Didn't even add a bullet point for the TrackPoint!
It used to be that ThinkPads had great keyboards too, pity about the chiclets.
Lenovo ThinkPad T460 – A Good Linux Laptop for Development
221–230 of 391 posts
Re: Lenovo ThinkPad T460 – A Good Linux Laptop for Development
#222You guys might be interested in an Archlinux centric T460 series I made on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLiKgVPlhUNuxgKwoVH4MM...
Suspend and networking work smoothly out of the box with systemd. The touchpad is OK using xf86-input-libinput, surprisingly the Trackpoint hardware is so bad in this model I've stopped using it.
Re: Lenovo ThinkPad T460 – A Good Linux Laptop for Development
#223I've seen shops on the internet selling "linux specific" PC's. Has anyone ever tried these ? See https://system76.com/ for example.
I bought a laptop from them 7-8 years ago because I felt paying for an OS then putting Gnu/Linux onto it was a waste of money (the Dell XPS is just as expensive as the Windows one, so I think I got this wrong). It worked really great, but, was ugly as sin. The body seemed 10 years out of date even back then (there were more modern looking laptops in the 90s). I think the Dell XPS linux is the only nice looking linux laptop that I am aware of. Given Apples dropping the ball for UNIX devs, I hope this space gets better.
Re: Lenovo ThinkPad T460 – A Good Linux Laptop for Development
#224It 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…
Thanks for pointing me to the correct wording 'palm detection'. Investigating this I found it was completely disabled and now when using it it seems to improve the situation, but will test further. I'm wondering why this touch pad issue is so important for you if you do development. When I'm not mobile I have a mouse, an external keyboard, headset or external sound system, external monitor etc
I guess it's a workflow that has stuck with me from using a Macbook Pro. For some reason I rarely feel comfortable sitting with a monitor, keyboard and mouse for many hours.
Re: Lenovo ThinkPad T460 – A Good Linux Laptop for Development
#225Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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.…
That is completely inane. You're telling me that a superset of something is worse than the thing itself, which can only be true if "I know it has no spyware" is worse than "I know it has spyware".
The rest of your comment disingenuously assumes that a computer can only have one piece of spyware, and if you know what it is you can remove it and now you're safe. What if there's more spyware you don't know about? And if your remover is completely safe, why not just run it on all your computers, safe or not?
Not to mention that removing spyware from a computer turns it into a computer that might or might not have spyware.
Re: Lenovo ThinkPad T460 – A Good Linux Laptop for Development
#226I'm still using an ancient Thinkpad T400 I bought when they first came out (2007, I think?), and I still love it. Despite heavy use, everything works perfectly and the case could probably last for decades. Doing normal dev work on Arch Linux (everything from low level C++ to Python/Julia, but no web stuff) is pleasant despite the dated CPU. Every time I look at reviews of "modern" laptops or try a friend's machine (A…
I also still have a T400 chugging along with Arch. It got put in storage for a few years until I dug it out while recycling some other junk and realized it still had considerable life in it.
I just set someone up with a T420 with a few upgrades and it's a fantastic value. Hardest part was finding a source for the rubber HD rails needed to swap a 7mm tall SSD in place of the original 9.5mm platter drive. It was technically a downgrade from a newer thinkpad laptop that they had, but the T420 is just a better machine from fit/finish/touchpad/upgrade/repair perspectives.
If anyone has advice on swapping the screen on a T420 please point me towards it - the T420 screen is, for me, the only negative.
Re: Lenovo ThinkPad T460 – A Good Linux Laptop for Development
#227Earlier quoted context omitted.
You're comparing the entry-level Thinkpad CPU with the Top-Level Macbook CPU - not surprising that the 3 year old top level CPU compares well with the entry level of this year. It's not like the faster CPUs for the Thinkpad will be any heavier. The author also deliberately chose the "regular" T460 model instead of the lighter, more integrated (and thus less serviceable) T460s. The T460s is at least comparable in weig…
Also comparing that by intention: A new Macbook Air 13" with top level i7 CPU (early 2015) is in the same price region or even cheaper and outperforms his setup slightly. But it also does not meet his requirements with 16GB of RAM.
So yes, you can get lighter laptops that can't handle 16GB RAM and have a lower-res screen (and a worse onboard graphics) card for a comparable price. But you specifically were comparing weight and power - and that's not entirely an apple - to - apple comparison you're doing here.
Re: Lenovo ThinkPad T460 – A Good Linux Laptop for Development
#228Earlier quoted context omitted.
A lot of people who buy Thikpads, myself included, are doing so mainly for the track point, which the XPS doesn't have.
The XPS touchpad is comparable to Macbook one, you won't miss the track point.
I was forced to use a Mac for one of my job ; didn't get converted to the touchpad!
Re: Lenovo ThinkPad T460 – A Good Linux Laptop for Development
#229I have a X240 (12.5" version of the T440) for about 2.5 years now, and while indeed being super quiet when it's new, today the fan is almost always on, even if it's only on the lowest speed. Probably need to open it up and give it a good cleaning, and/or replace the thermal paste between the CPU and cooler.
I did that with 2009 thinkpad and it got much worse. I guess the cheap paste I used was worse than the 6 year old paste lenovo had used :( What _did_ help was to take out the fan, clean it and then oil it carefully (too much oil or doing so without cleaning it first will only make things worse). You can also buy replacement fans, although original fans are quite expensive.
Thermal paste shouldn't be matter much.
Re: Lenovo ThinkPad T460 – A Good Linux Laptop for Development
#230I'm still using an ancient Thinkpad T400 I bought when they first came out (2007, I think?), and I still love it. Despite heavy use, everything works perfectly and the case could probably last for decades. Doing normal dev work on Arch Linux (everything from low level C++ to Python/Julia, but no web stuff) is pleasant despite the dated CPU. Every time I look at reviews of "modern" laptops or try a friend's machine (A…
I also still have a T400 chugging along with Arch. It got put in storage for a few years until I dug it out while recycling some other junk and realized it still had considerable life in it. I just set someone up with a T420 with a few upgrades and it's a fantastic value. Hardest part was finding a source for the rubber HD rails needed to swap a 7mm tall SSD in place of the original 9.5mm platter drive. It was techni…
> If anyone has advice on swapping the screen on a T420 please point me towards it - the T420 screen is, for me, the only negative.
There's a lot of people swapping them (one example [1]), but I don't know if there's a consensus on which are the best options, and there's quite a few. I think the T420 and the X220 are by far the best options for reasonably modern but not yet ruined Thinkpads, but for both of them the screens are definitely the weak points.
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/thinkpad/comments/3hjlbu/so_i_did_t...