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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

#191

Post by rhblake »

dom0 wrote: post #77
wfunction wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much do parts cost though? Are they reasonably priced?

Usually they are. A new keyboard is like 40-50 € for most models, for example. But don't expect to get a sparkling new system board for 200 €. New rubber feet are like 10 € (but it's the whole set for all rubber feet of the system). For the X20x there are still some parts available new from distributors. Which is like 6-7 years of parts supply.

New ThinkPad keyboards can easily be found on eBay, too, for a bit less. Even ones for models that are many generations old. Very convenient.

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

#192

Post by _lbaq »

TheCowboy wrote: post #178

I bought a used W520, as it was one of the last Thinkpads with full/normal keyboard. I just can't get work down as quickly using modern island-style keyboards. I recommend it especially if you are still using an older Thinkpad. It's fast, supports up to 32gb of memory, 3 hard drives (regular, micro SATA, ultrabay), and has a good video card. I also find the touchpad with its mouse thumb buttons to be easier on my wri…

I got the P50, it got a full keyboard, 64 GB memory and a "desktop class" HQ CPU, 2 M2. disk slots and 1 SATA slot.

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

#193

Post by Insanity »

StavrosK wrote: post #154
Insanity wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, if it comes with a preinstalled version of windows you can never really be sure what is on the machine, can you? I suspect that if a company really wanted to hide something they probably could. So unless you install windows or another OS on it yourself, you don't know what the manufacturer put on it. I guess it would not be too hard to find in general if it shows up in the list of processes, but they coul…

> you can never really be sure what is on the machine, can you? Yes, but "not sure if it has spyware preinstalled" is much better than "sure it has spyware preinstalled".

If you are not sure if it has spyware installed, you also do not know what the spyware is doing exactly and it could potentially be worse than what the spyware you know of is doing.

I guess I could argue that the former is actually worse. If you know spyware is installed, you can opt to remove it. If you are not aware of the existance of spyware on the system, and it happens to have spyware, you are more vulnerable.

You could of course take the risk and assume that it does not have spyware, and maybe you're right and everything is fine, but you can not _know_ that it is fine.

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

#194

Post by karussell »

jmnicolas wrote: post #80
karussell wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would be nice to have a faster one, yes :) ... some recommendations? Just fyi: I measure boot time from the time I press the power button. The BIOS logo appears a staggering 8sec or something although the BIOS fast boot is enabled. (Maybe the sync with NSA or something ;))

Check that PXE boot is disabled.

When I disabled UEFI Network Stack ipv4 and ipv6 it is indeed much faster: just ~2seconds

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

#195

Post by ronjouch »

Happy T560 (same laptop, with a 15'6" screen) owner here. Fully agree with the post conclusion: "powerful, has a very long lasting battery, it is silent under normal work and you can get your stuff done quickly and get solid Linux support. The Linux support is so good that I’m wondering why they do not ship it commercially to attract people like me."

EDIT1: To dig further: compared to half a dozen linux "tweaks" with my former Dell XPS laptop, I have zero with this Thinkpad. Everything works as expected, no hardware-related config whatsoever. This is using Arch Linux, which ships a recent kernel.

EDIT2: I bought the larger T560 version because I like the simplicity of doing everything on the same machine, but I'm more often using it at home than on the go, so the mobility / screen size trade-off is easy for me, and it's still relatively light (it's relatively thin, unlike W series).

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

#196

Post by karussell »

aiur3la wrote: post #75
cel1ne wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it curious that you care about boot-times. I use macbooks and just close and reopen the lid. Waking from this sleep takes less than a second usually. My average uptime is about 22 days until I reboot for an update or something. I used Linux for years, and I understood that in 2008 sleep/resume on notebooks didn't properly work, but now we have 2017 - 9 years later!

I don't really care about boot times, but as a tech guy 23 seconds sounds like an error to me and I want to find it and fix it :) Also, old laptops with dieing batteries (or new ones with always-on sensors such as fingerprint readers) have some leakage during sleep so it may be better to turn them off if you are not going to use them for a few days. edit: resume/suspend in linux works just fine and has done so for ma…

I have disabled the UEFI Network Stack (updated the article to reflect this) and now the BIOS boot time is down to ~2seconds :) !

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

#198

Post by jclardy »

mangecoeur wrote: post #190

As an ex-linux user and current mac user, I'm still frustrated by linux laptop hardware support. Ethernet ports that need to be re-plugged, suspend-to-disk not working... lots of glitches things that were already annoying 6-7 years ago but now are hard to justify compared with the polish you can expect from other systems. I could never go back from my macbook because I need everything to just work - no glitchy touchp…

Similar story here. Used linux in my HS/early college years, but switched to Mac when the swapped to intel. Recently looked at the possibilities of using linux again, but haven't really found any hardware that "just works." There is that one dell ubuntu dev laptop, but that is a pretty expensive gamble at $1800.

The best luck I've had for now is installing ubuntu on a crappy cheap Samsung Chromebook. Runs really well and everything seems to work fine, but the hardware is junk (The screen is atrocious coming from retina IPS displays.) Fun to play around with though, plus the battery life is incredible for it's $180 price tag.

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

#199

Post by dajohnson89 »

mangecoeur wrote: post #190

As an ex-linux user and current mac user, I'm still frustrated by linux laptop hardware support. Ethernet ports that need to be re-plugged, suspend-to-disk not working... lots of glitches things that were already annoying 6-7 years ago but now are hard to justify compared with the polish you can expect from other systems. I could never go back from my macbook because I need everything to just work - no glitchy touchp…

Agreed. I pay extra $$ for system 76 machines for just this reason. Things just work.

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

#200

Post by r1k »

mangecoeur wrote: post #190

As an ex-linux user and current mac user, I'm still frustrated by linux laptop hardware support. Ethernet ports that need to be re-plugged, suspend-to-disk not working... lots of glitches things that were already annoying 6-7 years ago but now are hard to justify compared with the polish you can expect from other systems. I could never go back from my macbook because I need everything to just work - no glitchy touchp…

Yes, yes, exactly this. I've been using Linux for 15+ years on my desk/laptop, but switched to Mac roughly one year ago. I'm afraid I can never go back.
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