Earlier quoted context omitted.
By far the best onscreen „hacking“ I know of. He does use Linux Mint as daily driver though...
I thought he was a KDE fan
Thinkpad X210
301–310 of 490 posts
Re: Thinkpad X210
#302Earlier quoted context omitted.
MacBook Pros not being user serviceable at every component level doesn’t mean they’re not environmentally friendly - not by a long shot. In fact, building a device like that might even shorten lifespan in a laptop form-factor, not to mention no one wants to carry around a heavy, clunky machine so it likely wouldn’t sell anyway. Here’s an example report that mostly has to do with the production and recycling aspects:…
Robust engineering, longevity, support, and resale markets do more for the environment than making components user-replaceable. But if the parts were also user replaceable it would be better for the environment.
This is not taking into account that most people won’t know how to fix the problems that arise from connectors wiggling loose or the replaceable hard drive failing. Additionally, there’s also the problem of the connectors themselves wearing out and breaking: e.g. I have a Lenovo X220 that no longer charges because the power cord connector is broken.
Re: Thinkpad X210
#303> Battery life is a little over 4 hours with the flush battery (55Wh) and 6-7 hours with the extended battery (80Wh). Not going to lie, that’s pretty horrible. > Battery life would increase by 50% if I got PC6 or PC8 idle states. The fan only turns on if I’m doing something intensive like compiling go or scrolling in Slack. lol. One of the things that really drives me nuts is my computer’s fan turning on when I know…
I don't lie about battery life numbers. People like to say, "I get 9 hours of battery life." when they mean that they get 9 hours if they do doing nothing but let their computer idle with the brightness at minimum. 4 hours with a 55Wh battery is an average consumption of 13 watts. That's because my typical workflow involves running a VM containing cassandra & postrgres (among other services) and recompiling go and ja…
Long lasting battery is the feature I appreciate most from a laptop. My T430 with the extended slice battery gives me 7-10 hours, and could probably get another 3+ if I swapped out the CD drive for the Power Bridge battery.
Long live the ThinkPad.
Edit: This is with mostly casual use on an Arch Linux setup.
I think the next killer feature I want/look for in a laptop is the ability to see the screen in bright sunlight. It's a gorgeous day today and I would mind spending a few hours by the waterfront coding.
Re: Thinkpad X210
#304Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've just unplugged my x220 and it is telling me it has 4:36 battery remaining. I only have firefox open and not doing anything else, so that 4:36 is probably quite a significant overhead. It will drop as soon as I do something.. Yup, just fired up emacs and now it is saying 3:44 remaining. Would you mind sharing what setup you have that lets you get such long battery life?
Currently in charge of th baby. But get power top installed. Make sure in the 4th screen in power top and make sure all settings are to "good". I made a systemd unit to do this for me know boot. I also installed tlp and have it set it's settings. Some of those cross over into what powertop does. I set some things on the i915 driver but that will have to wait until baby watch is over.
I have just installed powertop and updated the settings. It doesn't seem to have made any difference... but that's probably because I don't know what I am doing. I'll read up on it further. Thanks for the tip.
Re: Thinkpad X210
#305If you can still find one on then used market, I'll put in a plug for the Lenovo X1C 4th Gen (2016 model) as an ideal Linux laptop. It's what I switched to after the x220, and I describe it here: https://amontalenti.com/2017/09/01/lenovo-linux Fan never turns on, matte display, awesome connectivity, great battery life, and everything on Linux just works.
I recently switched to a X1C6, and I wholly agree. It's an amazing laptop in terms of hardware and build quality, but it does have a bunch of Linux compatibility problems.
Re: Thinkpad X210
#306Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yep, with this unattended upgrade thing I can’t make fun of windows update anymore. It’s horrible.
It's a bit clunky (as is 'apt' itself, tbh), but it should only ever install security updates and targeted bug fixes. You can configure apt relatively easily to have it download updated packages, but leave it to the user to actively install them (check out the apt configuration files in /etc/ - specifically the 'apt.d' folder). As for Windows 10, it's in its own class of terrible design - try as they might, the Linux…
Yep it should only ever install some high priority security issues and such, and actually I suspect it's not actually doing anything complex itself (kicking off processes that perform the downloads + upgrades, but not actually applying them?) so it seems there's something weird going on :-(
Re: Thinkpad X210
#307Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Not going to lie, that’s pretty horrible. The stock firmware is, uh, not good. I ported Coreboot to the second batch boards ( https://github.com/mjg59/coreboot/tree/X210_good ) and things improved significantly - I wrote it up at https://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/50924.html
Does it use the regular thinkpad EC, or is that also something custom ?
It's a custom EC running some pretty shitty firmware
Re: Thinkpad X210
#308> Battery life is a little over 4 hours with the flush battery (55Wh) and 6-7 hours with the extended battery (80Wh). Not going to lie, that’s pretty horrible. > Battery life would increase by 50% if I got PC6 or PC8 idle states. The fan only turns on if I’m doing something intensive like compiling go or scrolling in Slack. lol. One of the things that really drives me nuts is my computer’s fan turning on when I know…
>Not going to lie, that’s pretty horrible. The stock firmware is, uh, not good. I ported Coreboot to the second batch boards ( https://github.com/mjg59/coreboot/tree/X210_good ) and things improved significantly - I wrote it up at https://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/50924.html
first link should have a lowercase x: https://github.com/mjg59/coreboot/tree/x210_good
Re: Thinkpad X210
#309Can someone help me understand why Americans still buy Lenovo computers after Superfish and Lenovo Service Engine? Why isn't Lenovo as much of a security risk as Huawei?
Those are both issues with running Windows on Thinkpads. The article's author is running Linux. Besides, there are very few options for decently built laptops with good keyboards.
It‘s mostly an issue with the decision makers at lenovo. Were linux as widespread as a desktop os as windows, it would have happened to linux too.
Re: Thinkpad X210
#310Can someone help me understand why Americans still buy Lenovo computers after Superfish and Lenovo Service Engine? Why isn't Lenovo as much of a security risk as Huawei?
Second that. I don‘t get it