Every time I hear about mobile Linux releases I get excited just for the chance to get away from Android and iOS, then I get disappointed to find that the list of things that don't work includes like half the phone
That was a bit ironic, indeed, but at least the USB-A works!
For what it's worth, the majority of mechanical RGB keyboards and mice are USB-A anyways, so, if you're fine with a very powerful machine that wouldn't have an internal keyboard support for a few weeks, sounds like a good advice anyways!
I'm unsure what RGB or a keyboard being mechanical has to do with it being USB-A, or what the relevance is, but yes, there are many USB-A peripherals available.
An ARM64 is "a very powerful computer"? The whole promise with ARM is better thermals and long battery life, not screaming performance. With the thermals/cpu not working, we don't even get that.
The finer grained performance per watt vs silicon cost set in the context of use case is just lost in HN hardware conversations like this that ignore total cost of ownership, vendor politics and such.
Everyone is buying the tool that does the job, or building that tool if they want to make that large investment...
There's a difference in cost per flop at home and in a data center.
I'm updating my wiring and air conditioning for a 7x5090 workstation because having that power for experiments under the desk is worth the cost (and fire hazard).
If I had to build 10,000 of those I'd be banned by NVidia from ever buying their hardware again.
That makes sense. If you have working USB-A, then any USB ethernet adapter supported by FreeBSD should work right?
That’s actually a pretty big escape hatch for early development. It explains how you’d be able to get past having a nonfunctional keyboard pretty easily, for example.
If you prefer your usual (external) keyboard and mouse, which plenty of people (myself included) do, the rest of the list is kinda 'meh' as restrictions go.
Honestly when my current Helix 2 finally starts to die on me I'll be looking for a tablet or hybrid replacement since I neither want nor need an attached keyboard+mouse anyway, in my normal usage they're mostly just something that takes up desk space.
Obviously there are also plenty of people with preferences entirely incompatible with this approach, but so it goes.
Ubuntu has an experimental installation image for this laptop at https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/ubuntu-24-10-concept-snapdrag... . Everything works except for audio and screen brightness control (I saw a patch for audio upcoming on LKML. I don't know about the brightness control, but it is stuck on high. Nevertheless, it still reports 12+ hours of battery with a bright screen.). It is a nice laptop, if you like the Lenovo T series.
Not buying anything Lenovo made ever again. T14 G1 was the worst computer I've ever had the displeasure of using. Extremely spotty USB C connection, throttling to 0.2 Ghz for no reason with no fix, and just terribly slow all around. Shame since I loved the T450s dearly.
I'm using an X1 Carbon Gen 11, and for my purposes at least, it's an improvement over every previous generation.
I'd love to switch to a Framework one day, but I'm not willing to use a laptop without mouse buttons. (I don't care about the TrackPoint at all; I do care about having physical mouse buttons.)
I switched a couple years ago from X1 after I spent months without a working mic and had to get my screen replaced twice and it still didn't work.
I went with the ASUS Zenbook. It's not perfect in terms of Linux drivers or support but they are built solidly. I would pick them again over Dell, HP or the Chinese rebrands.
I've happily used Asus for the past 5 years. Great linux support and no serious hardware issues. The only negative is that one of the arrow buttons came of my ExpertBook B5 after 1 year but it was easily glued back. Otherwise linux works like a dream and the price was good as well.
Hows the build quality with framework laptops? I fear that making it so modular might have required engineering tradeoffs with regard to build quality and endurance.
Sorry to hear that. I actually cheaped out and for the first time went for the L-series, L14 G4, but with Ryzen. Very happy overall, pretty much no issues whatsoever, running Debian. I miss the old keyboard, though.
I have a P14s G4 AMD that I am very pleased with. My only issue is the Qualcomm-made Wi-Fi that still doesn't work properly after a year because Qualcomm engineers can't figure out how to write a driver.
As I was working in Denmark, we had a lot of Lenovo resellers providing better offers than the normal list prices. This was a couple of years ago, maybe this is still the case.
I just checked and the laptop can be had for $1036 USD or €1809 (includes 21% VAT), and the configurator doesn't even allow adding more than the soldered-on base 16GB of RAM. You can save yourself €500 and get 768GB of additional SSD storage by going HP, or save yourself €400 and get a 32GB model.
What an absolute shitshow. I'm surprised Lenovo sells laptops in Europe with these prices.
I sent mine back. I thought the NPU would help with local LLM but there nothing to utilize it yet, lmstudio has it on the roadmap but it was a bit of a letdown. M1 MacBook was 30 times faster at generating tokens.
Happy with my gen 11 x1 carbon (the one before they put the power button on the outside edge like a tablet ?!?)
I just got NPU based LLM inference working locally on Snapdragon X Elite with small (3B and 8B) models, but it’s not quite production ready yet. I know all llama.cpp wrappers claim to have it on their roadmap, but the fact of the matter is that they have no clue about how to implement it.
> M1 MacBook was 30 times faster at generating tokens.
Apples and oranges (pardon the pun). llama.cpp (and in turn LMStudio) use Metal GPU acceleration on Apple Silicon, while they currently only do CPU inference on Snapdragon.
It’s possible to use the Adreno GPU for LLM inference (I demoed this at the Snapdragon Summit), which performs better.
I find this to be less and less of an issue, because RAM has gotten so cheap that you can pretty much just max it out when buying. At the moment, going from 32GB to 64GB incurs a 193$ markup for this laptop, which I think is entirely reasonable for a machine like this (although, honestly, I'm usually not even close to reach 32GB in my normal work).
The only notable exception here is Apple with their absolutely bonkers RAM upgrade prices, which is why I would never buy a Macbook.
EDIT: I just HAD to look, MacBook Pro(ha!) by default with 16GB unified memory, it will set you back 400$ to go to 32GB, so more than 4x what Lenovo takes (64GB not even possible, of course).
You say ram has gotten cheap, and then $193 for 32GB is fine with you? You can easily get 64GB for that price when buying separate modules.
I still think it would be beneficial for us to keep memory swappable at all costs. And if the connector is the problem, they should address that, rather than just accepting these tactics that _enable_ manufacturers in setting their own prices. I'm not saying they all do this, but there's plenty of them and Apple is the perfect example like you say.
