Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Lenovo ThinkPad P1 Gen3 Review – with Linux

ernestas.me

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

291–300 of 492 posts

Re: Lenovo ThinkPad P1 Gen3 Review – with Linux

#291

Post by ledgerdev »

SailingCactus33 wrote: post #265
LeonM wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A bad dock can introduce a lot of problems. That's why I bought the $400 official Lenovo dock. Unfortunately, I can't do my daily work without the dock. (at least not without having to introduce numerous dongles and USB hubs, which may cause more issues)

I was unable to make the official dock work with my Lenovo (Fedora), but a usb-c dongle has been working without issues.

Same here, my $400 dock is completely non-functional with Fedora 35. I have read some reports it works with Arch, so maybe Fedora 36 will work.

Re: Lenovo ThinkPad P1 Gen3 Review – with Linux

#292

Post by ochoseis »

LeonM wrote: post #193

Based on all the comments on HN about how great Thinkpads are supposed to be with Linux, I bought an X1-Extreme some time ago. From my experience, Linux support for Lenovo devices is terrible. ACPI, power management, and UEFI are consistently causing problems. Grub has an issue with the 4K display, causing it to render at about 1 FPS. The dual-GPU (Intel and nVidia) situation is unworkable under Linux. Suspend on lid…

I have run into issues when the hardware is very recent, but usually have a “works out of the box” experience if the model has been out more than 6-12mo. This often coincides with good deals on those models since Lenovo refreshes every 6-12mo and has sales to clear out the prior year’s inventory.

Re: Lenovo ThinkPad P1 Gen3 Review – with Linux

#293

Post by 323 »

faeriechangling wrote: post #59
gabereiser wrote: post #45

I find it rather peculiar that tech folks think a plastic laptop is good build quality considering what we have from Apple and others. I wish more linux laptops had the build quality and support of macbooks. This isn't a rant from an Apple fan, this is a rant from a laptop fan. ThinkPad's aren't good laptops despite what the guy with the pocket protector says. They are flimsy and feel cheap. They still have 20th cent…

I make a distinction between "Plastic" and "Carbon Fibre Reinforced Polymer with a magnesium roll cage" that this laptop uses. We don't think an aluminium bike is better than a carbon fibre bike, so why is an aluminium laptop better than a carbon fibre laptop? I mean aluminium has some nice advantages like heat dissipation but CFRP allows for much lighter laptops. If anything I prefer CRFP because of the weight advan…

> We don't think an aluminium bike is better than a carbon fibre bike

Depends on how you define better. Carbon bikes are prone to catastrophic failure, and if you fall often are a bad idea. Of course, you might just say "just don't fall".

Re: Lenovo ThinkPad P1 Gen3 Review – with Linux

#294

Post by csdvrx »

ziml77 wrote: post #275
halotrope wrote: post #110

Generally great machines for Linux. Just a PSA from a X1E gen2 owner: Do NOT get the NVidia GPU, do NOT get the fastest CPU and most importantly: do NOT opt for the 4k screen. With 1080p and Intel GPU it is a good, even great laptop with ok battery life (if you can look over the touchpad). Wonderful keyboard, good Linux support (even fingerprint reader works). But just as with the last Intel macbook, the GPU, 10th ge…

> and most importantly: do NOT opt for the 4k screen Good advice for any laptop purchase. You will burn through battery driving that and the pixel density is much higher than necessary. Yes, 1920x1080/1200 is slightly too low when it comes to pixel density at 15", but it's still very reasonable and with decent eyesight you won't have to worry about any of the mess of DPI scaling.

> > and most importantly: do NOT opt for the 4k screen

> Good advice for any laptop purchase. You will burn through battery driving that and the pixel density is much higher than necessary.

Hard disagree. I use my thinkpads on AC most of the time, at home.

The crisp fonts in a terminal is a game changer. That has spoiled me: the bare minimum I can work with now is 2k.

Likewise for OLED: except the X1 nano which I use in the daytime, I can't see myself ever using a non OLED screen, so much that I would be ready to pay a huge premium for OLED in a Thinkpad with the X1 nano form factor.

Re: Lenovo ThinkPad P1 Gen3 Review – with Linux

#295

Post by uxcolumbo »

redundantly wrote: post #262
hackyhacky wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TrackPoints are a fantastic feature and are one of the most important criteria keeping me on ThinkPads. The casual dismissal of TrackPoints in the grandparent comment shows that the author has never tried one.

