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Lenovo ThinkPad T460 – A Good Linux Laptop for Development

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Re: Lenovo ThinkPad T460 – A Good Linux Laptop for Development

#161

Post by voltagex_ »

2bluesc wrote: post #65
sandGorgon wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

+1 on this. And for people planning to buy an XPS, just wait for a month. new models of XPS are being announced at CES. https://mspoweruser.com/dells-new-convertible-xps-13-leaks-a... The convertible, bezel-less XPS convertible = macbook pro + ipad pro

If you get the XPS and plan on Linux, plan to buy the Intel 7260 2x2 WiFi card. I tried the Dell DW1830 3x3 Broadcom WiFi and the driver support is rough for both WiFi and Bluetooth.

Does anyone have any idea if I could buy the Intel wifi and have Dell swap it in? I have whatever the highest non business warranty support is at the moment.

Re: Lenovo ThinkPad T460 – A Good Linux Laptop for Development

#162

Post by voltagex_ »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #116
Xylakant wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So thickness and weight are the drivers for this: You can always build a laptop that has the same battery capacity with a detachable battery as you can with a non-detachable. It's just going to be thicker and heavier.

It'll also have a great deal of wasted space, more moving parts, more breakable components, less structural support, additional hardware and software validation requirements, and require some careful engineering to avoid having it fall over backward when you open the screen slightly past vertical (battery cells work nicely as a counterweight). All for a laptop that wouldn't sell as well because people do care about s…

I'm still waiting for a USB C battery pack that can output the 20V that the XPS 13 requires. That said Dell's external battery pack is excellent, though extremely expensive.

Re: Lenovo ThinkPad T460 – A Good Linux Laptop for Development

#163

Post by ynniv »

_lbaq wrote: post #157
vegardx wrote: post #151

It would be so much easier to love my Thinkpad T460s if it wasn't for the touchpad. Coming to Thinkpad and Linux after many years as a Mac-user this was almost a deal breaker for me. The palm detection in synaptic driver is laughable. People installing Linux on the new Macbook Pros are going to have a blast with that gigantic touchpad. And I don't even think it's just a driver problem, as the touchpad can register a…

Learn to use the trackpoint instead and disable the touchpad.

The method of interaction is so different it would be nicer to advise people to not use a pointing device at all. I've always wanted to like them, but the track point is a poor man's trackball, and where do you see a trackball these days?

Re: Lenovo ThinkPad T460 – A Good Linux Laptop for Development

#164

Post by Symmetry »

petecox wrote: post #129
EdwinHoksberg wrote: post #53

I bought a T460p a few months ago and am not very happy with it. The problem I have is that linux(I am running debian) has quite a few problems with the Skylake architecture, especially the graphics driver. I tried everything I can think of, installing the intel driver manually and installing the newest kernel(4.9.0) but I still have some troubles with the graphics glitches. So I when I'll be buying a new laptop I wi…

Intel do a quarterly release that fetches pre-built packages but it's only for Ubuntu/Fedora. On my NUC, when new, I ran debian testing and had to pull in packages from debian experimental for Intel driver support. So I'd suggest maybe switching to downstream Ubuntu might involve less trauma? https://01.org/linuxgraphics/downloads/intel-graphics-update...

I can confirm that Ubuntu 16.04 works great on a T460p. The only issues I had were with the high resolution screen I chose and that was solved by finding the Gnome scaling options and also launching Chrome with '--force-device-scale-factor=1.4'.

EDIT: Oh, and swapping out the hard drive isn't super easy any more. It's a matter of watching a Youtube video then everything goes smoothly, rather than look at the bottom of the laptop and everything goes smoothly.

Re: Lenovo ThinkPad T460 – A Good Linux Laptop for Development

#165

Post by sorokod »

2bluesc wrote: post #12

I've owned Thinkpads in the past and almost bought the T460 last month, then I discovered the Dell XPS / Precision line and fell in love. I picked up a manufacturer refurbished XPS 15 on eBay and wound up swapping in a Dell Precision E3-1505M motherboard I stumbled across. The line has Intel quad core CPUs, minimal bezel (my 15" is almost the same size as the 14" System 76 Galago Ultra Pro it's replacing), reasonably…

The Thinkpad p50/p70 also have the Xeon option and can be configured with ECC.

Re: Lenovo ThinkPad T460 – A Good Linux Laptop for Development

#166

Post by todd8 »

HarrietJones wrote: post #98
endgame wrote: post #37

Lenovo are on my personal shitlist after superfish and abusing the windows platform binary table. When my current laptop dies (a thinkpad T440p that I'm reasonably happy with), I may have to suck up the performance hit and go to minifree for a machine I can actually trust.

One thing to consider w.r.t. SuperFish is it was two years ago, and Lenovo did apologise for it. Sometimes you have to keep a grudge, but my opinion on this is it was something that pretty much any laptop manufacturer could have done and they did deal with it. YMMV.

I have avoided buying anything significant made by Todhiba for 30 years. It's probably time for me to drop my grudge against them (it has to do with milling machines and corporate misconduct during the Cold War).

Re: Lenovo ThinkPad T460 – A Good Linux Laptop for Development

#167

Post by [deleted] »

HarrietJones wrote: post #98
endgame wrote: post #37

Lenovo are on my personal shitlist after superfish and abusing the windows platform binary table. When my current laptop dies (a thinkpad T440p that I'm reasonably happy with), I may have to suck up the performance hit and go to minifree for a machine I can actually trust.

One thing to consider w.r.t. SuperFish is it was two years ago, and Lenovo did apologise for it. Sometimes you have to keep a grudge, but my opinion on this is it was something that pretty much any laptop manufacturer could have done and they did deal with it. YMMV.

[deleted]

Re: Lenovo ThinkPad T460 – A Good Linux Laptop for Development

#168

Post by rifung »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #42
innocentoldguy wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have their trackpads improved at all during the last five years?

The current X1 Carbon has an excellent trackpad, to the point that I actually consider the trackpad a usable alternative to the stick.

Palm detection is pretty terrible still though (on Linux at least). Tap to click is unusable for me for this reason.

Re: Lenovo ThinkPad T460 – A Good Linux Laptop for Development

#169

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

yuhong wrote: post #95
endgame wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any vendors you'd recommend? (Non-x86 is fine.)

Personally I think the FSF ideology taken too far is pretty ridiculous anyway.

Any reason? I'm not sure I disagree, but it would be helpful for you to provide some justification for calling them "ridiculous".

Re: Lenovo ThinkPad T460 – A Good Linux Laptop for Development

#170

Post by dec0dedab0de »

_lbaq wrote: post #157
vegardx wrote: post #151

It would be so much easier to love my Thinkpad T460s if it wasn't for the touchpad. Coming to Thinkpad and Linux after many years as a Mac-user this was almost a deal breaker for me. The palm detection in synaptic driver is laughable. People installing Linux on the new Macbook Pros are going to have a blast with that gigantic touchpad. And I don't even think it's just a driver problem, as the touchpad can register a…

Learn to use the trackpoint instead and disable the touchpad.

i switched to a mac for work 2 years ago, and i still miss the track point.
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