3 years ago |

I am glad for those that have found machines and operating systems that work for them. For myself, I also prefer a solid Linux (NixOS) workstation over anything else.

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!

nivertech 3 years ago |

> 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.

@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?

hunterloftis 3 years ago | |

@nivertech I use the Samsung c34j74x:

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.

kristianp 3 years ago |

I have an X1 gen 6 and I love it. Keyboard keys don't have the nice click to them like a mac or surface, it's more of a mushy feel. However thinkpads do have pgup, pgdn, home and end buttons which is a big plus if you learnt to type on a pc desktop.

-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.

hunterloftis 3 years ago | |

> 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%).

kristianp 3 years ago | | |

That's cool. Is that for an X1 Carbon or something else?

zmz88 3 years ago |

I was thinking about getting one of these to replace my 6+ year old XPS 13. Did you compare this to the new XPS 13 Plus? It looks like for Linux laptops, these are pretty much the only two good options. How's the battery life?

hunterloftis 3 years ago | |

I did compare it to the XPS 13 - the XPS looked like a solid machine, but it felt a little cramped to me. I preferred the still-svelte-but-bigger 14" X1.

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 :)

i_am_proteus 3 years ago | |

T14S and other Think Pads are also pretty good. I use a latest-generation T14S and get about eight hours running modest workloads on Fedora.

ARM Macintosh Book has better battery life, but it does not run usefully run Linux (yet).

kitplummer 3 years ago |

I like my Framework with Ubuntu. Wish it wasn't Ubuntu but everything works.

timbit42 3 years ago | |

Why can't you use Linux Mint which is based on Ubuntu?

jonahbenton 3 years ago |

The larger P series from Lenovo are also excellent, have 4k screens, and run Fedora flawlessly. They also have next day onsite warranty support which actually works.

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.

wtf77 3 years ago |

I have tried several non-apple systems with windows or Linux. No, sorry, but unless you want to go crazy behind the PC and/or operating system Apple wins hands down.

luis2527 3 years ago |

Compared to the MB, the fan is loud. I even stated writing my own fan control, but it can't fix the fan that's either definitely audible at 4500RPM or dead silent at 0RPM (which is not sustainable even for very light workloads on Linux).

Here's the script: https://github.com/luisgerhorst/fancontrol-tpx1c9

luis2527 3 years ago | |

The solution I settled with was to use a 2m Thunderbolt cable to move the thing away from my desk. In an office environment this works, but in quiet rooms it may not.

sys_64738 3 years ago |

My criteria for a laptop are: must be totally silent with no loud fans, very long battery life, must not overheat. Usually that rules out any Intel laptop.

encryptluks2 3 years ago |

You know what works as a MacBook replacement? Pretty much any laptop. I have yet to encounter a laptop that didn't run Arch Linux just fine.

rcarmo 3 years ago |

Related: my take on the X1 Yoga (not Carbon), similar configuration: https://taoofmac.com/space/blog/2022/12/03/1600

Nice, but not world-shattering. Also noisy. Would not use it instead of a MacBook Air, let alone a Pro.

jonaf 3 years ago |

I purchased the ThinkPad P1 mobile workstation in 2018. It's a great machine but it's about as loud as a vacuum cleaner.

ArcMex 3 years ago | |

I’ve eyed the P series for years but ever since I got a MacBook Air, I have come to expect my machines to be silent.

thefz 3 years ago |

So far I am impressed at the quality of my X1 Yoga Gen.6. The least bullshit, most work oriented machine I've ever had.

pbsurf 3 years ago |

Excellent until the charging ports burn out, requiring a motherboard replacement: https://forums.lenovo.com/t5/ThinkPad-X-Series-Laptops/X1-Ca...

privacyking 3 years ago | |

Macbook M1s have the exact same problem (and have less ports), and good luck getting that fixed for any reasonable price.

elgar1212 3 years ago |

I've been considering moving from a mbp to an x1 for a while now, but a couple things are keeping me from it:

- 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

sva_ 3 years ago | |

> x1 is made in china, human rights issues

I was under the impression that most MBP are made in China?

