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ThinkPad T480 is my new main laptop which runs FreeBSD

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Re: ThinkPad T480 is my new main laptop which runs FreeBSD

#71

Post by zelly »

namirez wrote: post #6
xxpor wrote: post #2

>Ethernet and WiFi work, although WiFi is a bit slow (only up to 802.11a?) compared to 802.11n/802.11ac capable OSes. And stuff like this is why I've never stuck with FreeBSD when I've tried it. I screw around with debugging issues all day at work. Why would I want to try to figure out why something as fundamental as wifi isn't working in my spare time?

FreeBSD developers and people who use FreeBSD on a daily basis need laptops too. There are not many options out there unless they opt for ancient hardware.

Most of them use Macs and work on FreeBSD in a VM (I'm not kidding)

Re: ThinkPad T480 is my new main laptop which runs FreeBSD

#72

Post by zelly »

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #27

I dropped FreeBSD as my main laptop about four years ago (and have invested a fair bit of time on dockerising my experience on ubuntu so going back is hard) But what I wanted then (and dreamed of having a million or so to make it real) was a FreeBSD reference laptop - basically a distribution of FreeBSD that worked in this laptop series - you bought the laptop and a years support and basically three hackers just kept…

> basically a distribution of FreeBSD that worked in this laptop series - you bought the laptop and a years support and basically three hackers just kept on producing patches and co-ordinating drivers and making simple tools and simple videos on how to keep your base running.

This is basically the business model of Apple Computers

Re: ThinkPad T480 is my new main laptop which runs FreeBSD

#74

Post by organsnyder »

weystrom wrote: post #51
nextos wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it silent? I've found recent Thinkpads to be a hit and miss in terms of good thermal cooling and fan firmware. Sadly fan speed is not adjustable by the user in the last few generations. I'm also curious about their new AMD offerings.

I have one at work and it's not, I ended up using my personal MBP13 instead. Fan seems to struggle to dissipate even 25 watts of heat. Sometimes it would be sitting at 50+ degrees C, just idling. I asked our IT guys if I can repaste it, but they told me it's still on warranty. It might help, but I'll never know I guess.

My T480 is fairly quiet unless it's under pretty heavy load. I do have the model with discrete graphics, which apparently has much better cooling (even when the discrete chip isn't being used).

Re: ThinkPad T480 is my new main laptop which runs FreeBSD

#75

Post by zelly »

namirez wrote: post #3

The other good development with Thinkpads is the introduction of AMD processors in their mainstream offerings (T495, T495s, X395, etc.). Unfortunately their screens suck though.

I have a T495. I highly recommend it. Be warned, the keyboard is a chiclet keyboard, not the traditional Thinkpad keyboard. But having an AMD GPU and an AMD CPU automatically makes this my choice after having dealt with the horrors of NVIDIA on Linux.

Re: ThinkPad T480 is my new main laptop which runs FreeBSD

#76

Post by swalsh »

bayindirh wrote: post #8
PrimeDirective wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because you like the tinkering and believe there should be (fringe) alternatives to mainstream OSes?

> ...mainstream OSes? Look how far we've come. Linux was the alternative OS just ~15 years ago. Now it's one of the mainstream OSes . TBH, I'd like to see one of the BSDs to become one of the mainstream OSes too. :) edit: Except macOS ofc. :)

I think Linux went mainstream when the default installation of one of the distributions came with an icon that opened up "Amazon.com"

Re: ThinkPad T480 is my new main laptop which runs FreeBSD

#77

Post by organsnyder »

agentultra wrote: post #31

I use one of those too and made the switch rather recently from a MBPr. I used Linux Mint on it. It's speedy, video calling works fine, can compile lots of code quickly, and it's refurbished and saved from the dumpster. I hope to never buy a new computer again instead relying on refurbishing old ones as we go along. I keep all of my configurations and projects synced up so that booting up a new computer into my dev e…

Two-year-old ThinkPads (the real ones like the T and X series) are great deals. I did buy my T480 new (I wanted features like the best screen that are hard to find used), but my wife and mom are both using T470 units that we bought off of eBay. My mom's unit turned out to have a charging issue, but we discovered that it was still under a three-year extended warranty, which is tied to the machine rather than the purchaser; Lenovo replaced the motherboard on it with little fuss.

Re: ThinkPad T480 is my new main laptop which runs FreeBSD

#78

Post by zelly »

castratikron wrote: post #73

Why disable the TPM? One cool thing you can do is store your SSH private key inside: https://blog.habets.se/2013/11/TPM-chip-protecting-SSH-keys-...

Yes but the TPM can only generate its own RSA key. You can't take an existing private key and store it in the TPM.

Re: ThinkPad T480 is my new main laptop which runs FreeBSD

#80

Post by vesche »

nextos wrote: post #9
vesche wrote: post #4

I also use a T480 as my main laptop and love it. Here are my notes & dotfiles for running Arch Linux: https://github.com/vesche/t480 One big item (which you'll see at the bottom of my install notes) is that intel chips in these thinkpads have a throttling issue. There's a nice python program to fix that, I run it as a systemd service on boot: https://github.com/erpalma/throttled

Is it silent? I've found recent Thinkpads to be a hit and miss in terms of good thermal cooling and fan firmware. Sadly fan speed is not adjustable by the user in the last few generations. I'm also curious about their new AMD offerings.

Mine is quite silent I'd say. How I run my OS is very minimal so my CPU/RAM usage at rest is very light. I only hear the fans kick on loud when I run intense jobs. However, I'm also interested in AMD offerings- but more because of the intel chip vulnerabilities that have come to light over the past ~2 years (Spectre/Meltdown).
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