I think it's hard to go wrong with a ThinkPad for running Linux; the 15 inch 1080p screen hits my sweet spot. I picked up a reconditioned T460 and a year on I'm very happy (while friends around me with Asus and HP laptops are looking to replace them).
For WiFI and BT to work you can try two things: - Newer kernels - Check which chipset you have and find kernel modules supporting it. For ThinkPads I had I never needed to do anything special for making WiFi and BT to work. It worked out of the box (Ubuntu 20.04, Ubuntu 22.04 and Manjaro). Now I run Manjaro with 6.1 kernel.
Started with a Thinkpad T410 and since then I've picked up a T430 and a T480s. Love them all, but the T410 keyboard is truly the king of laptop keyboards.
I am using Linux on ThinkPads for years: ThinkPad E495, ThinkPad E14 gen2 now I have ThinkPad E16 gen 1 AMD (16"). Very nice laptop. I went for it because it is inexpensive for its screen size.
If you had Windows already installed on your machine then you have a product key in your BIOS. In case if you will change your mind and want Windows back, then install it. After installation Windows will activate itself as soon as you connect to Internet.
Also for the partition size, you can just resize your home partition with a tool called gparted, it is a gui tool and very very intuitive. Just resize and shirk the home partition and then resize and make the root partition bigger. You'il need to do it in a live usb of linux/the live gparted USB. Since you can't resize your mounted partitions
Screen real estate really is important. I can't really function well without two large monitors, so I don't even try to use my work laptop unless I can dock it somewhere with external screens and a mouse and keyboard.
I've been using a T61 15.4" with Linux mint 20.3 Una installed. I'm in my sophomore year of college and my computer has not failed me yet! If you want to improve the battery usage on your laptop, then I would highly recommend installing powertop and tlp which help me a lot with saving on battery life.
14 inch laptops are honeslty fine for coding if you get one with a good resolution, my Archpad is 1440p so its pretty good, definitely still prefer a 32 inch desktop tho
no reason not to have both. if you're just coding, you don't need high refresh rate, or super colour accuracy or anything, so you can get something really cheap.
wtf is wrong with your efi partition haha, those 3mb free are killing me haha. Anyways, I usually do a single 1GB EFI partition (running out of space in there is painful), then use everything else for a huge btrfs partition with subvolumes for root and home. That gb I lose on EFI I gain back in spades with btrfs compression.
You can use gparted to graphically resize partitions. Its just a slider. Make sure that the right drive was selected though. having said that, im not sure it'll let you resize a partition you are using so you may need to live boot into another distro using a usb.
For partitioning, I decided to use btrfs on my computer, so that I don't even have to think about the dimension of the partition. Moreover, btrfs once a day do a snapshot of my toot fs that I can also save in an external disk.
The battery issue is down to the Intel processor. It’s just a pig with energy, and the reason Apple are making their own ARM processors. And don’t fret about your settings, in Windows it’s even worse!
Loving my new P series AMD Gen 2 Thinkpad - got it a month ago - haven't put Linux on it yet - but use a dedicated 5900X based PC with Linux on it and Windows 11 virtualised
About that Windows thing in Uni - If it's a Uni with a computer science course that takes itself seriously they should not require you to use Windows outside of perhaps some specific classes where they should provide you with a computer running everything that is needed. But the moment they want you to run something on your personal computer that isn't available on every platform - they failed as a Uni and I would question their credibility. You should never have to dual boot "just in case".
just flash the gparted iso to an live usb and resize your root that way. the iso is just debian with xfce and gparted pre installed i think. i made my root too small too and i just doubled it a few weeks ago. for this to work you only need to have a few spare GBs in your home to transfer them across. Obligatory "This software is provided as is with no guarantees" so back up important data in case it fails and corrupts everything. I personally havent had issues, but you never know. It will just take a while tho, i has to move your entire home partition (30-60 mins).
To be honest I had a bunch of thinkpad (From L-460 to X13), every one was a sturdy laptop with decent performance. Right now, my company gave me a L-15 Gen1 (with Ryzen 3 pro), I'm very happy. L series are full plastic but the built quality is top. Funnily, E series looks more robust (because lid is in aluminium). The good thing about every thinkpad --whatever the serie-- is that it's made to last. I even recycled a very old L-540 (more than ten years old) and it's working flawlessly. Just pay attention to the screen selection : a bunch of L series and E series are still using old 250 candela screen (like mine). But if i had to chose personally I would wait for promotion. Right now there is a P14s that is very appealing in Europe. And P, T series are top notch when it comes to material used for the build. And of course, even if the keyboard has change a bit it's still the best keyboards in my opinion. Of course the Linux "compatibility" is also a very compealing argument.
I think many people in the Linux space say that the X220 and T420 are pretty much the sweetspot because they're the last ThinkPads that had the amazing keyboard and repairability, while being the first ones with reasonably modern processors.
