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Lenovo announces the first Arm-based ThinkPad

arstechnica.com

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Re: Lenovo announces the first Arm-based ThinkPad

#131
post #35

But do they run Linux? ThinkPads were always great for Linux and I've been happy with them ever since I can afford them (6 years now).

https://getfedora.org/en/workstation/download/ Fedora 35: aarch64 DVD ISO should work. Just FYI, we run our entire production api on arm on AWS. Its pretty rock stable and mature. The stability of ARM on linux is pretty much a solved problem at this point.

Sorry, but no. This is the kind of misinformation that causes people to wind up with $2000 paper weights.

ARM in the cloud and ARM on the desk-top (aka, SBC and Laptops) are nearly entirely different ballgames - certainly from a user UX perspective. Basic boot support, standards around device tree, actual driver support, firmware, quirks, ecosystem challenges due to vendors and the nightmare of a gazillion kernel forks.

I was actually shocked to see that Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 already has upstream support, but AFAICT that's not a tablet/laptop chipset. And the one that is again seems to only be seeing Windows support. The other mobile chipsets with decent suppor are few and usefuls even fewer - maybe three and that's including Librem/Pinephone.

Maybe you can find me an example of the 7c/8c running, anywhere? There are at least some DTSI for some 7c boards, but again, absolutely zero consumer hardware in the wild. I spend time every month looking and the options for running a proper upstream kernel, on an Android based laptop or kernel, and every time "upstream support" is added as a crtieria, the options drop to zero.

I've never wanted to be wrong so much before, but again, I look into this pretty regularly and am involved in some development efforts that expose me to some of these realities first hand (I run everything on aarch64 except my gaming PC). It's sort of amazing, actually, to boggle at how much collective time has been spent by some many random devs at random companies and then painstankingly re-discovered by OSS folks, especially for phones/SBCs.

(granted, if you can boot upstream, it's all downhill from there these days)

Re: Lenovo announces the first Arm-based ThinkPad

#132
post #127
post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A 16:9 screen is wider than it is tall, so if you’re programming that means fewer lines of code visible at a time.

> A 16:9 screen is wider than it is tall, so if you’re programming that means fewer lines of code visible at a time. A 16:10 screen is also wider than it is tall. I'm not sure if I'm being trolled. Number of usefully displayable lines is not defined by the x:y ratio. Further, any half-way decent 16:9 monitor can, in a matter of moments, become a 9:16 monitor. EDIT: I am aware we're talking about a laptop display, so…

16:10 is less wider, and thus gives you more vertical real estate.

If it helps you understand better 16:16 would be a perfect square.

Re: Lenovo announces the first Arm-based ThinkPad

#133
post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are authoring 16:9 content, something like 16:10 allows for some UI controls to be displayed along with 16:9 video at native resolution during previews. When programming, more space is better. So for creators, 16:10 is unambiguously better.

> When programming, more space is better. So for creators, 16:10 is unambiguously better. I don't think that's how space works.

Given the same diagonal size, a more-square display has a greater total area. So a 16:10 13" display has more area than a 16:9.

Re: Lenovo announces the first Arm-based ThinkPad

#134
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a happy native Linux desktop user for almost that long. Preferred it to windows. Let's not exaggerate about "only usable".

My experience with Linux since 1995, kind of proves otherwise, I lost track on hand holding Linux on laptops, including those sold with Linux pre-installed.

I've got zero problems on a T490. All I did was grab the nixos-hardware module for it and off I went.

Maybe don't buy hardware that other people haven't tested first? Some vendors pre-install or announce Linux support but don't actually have anywhere near proper support.

Re: Lenovo announces the first Arm-based ThinkPad

#135
post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the Pixel density differs ( a lot ) then yes it doesn't matter. But you still need economy of scale. This doesn't matter as much now because current LCD panel industry is essentially left over by Smartphone market. So you get a lot more flexibility than trying to print millions of the same 16:9 panels.

Do you have any sense what share of the LCD panel industry goes to phones?

No up to date number ( Because I no longer care as much ). Before pandemic and chip shortage the trajectory was OLED will be cheaper than LCD by 2022/ 2023. That is excluding other benefits like thinner display so you could fit larger battery and higher res ( spec ) numbers for better marketing. It is only a matter of time before LCD get completely squeezed out on Smartphone.

Re: Lenovo announces the first Arm-based ThinkPad

#136
post #74

Interesting. I was recently looking to upgrade my personal T480s which I use for development, but didn't see anything in Lenovo lineup that were reasonably light/powerful/quiet/cool enough to make put in the order. I've grown so sick of laptops constantly hissing at me when I do something more complicated than browsing the web. My work issued Dell is basically unusable in a quiet room without headphones. So as an imp…

FWIW, I switched from X270 to X13 Gen2 AMD (5850U, 32GB) recently and the difference has been night-and-day - even just web browsing on X270 caused audible noise, while X13G2A is practically completely silent unless I do something very demanding. So maybe look into T14s Gen2 AMD (which may be pretty similar to X13 Gen2 since they share the HW maintenance manual). But YMMV of course, and I have no experience of M1.

Be aware the screens on X13 and T14/T14s are pretty lacklustre for colour reproduction

Re: Lenovo announces the first Arm-based ThinkPad

#139
post #35

But do they run Linux? ThinkPads were always great for Linux and I've been happy with them ever since I can afford them (6 years now).

I'd encourage you to do your own research on this. The kind of research where you assume you're getting a soon-to-be-abanonded piece of techno-capital-consumerist ewaste, and critically evaluate anecdata against a rubrik composed from spending time researching the hairy corners of the space. This comes from a bleeding heart optimistic burned almost too many times.

Here are some items to look for: - a device tree for the chipset for your device - a u-boot fork or patches for the chipset/device/both - a Chromebook built with that chipset, due to how ChromeOS development is done - any sign of commitment from the chipset manufacturer

This topic is a lot like early Android bootloaders before... one of the early Motorola devices. Before there was a set of expectations/framework-support/etc for unlocking. That first unlockable Motorola device, there was 9 months of every wise-guy on the Internet swearing it was just a matter of time. And often it is, but only due to what amounts to luck.

Hint: there's a reason that every single Linux enthusiast isn't running a ARM laptop. There's a reason that Linux folks are excited about the Linux on M1 project even though it means jumping through hoops and reverse engineering and playing ball with Apple.

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