> The casual dismissal of TrackPoints in the grandparent comment shows that the author has never tried one. I've tried to use track points. A dozen or so times. Recently I got a new thinkpad from work and gave it another go, same result. I just don't like it. Granted, the trackpad on my thinkpad is also garbage. I prefer my external trackball mouse. Trackpoint fanatics don't seem to understand what works for them doe…

There is a learning curve - it takes some time to get used to it.

I had the same experience initially - uh, this is awkward to use - but I stuck with it and now can't go back.

Re: Lenovo ThinkPad P1 Gen3 Review – with Linux

#296

Post by jgaa »

jen20 wrote: post #118
jgaa wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What we have from Apple laptops, when it comes to the ThinkPad keyboard, is like comparing stone tablets with a 1980 IBM electric type writer ;)

It’s pretty unclear to me which is supposed to be which in this comparison after the ThinkPad switch to mushy chiclets in the early 2010s (limited run anniversary edition excepted).

They used to be better, that is true. But any of my thinkpads have way better keyboards than any of my macbooks. I keep a X1 just as a typewriter.

Re: Lenovo ThinkPad P1 Gen3 Review – with Linux

#297

Post by smoldesu »

Avamander wrote: post #81
byefruit wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you scroll down on the link above you can see some graphs that show the 1280P is significantly faster than the M1 and the battery lives are very similar 11 hours vs 13 hours. AMD are also doing a good job. The 7000s look very good. Crazy that this is still on a larger process node than Apple.

That graph is about light load. The Intel is fast only with a ridiculous power usage, thus low runtime. It comes nowhere close to the M1's runtime when forced to the same high load.

Well... yeah. Apple is running 5nm silicon, there's no way Intel can squeeze the same battery life out of that performance profile on their 10nm node. The flip side of this coin is that it's really good battery life for casual use, and it's not like that performance is going nowhere: it's thrashing the M1 in benchmarks.

I think things will get a lot more interesting in 2024, when Intel and Apple are on similar nodes. Right now Apple is making chips with transistors that are 2-3 times as dense, but they're consistently losing the performance crown to x86 machines on dinosaur silicon. The performance-per-watt gap is bound to start closing, and when it does there won't be much of a benefit left to using ARM, especially if your casual users can get Macbook-beating battery life with it.

Re: Lenovo ThinkPad P1 Gen3 Review – with Linux

#298

Post by smoldesu »

adamors wrote: post #114
alkonaut wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On most laptops I find using a battery for any kind of heavy work a non-starter anyway. I might send an email or take a call on battery but I wouldn’t even launch a heavy IDE. Without aggressive power saving (I.e CPU sits under 1GHz even att full load meaning less than half the performance) then battery is often less than 30 minutes. I should add that this is for scorching hot “desktop replacement” (45W) laptops. But…

This may be true on Intel/AMD based CPUs but it has not been my experience on an M1 machine. I have the same workflow both connected to power and not. Multiple docker containers running, slack, zoom etc. There's definitely no performance compromise.

I mean, there is still a performance compromise; Docker on Mac sucks. Being forced to use APFS is incredibly slow for local Docker development.

Re: Lenovo ThinkPad P1 Gen3 Review – with Linux

#299

Post by leeoniya »

csdvrx wrote: post #285
alluro2 wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm touting everywhere how P14s Gen 2 AMD is the best laptop I ever had - performance, portability, silent, ports, battery, keyboard...Even compared to the MBP 14 I'm using now, I'm missing it, and Linux, while I doubt I would miss anything from MBP if I switched back, even though it's objectively great.

Unfortunately, no OLED option is a dealbraker for me. I haven't seen even a frankenpad option to transplant an OLED on the P14s Gen 2 AMD

the 4k panel is much better than the 2k/QHD IPS one i have on my previous T480s, and that one is better than all previous ThinkPad IPS panels! the colors are much better and actually pre-calibrated. still not OLED or Mac, but for a non-touch/matte ThinkPad display, it's definitely the best i've used so far.

Re: Lenovo ThinkPad P1 Gen3 Review – with Linux

#300

Post by 323 »

JetSetWilly wrote: post #226
DoingIsLearning wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also distinctly remember the unnerving feeling of getting a tingling sensation on my wrists when having a macboook pro charging connecting to mains. I have only used them when clients specifically request it, but otherwise connect them to a workstation of my choice.

It is because it is not grounded. The leakage current then goes into the case. Unfortunately it seems to be quite difficult to buy grounded usb-c chargers. Most of them seem to come with C7 cables with no ground.

Grounding doesn't make much sense for devices which are completely plastic encased.

I get your point about "pass-through grounding" to the laptop, but then again, a lot of time the laptop is not connecting to a charging wire anyway.

Post reply on HN