We wanted longer battery life, so they run RAM at lower voltages now, which makes it necessary to minimize paths as much as possible. It's not some conspiracy. And they are working on a connector, see the LPCAMM2 link in the other post, so maybe you can wait it out if you feel that strongly.
I upgraded from a 10-year-old Lenovo to a MacBook Pro M1 w/Asahi Linux for a while recently. It convinced me that we're not ready for ARM Linux desktops for general-purpose, regular-person use.
Besides all the crappy Linux desktop software today (I have been trying multiple recent distros out on multiple new laptops... all the Linux desktop stuff now is buggy, features are gone that were there 10 years ago... it's annoying as hell). The ARM experience is one of being a second-class citizen. A ton of apps are released as AppImages or Snaps/Flatpaks. But they have to be built for both X86_64 and ARM64, and extremely few are built for the latter. Even when they are built for it, they have their own bugs to be worked around, and there's fewer users, so you wait longer for a bugfix. The end result is you have fewer choices, compatibility and support.
I love the idea of an ARM desktop. But it's going to cause fragmentation of available developer (and corporate/3rd-party) resources. ARM devices individually are even more unique than X86_64 gear is, so each one requires more integration. I'm sticking to X86_64 so I don't have to deal with another set of problems.
Counterpoint: I've been on an M2 Macbook running NixOS-via-Asahi-installer for about a year, and I've run into maybe 2 applications that I cannot find in the Nix repos or flathub. I have a stable, fast, long-lasting machine running Hyprland and all the productivity software I've needed. I'm currently missing an internal microphone and, I believe, Thunderbolt (USB-C works fine) but this machine is faster than and as stable as it was when it had macOS on it.
I am as general purpose, regular person as you're going to find, in this world at least. I stare at a sentence like "In a functional programming language, everything is a function" and just blink. But a few months of blood and suffering to learn Nix/NixOS and I am managing the family's computers from a single repository and working faster than ever.
No and, currently, no, though Asahi has the accelerated graphics and an x86 compatibility layer sort of working now, so I imagine that will come soon enough.
The usuals are there, like Libreoffice, though I use browser-based MS Office too. Firefox and all my plugins Just Work.
I do a ton of photo work with Darktable, which I have come to appreciate after years of fighting it. Writing tools. Software development tools. It's arguably overpowered for my needs, but that also translates into 16-hour battery life (less than macos, but plenty), dead quiet, and a machine that does everything I ask without complaint.
For the kiddo, it's mainly about configuring and locking down the machine ... and getting it back up and running quickly if he breaks something. I've been using off-lease, years-old Thinkpads for him. No games to speak of, but he's more of an xbox kid anyway. I should probably do parental controls, but I have that largely handled at the DNS level anyway.
One hopeful note: the developers for the Snapdragon X Elite are active on the kernel mailing list, and they are supplying patches for specific laptops, including the T14s. Now I run Debian, so i don't use AppImages or Snaps or Flatpaks, but I expect to have a fully functional T14s Gen 6 running Trixie when it is released as stable next year, assuming Trixie uses kernel 6.12 or (hopefully) 6.13.
they also butchered their entire dev kit rollouts and didn't launch with any sort of (promised) Linux support, I'm pretty sure time wise macran had Linux booting on M1s faster than Qualcom got any sort of Linux movement going on their own hardware.
It's interesting to see the arm building issues still mentioned. I've been patching many packages in nixpkgs for apple silicon, and I can remember only one which had any kind of arm-related problem rather than darwin-specific. Snap/appimage packages have their issues of maintainers needing to spend the extra time. But sources? Not in my experience - I'd be interested to hear some examples.
I sadly am inclined to agree a bit about the Linux desktop stuff, I've been trying to get a nice simple XFCE linux desktop on a used thinkpad I recently picked up, so far tried Debian and Mint and they both have some issues with the keyboard mute button (it flickers on/off rapidly when I press it the first time, and the keyboard doesn't respond to input until I press the mute toggle again). There's other stuff like just weird quirks, like you can't have a key command like Super-R and then also a key command of just Super, because when you try to press Super-R it just instantly triggers the key command you assigned to just Super! Like, while I'm still holding it down! Is it not a modifier?! Or then there's something unmuting my speakers and mic every time the machine wakes from sleep/lock, and I think it's due to wireplumber, but Debian stable's wireplumber version is literally a year old (wtf?), so I can't find documentation on how I can alter this default behaviour (especially because this version of wireplumber uses lua for configuration? also wtf?) … No clue. (Also why does so much Linux software lack man pages?) … haha, that went on a tangent but it's been a surprisingly frustrating experience!
Meh. Until support reaches full feature parity with x86 I’ll just keep running Linux in a VM on my m3 max MacBook. I do want an arm64 Linux or BSD laptop with the same ease of use and support as x86 though it’ll take time.
I also got one of these. AFAICT for Linux, we need to wait for kernel 6.12, which is still at the rc stage but should be ready at the end of this month. As a NixOS user, I'm keeping track of this repo [1] for support.
> Those of you how know me, know that I am not a big fan of the X86
architecture, which I think is a bad mess, mangled by market power
considerations, rather than the CPU architecture this world actually
needs, in particular in terms of performance/energy ratio.
Meanwhile, ARM is a complete disaster, a mess and mangled by profit considerations when looking at the complete lack of platform standardisation and issues around compatibility. Issues which require significant engineering effort to bring a single ARM device in line with any random x86-based device that came out this year.
I'm a bit puzzled about their weird naming. "T14s Gen 6" when apparently "T14s Gen 5" was Intel based. Surely changing the entire CPU architecture deserves a new model name?
Actual model numbers of T14s Gen 6(AMD) and Gen 6(Snapdragon) are respectively 21M1 and 21N1, they still use IBM inherited "Machine Type-Model" system. Looks like this is now expanded into a 4-3-3 digits alphanumeric sequence like "21N1001PUS". In case anyone needed cues to tackle these confusions...
It's still better than other manufacturers. If you look at HP's website their laptops are literally just named like 'HP 14" Laptop', without a generation/year.