elgar1212 3 years ago | | |

> 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

nequo 3 years ago | |

Isn’t the MacBook Pro also manufactured in China?

elgar1212 3 years ago | | |

Yes, but I got it several years ago and wasn't as concerned about China at the time

Future gens of mbp might not be made in China (but afaik they still are)

akvadrako 3 years ago | |

You might be okay with laptops from Taiwan instead of mainland China, for example ASUS. They have nicer laptops than Lenovo too.

sofixa 3 years ago | | |

And they have machines in different ranges to choose from, including light beasts such as the ROG Zephyrus G14 which manages to pack a lot of power including a dedicated GPU in roughly the same weight as an M series MacBook Pro.

elgar1212 3 years ago | | |

Are all models made in Taiwan though? Where do you find the data to confirm where they source their parts from?

cm277 3 years ago |

I've used Thinkpads exclusively for >20 years, last ~10 all X1s. I am typing this on an X1C Gen10 as well. It's an OK machine, but unless something shifts spectacularly, it will be my last Thinkpad: it runs hot, even with the fan on (I dont code anymore; this is just standard Office workload), its battery is ridiculous for 2022 (~6-7hrs in practice even with battery saver turned on) and it's glitchy (which granted may be Windows 11). At the end of the day, I can excuse all of these if a) it wasnt a nearly $3k machine (!), b) that Macbooks didnt exist.

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?

vxNsr 3 years ago |

Does this support 2560x1440p@60Hz x3? Lenovo promised that their thinkpad 14s with the thinkpad thunderbolt 4 dock could do it, but the dock fails to actually consistently display all 3 monitors, with one irregularly flickering.

tomjen3 3 years ago |

Does the fingerprint reader work?

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.

hunterloftis 3 years ago | |

I don't know if the fingerprint reader works - I don't like them, so haven't tried to set it up (it's integrated into the power button, which of course does work).

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.

pengaru 3 years ago |

Why wouldn't you get one of the AMD ThinkPads?

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".

hunterloftis 3 years ago | |

Because I wanted hardware that's already been tested end-to-end with not only linux in general, but the distro & version I'm using (Fedora 36).

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.

CameronNemo 3 years ago | |

* Deep suspend has been hit or miss on AMD thinkpads; you can check Lenovo forums. I'm actually not sure if Intel is any better, but it is something to consider.

* 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.

wereallterrrist 3 years ago |

Lenovo has the absolute worst bioses of any laptops I've ever bought. None have LVFS/fwupdmgr support. My most recent one, bought from newegg, appears to be a limited mainline-china-only release that hasnt received A SINGLE BIOS UPDATE despite there being numerous high-sev platform updates for every other device in my arsenal.

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.

nathants 3 years ago |

i have this laptop and am also very satisifed. zero issues. i run a minimal dev setup[1].

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.

1. https://github.com/nathants/alpine-setup

gigatexal 3 years ago |

I have a Lenovo p14s. I got it from work. I love it. I came from a 2020 MacBook Pro. I’ll never ever go back to MacOS. I love my thinkpad and fedora too much.

caycep 3 years ago |

Granted, I feel they've been slacking on the (previously) legendary T series models, sadly...screen/trackpad suck and the chassis flexes

Bud 3 years ago |

I set up and supported 200 X1 Carbons over the past few years.

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.

hunterloftis 3 years ago | |

> I set up and supported 200 X1 Carbons over the past few years.

...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.

NovemberWhiskey 3 years ago | |

>the screen has the same absurdly-wide aspect ratio common to so many PC laptops

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.

ergonaught 3 years ago |

I've been using the X1 Carbon for my Linux laptops for at least six years (4th Generation), and mostly love it.

boppo1 3 years ago |

Is the keyboard as lovely as my x220 with xubuntu? Can I replace parts?

yellow_lead 3 years ago |

I wish they had one with the i9 and no Nvidia card.

borland 3 years ago |

Why are there ads on HN now?

hunterloftis 3 years ago | |

There are regular HN threads discussing good development machines, especially from people hoping to find an OSS alternative to MS, Google, & Apple walled gardens. The hardware & operating system used for building products is a discussion relevant to many of us here.

- 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`