I've had a T470 that was provided by my company 6 years ago. They replaced it with a Dell XPS 2 years ago and since I've been using the T470 for my personal use (they let us keep them after replacement every 4 years) The T470 is 10x better than the Dell. I love the replacable battery, of which I have a few, battery life is good. The Dell is a piece of Crap, runs at like 90c all the time with a fan like a Saturn 5. sure it's got a fast GPU but I don't give a crap. I'd dont game on it. I would rather use the 6 yo T470 than the XPS. I'm looking at a new TP T14 for personal use but I just wish it had a replaceble battery. I also would love better support of the finger print reader in linux as it's currently next to useless
The only good thing about Thinkpads, nowadays, is that it's Linux certified. And they have engineers that work to ensure linux compatibility and driver ports. Aside from that, not that great
it depends. lately I testes an old HP elitebook G3 (with an awful CPU) : it lasts 50% time more with Ubuuntu 22.04 than with windows 11. For a more modern CPU I don't know, but the situation is far better nowadays.
in my experience, i had longer battery life with linux than windows. it was 2.5 hours on windows, and about 4 hours in linux. i am using auto-cpufreq on linux btw
My T480 draws 4 watts on idle on desktop on bspwm (arch) .I played with tlp, auto-cpufreq, powertop and I still can't get to 2 watts that system was drawing in windows 11. But it isn't that big of a deal because I have big enough battery (2x25Wh) and it gets 7-8 hours with ease. If I need to watch a youtube video, I open it in mpv (it uses 70% less power).
im thinking abt getting a used thinkpad t480 for 200 dollars and use linux mint on it, other than that i use linux on those chinese emulation handhelds.
![[TF2] The Russian Bear Trap](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/YFNSwz2_rOA/mqdefault.jpg)
your video "why linux people love thinkpads" made me to buy my thinkpad and since then i love it
I've been using T480 for an year and loving it so far.
I think it's hard to go wrong with a ThinkPad for running Linux; the 15 inch 1080p screen hits my sweet spot. I picked up a reconditioned T460 and a year on I'm very happy (while friends around me with Asus and HP laptops are looking to replace them).
For WiFI and BT to work you can try two things:
- Newer kernels
- Check which chipset you have and find kernel modules supporting it.
For ThinkPads I had I never needed to do anything special for making WiFi and BT to work. It worked out of the box (Ubuntu 20.04, Ubuntu 22.04 and Manjaro). Now I run Manjaro with 6.1 kernel.
Started with a Thinkpad T410 and since then I've picked up a T430 and a T480s. Love them all, but the T410 keyboard is truly the king of laptop keyboards.
the fact a computer science course is railroading its students into using windows or mac is just sad.
This is soo true, it feels illegal to say.
I am using Linux on ThinkPads for years: ThinkPad E495, ThinkPad E14 gen2 now I have ThinkPad E16 gen 1 AMD (16"). Very nice laptop. I went for it because it is inexpensive for its screen size.
If you had Windows already installed on your machine then you have a product key in your BIOS. In case if you will change your mind and want Windows back, then install it. After installation Windows will activate itself as soon as you connect to Internet.
came down to comment section to say this. OEM keys are nice in case you need to go back to windows for any reason.
cheers mate
Also for the partition size, you can just resize your home partition with a tool called gparted, it is a gui tool and very very intuitive. Just resize and shirk the home partition and then resize and make the root partition bigger. You'il need to do it in a live usb of linux/the live gparted USB. Since you can't resize your mounted partitions
I just wrote this comment myself before I saw yours😂
💀mine is encrypted with LUKS, so i got no luck
@@QmVuamFtaW4just decrypt it and then shrink the partition and then re-encrypt it again.
Screen real estate really is important. I can't really function well without two large monitors, so I don't even try to use my work laptop unless I can dock it somewhere with external screens and a mouse and keyboard.
I've been using a T61 15.4" with Linux mint 20.3 Una installed. I'm in my sophomore year of college and my computer has not failed me yet! If you want to improve the battery usage on your laptop, then I would highly recommend installing powertop and tlp which help me a lot with saving on battery life.
Also Arch is hella gay😫🏳🌈🏳🌈🏳🌈🏳🌈🏳🌈
I love this video great one Bro! I have also seen that Wi-Fi issue several times.
I also bought a Thinkpad that came with Windows 11 preinstalled and didn't even boot it once.
14 inch laptops are honeslty fine for coding if you get one with a good resolution, my Archpad is 1440p so its pretty good, definitely still prefer a 32 inch desktop tho
no reason not to have both. if you're just coding, you don't need high refresh rate, or super colour accuracy or anything, so you can get something really cheap.
wtf is wrong with your efi partition haha, those 3mb free are killing me haha.
Anyways, I usually do a single 1GB EFI partition (running out of space in there is painful), then use everything else for a huge btrfs partition with subvolumes for root and home. That gb I lose on EFI I gain back in spades with btrfs compression.
You can use gparted to graphically resize partitions. Its just a slider. Make sure that the right drive was selected though. having said that, im not sure it'll let you resize a partition you are using so you may need to live boot into another distro using a usb.