How about the Microsoft Surface Pro 9 being x86 while the Surface Pro 9 with 5g being ARM. My conspiracy theory is they did it on purpose to submarine ARM into enterprise environments
I always ask about battery consumption... Apple seems to be on another galaxy right now. I decided to stop waiting and installed Parallels to run Ubuntu there... I really wish the best for Asahi Linux.
Using the Ubuntu experimental image on the T14s Gen 6, the screen brightness is not adjustable, so for me it is stuck on high. Nevertheless, Gnome claims 12+ hours remaining when near 100%. In Windows where I can adjust the brightness, the battery lasts longer. Battery life is much better than any other x86 Thinkpad I've ever owned.
The CPU is pretty fast as well. I did no real benchmarks, but C++ std::sort() on the Snapdragon runs just 10-20% slower than on my 4 year old Ryzen 5 5600X desktop. Also, the base model T14s comes with 32G of memory, which is very nice.
On the other hand, I dropped mine in the street, damaging the upper right corner of the display (physically intact, but dead pixels in the corner). Even though the case material is nice, the laptop seems to be more fragile than older Thinkpads. (I've dropped my T480 and T450 numerous times, and never had issues other than cosmetic.) So the $35 accidental damage protection was worth it.
The M3 Max laptops can cross-build FreeBSD at a fraction of the time of the ThinkPad, being at around 791 seconds for `make -j17` versus the T14s being at 3210 seconds (with `make -j12`) according to the post above.
You probably can follow build(5) from FreeBSD hosts instead.
NetBSD is similar, but you need to edit `tools/llvm/Makefile` and make sure that you use the following target for `support-modules` instead:
support-modules: module-test.cpp Makefile
- if ${HOST_CXX} -stdlib=libc++ -c -fmodules -fcxx-modules -fmodules-cache-path=./module.cache \
- ${.CURDIR}/module-test.cpp 3> /dev/null 2>&1; then \
- echo HOST_SUPPORTS_MODULES=yes > ${.TARGET}; \
- else \
- echo HOST_SUPPORTS_MODULES=no > ${.TARGET}; \
- fi
+ # Just don't use modules pre for C++20 targets. Some compilers cannot support them.
+ echo HOST_SUPPORTS_MODULES=no > ${.TARGET};
You can further speed up NetBSD builds by editing `share/mk/bsd.sys.mk` and removing the workaround for SunPro's cc. The repeated invocation of /bin/mv for each object file really does add up.
I have not tried cross builds of OpenBSD from other operating systems.
Word of warning, I ended up getting a lot of strange compiler segfaults within xgcc when using when using `MKGCC=yes` instead `MKLLVM=yes` with NetBSD, specifically with floating point heavy code. I never did end up finding out why that happens.
Do you need to be in that galaxy? I easily get 8h with this $1400 64GB RAM AMD Thinkpad with an OLED screen running unoptimized Ubuntu (yes it looks 90s anonymous). An equivalent notebook for most practical purposes from Apple would be at least 3.5× more expensive.
Based on the reviews I've seen, Snapdragon + Windows seems to equal to the M3 generation of Apple ARM laptops in terms of longevity and performance (both devices winning and losing some benchmarks). Snapdragon didn't pull off their promises of consistently beating Apple, but they're extremely close, for a much lower price.
If Qualcomm continues to actually work on Linux, rather than let enthusiasts do all of the work for them like Apple, I think ARM on Linux is going to be all Qualcomm with Macs yet again being a second citizen in the Linux world. For Windows, it's already a choice of "do I want to be forced into using Windows for a couple hundred dollars of savings".
Really? Could you please arguably name something that you'd subjectively consider to be "actual engineering" and that you'd want to do on macOS or windows rather than on Linux?
(the comment you replied to was clearly arguing quality rather than quantity, so that's what I'm asking too)
Anything graphics programming related. D3D and Metal are significantly more prevalent than OpenGL or Vulkan.
Anything CAD related, because there’s next to no professionally used CAD software on Linux.
Audio stuff. How many DAWs have a significant Linux user base?
And even beyond that, how many website devs are on Linux? Most people making product pages aren’t on Linux because not a lot of the designers work on Linux and it’s better to have a mono culture of devices for office management.
And your question is what one would rather do on macOS/Windows rather than Linux which again is subjective even if I scope it to stuff you can do on both Linux and macOS and windows.
Flip that around, why would someone use Linux to develop when they could use macOS? Can you give a non-subjective answer? Then try the opposite.
Even if you’re developing for Linux deployments, you can still do most of it local and then spin up docker in the VM on demand.
The number of software developers who need to run a Linux VM on their Mac/Windows are a vast minority.
I suppose that by CAD you mean mechanical CAD, with which I have less experience.
On the other hand electronics CAD had been run mainly on Solaris decades ago, but for the last 20 years Linux has been the most likely host, including for the most expensive commercial professional solutions.
I have never heard of anyone using macOS for any kind of electronics design.
Mitchell Hashimoto has written extensively about his use of Linux in a VM on macOS. He published a NixOS configuration[1] which seems easy to use.
I recently bought a Mac mini M4 to experiment with this setup, and am strongly considering getting a MBP if it works as advertised. As a longtime ThinkPad user and F/LOSS enthusiast, it feels awful giving money to Apple to run Linux as a second-class citizen, but honestly there is just no comparable hardware that does what Apple has accomplished.
I have been running Ubuntu inside Parallels on an M1 MacBook for several years now, and am in general quite happy with it. What makes it less than ideal is e.g. that only OpenGL 3.3 is supported in Linux guests (Windows guests get 4.1), but for some reason the Vulkan support is actually quite good, and allows me to run the graphics tools I need. Having most AppImages out there unavailable on ARM64 is also sometimes a problem, but that's not Parallels' fault.
Parallels has some glitches (graphical flicker when it runs low on guest memory, less than stellar trackpad scrolling) but is otherwise very stable. I like that I have access to Linux and macOS at the same time, the other side is just a 3 finger swipe away, and cut-n-paste and shared folders work. Sound and video all work, though for things like zoom calls I tend to use the macOS side. All runs happily together with 16GB RAM for each side (and I often have both xcode and android studio open on the macOS side while compiling large projects on the Linux side).
I'm actually thinking of switching from a Mac back to the PC, since everything is done in a browser anyways, regardless of the system, but the lack of the fanless laptops in the PC world isn't promising.
ThinkPad X13s Snapdragon was fanless, but it's a bit old now, plus, only 2x USB-C, without any USB-A ports, and a screen that doesn't open 180°, unlike any other ThinkPad, meh.
One small tip I didn't appreciate for far too long with "mac-peer" laptops that have fans is to use them unplugged. My laptop almost never spins up fans when it is unplugged, and I can get a good batch of work done with the battery levels of today and fast charge over lunch. It's still not quite as ideal nor as long a battery life as Mac. But it feels so beautiful.
For the first time on Linux I feel better, like I am not just making sacrafices for values but like the actual whole all-around experience is better in most ways compared to my work Mac (M2 Pro so fans abound and not as aesthetically pleasing as the Airs IMO). It's instantly snappy, I have a nice large SSD, I've already swapped out RAM, no issues with key software, I have a theme with a desktop experience I prefer over the Mac one, and I can go to a presentation and type without fans stressing me out. As someone in AI for a while, personally, I don't value GPUs or NPUs, but that would be a difference. That's really leaps and bounds over Linux from 2016 or 2010 on Laptops.
The x13s is still quite quick and useable - especially since you can pick them up for a song on the used market. The display only opening to ~135 degrees is a bummer though.
So far, I’ve had a very good user experience, but I haven’t yet tried using it exclusively for an extended period to compare its battery life with that of a bare Apple Silicon macOS. Mapping shortcuts now...
A lot of people use a laptop with an external keyboard and mouse because they're sufficiently picky about their keyboard and mouse to be happy to deal with the additional hassle.
I use the top half of a Helix 2 with a Thinkpad Tablet 2 Bluetooth Keyboard because I'm one of the three people in the world who actively likes the optical trackpoint.
If you almost always use the machine on a desk rather than literally on your lap (for which I use the same keyboard paired with an 8" tablet) it's not even -much- additional hassle.
So maybe it wouldn't work for you, but "basically useless" is silly.
I love it(in context of FreeBSD):
—————
What does not work: Keyboard, mouse, TB & USB-C ports, thermal/freq mgt.
Conclusion: Highly recommended
Sounds like some of the Linux phones. This is our flagship device. It doesn't have a working camera or radios, but who needs those?
Every time I hear about mobile Linux releases I get excited just for the chance to get away from Android and iOS, then I get disappointed to find that the list of things that don't work includes like half the phone
That was a bit ironic, indeed, but at least the USB-A works!
For what it's worth, the majority of mechanical RGB keyboards and mice are USB-A anyways, so, if you're fine with a very powerful machine that wouldn't have an internal keyboard support for a few weeks, sounds like a good advice anyways!
I'm unsure what RGB or a keyboard being mechanical has to do with it being USB-A, or what the relevance is, but yes, there are many USB-A peripherals available.
An ARM64 is "a very powerful computer"? The whole promise with ARM is better thermals and long battery life, not screaming performance. With the thermals/cpu not working, we don't even get that.
M4 crushing benchmarks and AWS running Graviton 2 would disagree on the idea of "whole premise".
I always knew hardware discussions on HN were below the normal standards. But sometimes I am still surprised at how low it can go.
The finer grained performance per watt vs silicon cost set in the context of use case is just lost in HN hardware conversations like this that ignore total cost of ownership, vendor politics and such.
Everyone is buying the tool that does the job, or building that tool if they want to make that large investment...
There's a difference in cost per flop at home and in a data center.
I'm updating my wiring and air conditioning for a 7x5090 workstation because having that power for experiments under the desk is worth the cost (and fire hazard).
If I had to build 10,000 of those I'd be banned by NVidia from ever buying their hardware again.
What are you doing with the workstation that it’s worth the cost?
High dimensional computations for time series data in finance.
And it usually ends with some weird implied conclusion, like “AMD-Intel duopoly bad, Apple monopoly good”.
Somewhat surprised that networking is not mentioned in either list. Maybe a USB to ethernet dongle was used?
That makes sense. If you have working USB-A, then any USB ethernet adapter supported by FreeBSD should work right?
That’s actually a pretty big escape hatch for early development. It explains how you’d be able to get past having a nonfunctional keyboard pretty easily, for example.
If you prefer your usual (external) keyboard and mouse, which plenty of people (myself included) do, the rest of the list is kinda 'meh' as restrictions go.
Honestly when my current Helix 2 finally starts to die on me I'll be looking for a tablet or hybrid replacement since I neither want nor need an attached keyboard+mouse anyway, in my normal usage they're mostly just something that takes up desk space.
Obviously there are also plenty of people with preferences entirely incompatible with this approach, but so it goes.
What is a TB?
Thunderbolt port
I mean it's a fun computer to write drivers for. You will be that dude if you make it all work and share with community
The post was from Poul-Henning Kamp, who writes a lot of drivers for FreeBSD. Him having this laptop is good news for future compatibility.
Ubuntu has an experimental installation image for this laptop at https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/ubuntu-24-10-concept-snapdrag... . Everything works except for audio and screen brightness control (I saw a patch for audio upcoming on LKML. I don't know about the brightness control, but it is stuck on high. Nevertheless, it still reports 12+ hours of battery with a bright screen.). It is a nice laptop, if you like the Lenovo T series.
Is this "by Ubuntu" or a third party project?
well the poster looks to have an ubuntu flair on its profile pic
OpenBSD support is quite a bit further: https://roblillack.net/openbsd-arm64-on-the-thinkpad-t14s
OpenBSD has support for a number of Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite machines.
A bit more works on the T14s Gen 6 too, such as the keyboard! ;-)
https://marc.info/?l=openbsd-cvs&m=172925590407875&w=2
Not buying anything Lenovo made ever again. T14 G1 was the worst computer I've ever had the displeasure of using. Extremely spotty USB C connection, throttling to 0.2 Ghz for no reason with no fix, and just terribly slow all around. Shame since I loved the T450s dearly.
I've watched the X1 Carbon line similarly nosedive from great, to decent, to self-immolating. Now I'm really not sure what to try next.
What do you see as having gone downhill?
I'm using an X1 Carbon Gen 11, and for my purposes at least, it's an improvement over every previous generation.
I'd love to switch to a Framework one day, but I'm not willing to use a laptop without mouse buttons. (I don't care about the TrackPoint at all; I do care about having physical mouse buttons.)