For partitioning, I decided to use btrfs on my computer, so that I don't even have to think about the dimension of the partition. Moreover, btrfs once a day do a snapshot of my toot fs that I can also save in an external disk.
the first thing i did when getting my thinkpad was remove windows 10 off of it and put linux
The battery issue is down to the Intel processor. It’s just a pig with energy, and the reason Apple are making their own ARM processors. And don’t fret about your settings, in Windows it’s even worse!
Loving my new P series AMD Gen 2 Thinkpad - got it a month ago - haven't put Linux on it yet - but use a dedicated 5900X based PC with Linux on it and Windows 11 virtualised
About that Windows thing in Uni - If it's a Uni with a computer science course that takes itself seriously they should not require you to use Windows outside of perhaps some specific classes where they should provide you with a computer running everything that is needed. But the moment they want you to run something on your personal computer that isn't available on every platform - they failed as a Uni and I would question their credibility. You should never have to dual boot "just in case".
Try auto-cpufreq to save battery, also I think 14' is the perfect size.
just flash the gparted iso to an live usb and resize your root that way. the iso is just debian with xfce and gparted pre installed i think. i made my root too small too and i just doubled it a few weeks ago. for this to work you only need to have a few spare GBs in your home to transfer them across.
Obligatory "This software is provided as is with no guarantees" so back up important data in case it fails and corrupts everything. I personally havent had issues, but you never know. It will just take a while tho, i has to move your entire home partition (30-60 mins).
well. mine is the freaking internal speaker doesn't work properly, but luckily I barely use it. I either use airpods or external speaker...
I got in x240 I'm wondering how early you can go in their lineup before they start losing their appeal.
To be honest I had a bunch of thinkpad (From L-460 to X13), every one was a sturdy laptop with decent performance. Right now, my company gave me a L-15 Gen1 (with Ryzen 3 pro), I'm very happy. L series are full plastic but the built quality is top. Funnily, E series looks more robust (because lid is in aluminium). The good thing about every thinkpad --whatever the serie-- is that it's made to last. I even recycled a very old L-540 (more than ten years old) and it's working flawlessly.
Just pay attention to the screen selection : a bunch of L series and E series are still using old 250 candela screen (like mine). But if i had to chose personally I would wait for promotion. Right now there is a P14s that is very appealing in Europe. And P, T series are top notch when it comes to material used for the build. And of course, even if the keyboard has change a bit it's still the best keyboards in my opinion.
Of course the Linux "compatibility" is also a very compealing argument.
I think many people in the Linux space say that the X220 and T420 are pretty much the sweetspot because they're the last ThinkPads that had the amazing keyboard and repairability, while being the first ones with reasonably modern processors.
X240's are great, I used one for years until I got my X1 Yoga G3 this summer, I've heard really good things about x230 and x220 as well
T450s archlinux.
Can you link the model you have ? Tnks in Advance.
He says it's the e15 around 6:45
I've had a T470 that was provided by my company 6 years ago. They replaced it with a Dell XPS 2 years ago and since I've been using the T470 for my personal use (they let us keep them after replacement every 4 years) The T470 is 10x better than the Dell. I love the replacable battery, of which I have a few, battery life is good. The Dell is a piece of Crap, runs at like 90c all the time with a fan like a Saturn 5. sure it's got a fast GPU but I don't give a crap. I'd dont game on it. I would rather use the 6 yo T470 than the XPS. I'm looking at a new TP T14 for personal use but I just wish it had a replaceble battery. I also would love better support of the finger print reader in linux as it's currently next to useless
The only good thing about Thinkpads, nowadays, is that it's Linux certified. And they have engineers that work to ensure linux compatibility and driver ports. Aside from that, not that great
that's why you buy old ones
Bro, I have the same exact laptop.
What's the program you're using on the bottom to view your resource usage/temperatures/processes?
gotop
hair looks good now :)
Talk about from linux to think pad x13s ARM. Pls!
Eww, discord. You lost me there a little bit.
Resize your root partition :D
Linux power management is still bad. Thats it
it depends. lately I testes an old HP elitebook G3 (with an awful CPU) : it lasts 50% time more with Ubuuntu 22.04 than with windows 11. For a more modern CPU I don't know, but the situation is far better nowadays.
@@david-6110 yeah it getting better
in my experience, i had longer battery life with linux than windows. it was 2.5 hours on windows, and about 4 hours in linux.
i am using auto-cpufreq on linux btw
My T480 draws 4 watts on idle on desktop on bspwm (arch) .I played with tlp, auto-cpufreq, powertop and I still can't get to 2 watts that system was drawing in windows 11. But it isn't that big of a deal because I have big enough battery (2x25Wh) and it gets 7-8 hours with ease. If I need to watch a youtube video, I open it in mpv (it uses 70% less power).
holy 7-8 hours? thats crazy@@timrosulnik1588
what thinkpad are you using?
e15
I just ordered e16 amd
im thinking abt getting a used thinkpad t480 for 200 dollars and use linux mint on it, other than that i use linux on those chinese emulation handhelds.