I used an X1C6 for years before switching to X1 Yoga 6 recently.
The X1C6 had the potential to be a great laptop, except it was plagued by charging issues from the beginning and was limited to 16GB of RAM.
The X1Y6 is perfect; I can't find a single issue with it.
I switched a couple years ago from X1 after I spent months without a working mic and had to get my screen replaced twice and it still didn't work.
I went with the ASUS Zenbook. It's not perfect in terms of Linux drivers or support but they are built solidly. I would pick them again over Dell, HP or the Chinese rebrands.
I've happily used Asus for the past 5 years. Great linux support and no serious hardware issues. The only negative is that one of the arrow buttons came of my ExpertBook B5 after 1 year but it was easily glued back. Otherwise linux works like a dream and the price was good as well.
Framework is my new thinkpad nowadays. Just saying
The funny thing is that Thinkpads got their reputation during the period that they were nose diving in quality.
There hasn't been a decent one since the t440 and the only way to get that to a good standard was by modding the hell out of it.
The t61 was the last good one.
Framework is not quite at that quality but it's better than any other laptop made in the last 10 years.
'Looks over at stack of T61 15" display refurbished laptops'
Yup, the are awesome, I'm on my second decade of driving them, should be able to get another decade out of the supply.
Hows the build quality with framework laptops? I fear that making it so modular might have required engineering tradeoffs with regard to build quality and endurance.
Worse than the IBM thinkpads, on par with early lenovo thinkpads, better than 2020 think pads (which is the last time I used one).
Is that an Intel CPU? I had the same thermal throttling problem with frame.work laptop. Never getting any Intel CPU again.
I've been running Fedora 40 (and recently 41) on my P14s G5 Intel at work, absolutely great machine.
Is it the core ultra 155H? How is it efficiency/heat and performance wise?
Was planning on getting one.
Sorry to hear that. I actually cheaped out and for the first time went for the L-series, L14 G4, but with Ryzen. Very happy overall, pretty much no issues whatsoever, running Debian. I miss the old keyboard, though.
I have a P14s G4 AMD that I am very pleased with. My only issue is the Qualcomm-made Wi-Fi that still doesn't work properly after a year because Qualcomm engineers can't figure out how to write a driver.
Been mostly happy with P16 Gen 2 for Qubes OS. Flat button mouse design is a downgrade compared to X1 Extreme Gen 3 (more raised).
I would gladly buy any other laptop with a TrackPoint. Got any recommendations? This is not sarcasm I donated to https://community.frame.work/t/thinkpad-keyboard-mod-super-e... because I really want it to happen.
15+ years of mac user here, just swapped to a Lenovo X1 Gen12 running Ubuntu and it's so smooth.
Which processor? There U or the H?
> So when my regular HW-pusher had a T14s G6 with Qualcomm Snapdragon ARM64 CPU, for only EUR1000 + VAT, and I couldn't resist.
I wonder where Poul-Henning, who is based in Denmark, got that price. Perhaps he managed to get US pricing.
Lenovo EU are notorious for charging a ton of money for new models with limited supply. And poor after-market support, as everything is outsourced.
As I was working in Denmark, we had a lot of Lenovo resellers providing better offers than the normal list prices. This was a couple of years ago, maybe this is still the case.
He's running a business, so, perhaps he got some kind of business pricing?
I just checked and the laptop can be had for $1036 USD or €1809 (includes 21% VAT), and the configurator doesn't even allow adding more than the soldered-on base 16GB of RAM. You can save yourself €500 and get 768GB of additional SSD storage by going HP, or save yourself €400 and get a 32GB model.
What an absolute shitshow. I'm surprised Lenovo sells laptops in Europe with these prices.
Or fly to the US, get a hotel and meal for two for the night, and fly back with change for just one laptop purchase.
When VAT incentivises people to essentially take their holidays outside the EU - not even incentivises, subsidises(!) - VAT's too high.
I sent mine back. I thought the NPU would help with local LLM but there nothing to utilize it yet, lmstudio has it on the roadmap but it was a bit of a letdown. M1 MacBook was 30 times faster at generating tokens.
Happy with my gen 11 x1 carbon (the one before they put the power button on the outside edge like a tablet ?!?)
I just got NPU based LLM inference working locally on Snapdragon X Elite with small (3B and 8B) models, but it’s not quite production ready yet. I know all llama.cpp wrappers claim to have it on their roadmap, but the fact of the matter is that they have no clue about how to implement it.
> M1 MacBook was 30 times faster at generating tokens.
Apples and oranges (pardon the pun). llama.cpp (and in turn LMStudio) use Metal GPU acceleration on Apple Silicon, while they currently only do CPU inference on Snapdragon.
It’s possible to use the Adreno GPU for LLM inference (I demoed this at the Snapdragon Summit), which performs better.
It is used transparently by applications when they make use of DirectML.
imho the biggest problem with all the new snapdragon laptops is that all ram is soldered on, because the new chips don't support slotted ram.
There's another way, Lenovo just chose not to for this model: https://www.ifixit.com/News/95078/lpcamm2-memory-is-finally-...
I find this to be less and less of an issue, because RAM has gotten so cheap that you can pretty much just max it out when buying. At the moment, going from 32GB to 64GB incurs a 193$ markup for this laptop, which I think is entirely reasonable for a machine like this (although, honestly, I'm usually not even close to reach 32GB in my normal work).
The only notable exception here is Apple with their absolutely bonkers RAM upgrade prices, which is why I would never buy a Macbook.
EDIT: I just HAD to look, MacBook Pro(ha!) by default with 16GB unified memory, it will set you back 400$ to go to 32GB, so more than 4x what Lenovo takes (64GB not even possible, of course).
You say ram has gotten cheap, and then $193 for 32GB is fine with you? You can easily get 64GB for that price when buying separate modules.
I still think it would be beneficial for us to keep memory swappable at all costs. And if the connector is the problem, they should address that, rather than just accepting these tactics that _enable_ manufacturers in setting their own prices. I'm not saying they all do this, but there's plenty of them and Apple is the perfect example like you say.
We wanted longer battery life, so they run RAM at lower voltages now, which makes it necessary to minimize paths as much as possible. It's not some conspiracy. And they are working on a connector, see the LPCAMM2 link in the other post, so maybe you can wait it out if you feel that strongly.
> (64GB not even possible, of course).
Just to be clear, that applies to the base M4. M4 Pro and Max can go up. (To 128GB I think).
And I believe these are LPDDR5X 7500 on the base M4 model. So it is more expensive than Lenovo even though it is slower.
M4Pro and Max get much faster RAM though.
> capture the boot messages with my mobile phone's camera.
ha dont we all
I upgraded from a 10-year-old Lenovo to a MacBook Pro M1 w/Asahi Linux for a while recently. It convinced me that we're not ready for ARM Linux desktops for general-purpose, regular-person use.
Besides all the crappy Linux desktop software today (I have been trying multiple recent distros out on multiple new laptops... all the Linux desktop stuff now is buggy, features are gone that were there 10 years ago... it's annoying as hell). The ARM experience is one of being a second-class citizen. A ton of apps are released as AppImages or Snaps/Flatpaks. But they have to be built for both X86_64 and ARM64, and extremely few are built for the latter. Even when they are built for it, they have their own bugs to be worked around, and there's fewer users, so you wait longer for a bugfix. The end result is you have fewer choices, compatibility and support.
I love the idea of an ARM desktop. But it's going to cause fragmentation of available developer (and corporate/3rd-party) resources. ARM devices individually are even more unique than X86_64 gear is, so each one requires more integration. I'm sticking to X86_64 so I don't have to deal with another set of problems.
Counterpoint: I've been on an M2 Macbook running NixOS-via-Asahi-installer for about a year, and I've run into maybe 2 applications that I cannot find in the Nix repos or flathub. I have a stable, fast, long-lasting machine running Hyprland and all the productivity software I've needed. I'm currently missing an internal microphone and, I believe, Thunderbolt (USB-C works fine) but this machine is faster than and as stable as it was when it had macOS on it.
I am as general purpose, regular person as you're going to find, in this world at least. I stare at a sentence like "In a functional programming language, everything is a function" and just blink. But a few months of blood and suffering to learn Nix/NixOS and I am managing the family's computers from a single repository and working faster than ever.
What software do you add your family use on these machines? Do you need or use parental controls? Gaming?
No and, currently, no, though Asahi has the accelerated graphics and an x86 compatibility layer sort of working now, so I imagine that will come soon enough.
The usuals are there, like Libreoffice, though I use browser-based MS Office too. Firefox and all my plugins Just Work.
I do a ton of photo work with Darktable, which I have come to appreciate after years of fighting it. Writing tools. Software development tools. It's arguably overpowered for my needs, but that also translates into 16-hour battery life (less than macos, but plenty), dead quiet, and a machine that does everything I ask without complaint.
For the kiddo, it's mainly about configuring and locking down the machine ... and getting it back up and running quickly if he breaks something. I've been using off-lease, years-old Thinkpads for him. No games to speak of, but he's more of an xbox kid anyway. I should probably do parental controls, but I have that largely handled at the DNS level anyway.
One hopeful note: the developers for the Snapdragon X Elite are active on the kernel mailing list, and they are supplying patches for specific laptops, including the T14s. Now I run Debian, so i don't use AppImages or Snaps or Flatpaks, but I expect to have a fully functional T14s Gen 6 running Trixie when it is released as stable next year, assuming Trixie uses kernel 6.12 or (hopefully) 6.13.
they also butchered their entire dev kit rollouts and didn't launch with any sort of (promised) Linux support, I'm pretty sure time wise macran had Linux booting on M1s faster than Qualcom got any sort of Linux movement going on their own hardware.
I believed the dream back in 2000.
Eventually I moved into VMWare Workstation, for GNU/Linux stuff on the desktop, with an aging Asus netbook on the side.
Nowadays, the netbook is dead, its used replaced by tablet, and my desktops are Windows/WSL (for Linux containers only, started on demand).
At work our workstations are a mix of Windows and macOS, leaving GNU/Linux on the servers.
Not even x86 is 100% usable on laptops, meaning supporting every single feature, and late nights to fix stuff eventually gets old.
It's interesting to see the arm building issues still mentioned. I've been patching many packages in nixpkgs for apple silicon, and I can remember only one which had any kind of arm-related problem rather than darwin-specific. Snap/appimage packages have their issues of maintainers needing to spend the extra time. But sources? Not in my experience - I'd be interested to hear some examples.
I sadly am inclined to agree a bit about the Linux desktop stuff, I've been trying to get a nice simple XFCE linux desktop on a used thinkpad I recently picked up, so far tried Debian and Mint and they both have some issues with the keyboard mute button (it flickers on/off rapidly when I press it the first time, and the keyboard doesn't respond to input until I press the mute toggle again). There's other stuff like just weird quirks, like you can't have a key command like Super-R and then also a key command of just Super, because when you try to press Super-R it just instantly triggers the key command you assigned to just Super! Like, while I'm still holding it down! Is it not a modifier?! Or then there's something unmuting my speakers and mic every time the machine wakes from sleep/lock, and I think it's due to wireplumber, but Debian stable's wireplumber version is literally a year old (wtf?), so I can't find documentation on how I can alter this default behaviour (especially because this version of wireplumber uses lua for configuration? also wtf?) … No clue. (Also why does so much Linux software lack man pages?) … haha, that went on a tangent but it's been a surprisingly frustrating experience!
Meh. Until support reaches full feature parity with x86 I’ll just keep running Linux in a VM on my m3 max MacBook. I do want an arm64 Linux or BSD laptop with the same ease of use and support as x86 though it’ll take time.
I also got one of these. AFAICT for Linux, we need to wait for kernel 6.12, which is still at the rc stage but should be ready at the end of this month. As a NixOS user, I'm keeping track of this repo [1] for support.
[1]: https://github.com/kuruczgy/x1e-nixos-config
What makes 6.12 the necessary version for this machine?
I have to imagine there's a whole bunch of patches in that tree for this chipset.
> Those of you how know me, know that I am not a big fan of the X86 architecture, which I think is a bad mess, mangled by market power considerations, rather than the CPU architecture this world actually needs, in particular in terms of performance/energy ratio.
Meanwhile, ARM is a complete disaster, a mess and mangled by profit considerations when looking at the complete lack of platform standardisation and issues around compatibility. Issues which require significant engineering effort to bring a single ARM device in line with any random x86-based device that came out this year.
I'm a bit puzzled about their weird naming. "T14s Gen 6" when apparently "T14s Gen 5" was Intel based. Surely changing the entire CPU architecture deserves a new model name?
There's the "T14s Gen 6 (AMD)", "T14s Gen 6 (Intel)", and "T14s Gen 6 (Snapdragon)".
I'm not naming them either ... just telling you how it works.
Actual model numbers of T14s Gen 6(AMD) and Gen 6(Snapdragon) are respectively 21M1 and 21N1, they still use IBM inherited "Machine Type-Model" system. Looks like this is now expanded into a 4-3-3 digits alphanumeric sequence like "21N1001PUS". In case anyone needed cues to tackle these confusions...
1: https://psref.lenovo.com/Product/ThinkPad/ThinkPad_T14s_Gen_...
It's still better than other manufacturers. If you look at HP's website their laptops are literally just named like 'HP 14" Laptop', without a generation/year.
Also, for Lenovo - https://psref.lenovo.com/ shows their products without marketing filler.
How about the Microsoft Surface Pro 9 being x86 while the Surface Pro 9 with 5g being ARM. My conspiracy theory is they did it on purpose to submarine ARM into enterprise environments
T14(s) Gen5 were also available in AMD versions, so I guess there will be T14(s)-Gen6's in Intel/AMD/Qualcomm versions
(Typing this on a T14-Gen5-AMD, under linux, which is still not really stable with the amdgpu driver crashing at least weekly)
What sort of crash are you experiencing?
You should bring your dist fully up to date, and also make sure you have the latest amdgup firmware files (most likely not yet available in your dist) https://gitlab.com/kernel-firmware/linux-firmware/-/commit/9...
The Vivobook ARM from Asus also seems very decent, and it has a numpad.
Where I live, the T14s is also sold with 64GB memory. It's the cheapest VRAM around (although support for it is lacking everywhere).
I always ask about battery consumption... Apple seems to be on another galaxy right now. I decided to stop waiting and installed Parallels to run Ubuntu there... I really wish the best for Asahi Linux.
Using the Ubuntu experimental image on the T14s Gen 6, the screen brightness is not adjustable, so for me it is stuck on high. Nevertheless, Gnome claims 12+ hours remaining when near 100%. In Windows where I can adjust the brightness, the battery lasts longer. Battery life is much better than any other x86 Thinkpad I've ever owned.
The CPU is pretty fast as well. I did no real benchmarks, but C++ std::sort() on the Snapdragon runs just 10-20% slower than on my 4 year old Ryzen 5 5600X desktop. Also, the base model T14s comes with 32G of memory, which is very nice.
On the other hand, I dropped mine in the street, damaging the upper right corner of the display (physically intact, but dead pixels in the corner). Even though the case material is nice, the laptop seems to be more fragile than older Thinkpads. (I've dropped my T480 and T450 numerous times, and never had issues other than cosmetic.) So the $35 accidental damage protection was worth it.
> ...the $35 accidental damage protection was worth it.
That does seem rather inexpensive! How did the process go filing a claim?
The M3 Max laptops can cross-build FreeBSD at a fraction of the time of the ThinkPad, being at around 791 seconds for `make -j17` versus the T14s being at 3210 seconds (with `make -j12`) according to the post above.
No idea about power consumptions.
It still scares me.
One is $1000 and the other is around $3000. So performance per dollar looks about right.
Not only performance per dollar but also battery duration/consumption.
The M3 Max though only boosts GPU - the M3 Pro has the same number of CPU cores at a lower price.
No, M3 Pro is available with 11 or 12 cores. M3 Max with 14 or 16:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_M3#Variants
Similarly, the M4 Pro is available with 12 or 14 cores, the M4 Max with 14 or 16:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_M4#Comparison_with_other...
Not so on the M3 generation (nor the newer M4s). M3 Pro was particularly hobbled in this regard with only 6 performance cores vs 10 on the Max.
my m4 pro has 10 p cores as m4 max has ,get your facts right at least.
You can get the M4 Max with 12 performance cores.
Do you have more details or a source on this? I'd like to learn more about the build process and timings.
Sure.
I basically did the following on trunk:
You probably can follow build(5) from FreeBSD hosts instead.NetBSD is similar, but you need to edit `tools/llvm/Makefile` and make sure that you use the following target for `support-modules` instead:
You can further speed up NetBSD builds by editing `share/mk/bsd.sys.mk` and removing the workaround for SunPro's cc. The repeated invocation of /bin/mv for each object file really does add up.I have not tried cross builds of OpenBSD from other operating systems.
Word of warning, I ended up getting a lot of strange compiler segfaults within xgcc when using when using `MKGCC=yes` instead `MKLLVM=yes` with NetBSD, specifically with floating point heavy code. I never did end up finding out why that happens.
Do you need to be in that galaxy? I easily get 8h with this $1400 64GB RAM AMD Thinkpad with an OLED screen running unoptimized Ubuntu (yes it looks 90s anonymous). An equivalent notebook for most practical purposes from Apple would be at least 3.5× more expensive.
Which ThinkPad is this? The OLED uses a ton of battery life, so either you're not pushing the system very hard or you have a very big battery.
P16s gen 2, with the larger battery. OLED can use less power if you can keep things dark, but I don't put a lot of work into it.
Based on the reviews I've seen, Snapdragon + Windows seems to equal to the M3 generation of Apple ARM laptops in terms of longevity and performance (both devices winning and losing some benchmarks). Snapdragon didn't pull off their promises of consistently beating Apple, but they're extremely close, for a much lower price.
If Qualcomm continues to actually work on Linux, rather than let enthusiasts do all of the work for them like Apple, I think ARM on Linux is going to be all Qualcomm with Macs yet again being a second citizen in the Linux world. For Windows, it's already a choice of "do I want to be forced into using Windows for a couple hundred dollars of savings".
I have an M3 but the battery life is not that great -- because you still want to run a Linux VM for actual engineering.
“Actual engineering” is incredibly subjective.
Arguably, more people do “actual engineering” on macOS and windows.
Really? Could you please arguably name something that you'd subjectively consider to be "actual engineering" and that you'd want to do on macOS or windows rather than on Linux?
(the comment you replied to was clearly arguing quality rather than quantity, so that's what I'm asking too)
Anything graphics programming related. D3D and Metal are significantly more prevalent than OpenGL or Vulkan.
Anything CAD related, because there’s next to no professionally used CAD software on Linux.
Audio stuff. How many DAWs have a significant Linux user base?
And even beyond that, how many website devs are on Linux? Most people making product pages aren’t on Linux because not a lot of the designers work on Linux and it’s better to have a mono culture of devices for office management.
And your question is what one would rather do on macOS/Windows rather than Linux which again is subjective even if I scope it to stuff you can do on both Linux and macOS and windows.
Flip that around, why would someone use Linux to develop when they could use macOS? Can you give a non-subjective answer? Then try the opposite.
Even if you’re developing for Linux deployments, you can still do most of it local and then spin up docker in the VM on demand.
The number of software developers who need to run a Linux VM on their Mac/Windows are a vast minority.
I suppose that by CAD you mean mechanical CAD, with which I have less experience.
On the other hand electronics CAD had been run mainly on Solaris decades ago, but for the last 20 years Linux has been the most likely host, including for the most expensive commercial professional solutions.
I have never heard of anyone using macOS for any kind of electronics design.
* AutoCAD (Drafting)
* Inventor (Mechanical analysis)
* PLAXIS (Geotechnical finite element analysis)
* Aspen HYSYS (Chemical process simulation)
Probably a pile more that I don't know off the top my head.
Autocad doesn’t even have a Linux version.
I much prefer MacOS for documentation and web browsing. All of my requirements engineering work is in documentation tools and web browsers.
Any issues or things you wish you had known with your current Parallels/Ubuntu set up? Asking since I've been considering doing the same thing
Mitchell Hashimoto has written extensively about his use of Linux in a VM on macOS. He published a NixOS configuration[1] which seems easy to use.
I recently bought a Mac mini M4 to experiment with this setup, and am strongly considering getting a MBP if it works as advertised. As a longtime ThinkPad user and F/LOSS enthusiast, it feels awful giving money to Apple to run Linux as a second-class citizen, but honestly there is just no comparable hardware that does what Apple has accomplished.
[1]: https://github.com/mitchellh/nixos-config
I have been running Ubuntu inside Parallels on an M1 MacBook for several years now, and am in general quite happy with it. What makes it less than ideal is e.g. that only OpenGL 3.3 is supported in Linux guests (Windows guests get 4.1), but for some reason the Vulkan support is actually quite good, and allows me to run the graphics tools I need. Having most AppImages out there unavailable on ARM64 is also sometimes a problem, but that's not Parallels' fault.
Parallels has some glitches (graphical flicker when it runs low on guest memory, less than stellar trackpad scrolling) but is otherwise very stable. I like that I have access to Linux and macOS at the same time, the other side is just a 3 finger swipe away, and cut-n-paste and shared folders work. Sound and video all work, though for things like zoom calls I tend to use the macOS side. All runs happily together with 16GB RAM for each side (and I often have both xcode and android studio open on the macOS side while compiling large projects on the Linux side).
I'm actually thinking of switching from a Mac back to the PC, since everything is done in a browser anyways, regardless of the system, but the lack of the fanless laptops in the PC world isn't promising.
ThinkPad X13s Snapdragon was fanless, but it's a bit old now, plus, only 2x USB-C, without any USB-A ports, and a screen that doesn't open 180°, unlike any other ThinkPad, meh.
One small tip I didn't appreciate for far too long with "mac-peer" laptops that have fans is to use them unplugged. My laptop almost never spins up fans when it is unplugged, and I can get a good batch of work done with the battery levels of today and fast charge over lunch. It's still not quite as ideal nor as long a battery life as Mac. But it feels so beautiful.
For the first time on Linux I feel better, like I am not just making sacrafices for values but like the actual whole all-around experience is better in most ways compared to my work Mac (M2 Pro so fans abound and not as aesthetically pleasing as the Airs IMO). It's instantly snappy, I have a nice large SSD, I've already swapped out RAM, no issues with key software, I have a theme with a desktop experience I prefer over the Mac one, and I can go to a presentation and type without fans stressing me out. As someone in AI for a while, personally, I don't value GPUs or NPUs, but that would be a difference. That's really leaps and bounds over Linux from 2016 or 2010 on Laptops.
Windows sucks nowadays.
For work Ive had to come back.... it's gotten bad. Ads everywhere. Search bar that sucks. Weird hand gestures that empties your screen.
What happened? Win7 is probably the best UX ever. Now its unusable.
The x13s is still quite quick and useable - especially since you can pick them up for a song on the used market. The display only opening to ~135 degrees is a bummer though.
So far, I’ve had a very good user experience, but I haven’t yet tried using it exclusively for an extended period to compare its battery life with that of a bare Apple Silicon macOS. Mapping shortcuts now...
Linus tech tips reviewed these or something similar.
Short story: good but compatibility issues.
Sounds like an AD more than a review, weird
> What does not work: Keyboard, mouse, TB & USB-C ports, thermal/freq mgt.
So, eh, yeah. Basically useless as a laptop.
Is the "Conclusion: Highly recommended" at the end sarcasm?
A lot of people use a laptop with an external keyboard and mouse because they're sufficiently picky about their keyboard and mouse to be happy to deal with the additional hassle.
I use the top half of a Helix 2 with a Thinkpad Tablet 2 Bluetooth Keyboard because I'm one of the three people in the world who actively likes the optical trackpoint.
If you almost always use the machine on a desk rather than literally on your lap (for which I use the same keyboard paired with an 8" tablet) it's not even -much- additional hassle.
So maybe it wouldn't work for you, but "basically useless" is silly.
I said "Basically useless as a laptop", not "useless".
Even with the correct drivers, the touchpad/trackpad is not functioning properly on Windows.
The Lenovo's "touch" input feels like you are using a HTC Dream.
Great for nostalgia, but would prefer the multi-touch of an iPhone.
No, I think it is the optimism of someone who writes drivers when they need them.
Bit of a fixer-upper.