
One Year with ThinkPad and Linux (From MacBook Pro) - drikerf
https://drikerf.com/one-year-with-thinkpad-and-linux-from-macbook-pro/
======
alexktz
I recently purchased a 16” MBP despite significant personal concerns over the
future of MacOS, being a strong open source advocate and Linux paying my
mortgage.

I did this ultimately for a few reasons. MacOS lets me run Adobe (Photoshop,
Lightroom, etc), Fusion360, has a good terminal (iTerm and zsh unix like
shell) and Logic.

Mac hardware is still some of the best in the business, no other vendors seem
to be able to catch-up. The XPS line is a great example, the battery that Dell
chose to put in that laptop can’t run the internals at full power when not
connected to AC. There are plenty of other comments about Thinkpads here (I
have a T480s through work) and find the overall experience just fine.

The MacBook on the other hand, I use for 8+ hours every day. It’s the machine
I reach for first. It sparks joy. It just works when roaming on WiFi, always.
It just works with Bluetooth headphones, always. It just works with external
displays, first time, every time. To put it simply, the machine gets out of my
way and lets me get real work done. I can SSH to wherever I want and get ‘the
Linux experience’.

My personal desktop runs Arch and KDE but for a portable, annoyingly, I still
think Macs are the only way to go. But damn do I wish they had a SD card slot.

~~~
zdragnar
I am glad that you like your macbook, but your experience has been very
different from mine. It has the worst WIFI radio in a laptop that i have used;
one area of my house is basically off-limits to it despite every other Wi-Fi
enabled device i own working there (phones and several laptop brands).

The fancy metal case isnt properly grounded- I get occasionally a slight
tingling /shock from it when I have it plugged in.

Battery life is on par, at best, with my other laptops.

Macos doesn't let me configure or change the things I want to configure or
change. Some programs are usability / discoverability nightmares.

Performance of most programs is, at best, similar to linux or Win10, and is
frequently worse against other machines with similar hardware.

I have used several models of MacBook and an Air, and personally will not
purchase another again... I am tired of paying top dollar for a mediocre
experience.

~~~
systemvoltage
> It has the worst WIFI radio in a laptop that i have used

This is an extremely disputable claim. Wifi chipset used by Apple is by _far_
the best in class in my experience. I have 4 laptops - ASUS, Thinkpad, HP
laptop from work and MBP 16". All of them get a visit to the special room once
a week at least. If we use my commode as a benchmark of wifi radio
performance, when I am sitting on it and watching Monty Python, I can get
every single joke with MacBookPro 16 streaming smoothly at 320p resolution.
Not so much with other products of similar class.

~~~
zdragnar
YMMV, I guess. We have a lot of wood paneling, plus the furnace is in between
me and the router, so it would be understandable if the issue was universal.

My HP Spectre x360 has not had a problem with the reception once, but I can
barely attend video calls or load Jira with the macbook. Likewise, my wife's
chromebook and my previous surface book 2 were all perfectly happy.

That said, the Dell XPS 13 was pretty close to equally bad as the macbook,
though I haven't had it in a long enough time that I've since re-arranged my
sitting area- whether it actually was worse or not I'm not sure.

~~~
organsnyder
I've had Mac wifi adapters that didn't like certain access points in the past
(a specific Ubiquiti AP firmware revision circa 2014 comes to mind). Not sure
that's still an issue nowadays, but you might want to make sure your AP
firmware is up to date.

------
lmilcin
I am also running Linux on Thinkpad (Debian unstable on T440s).

As to the battery life, this typically requires some work but I found it is
generally possible to get good battery life. I am able to get my T440s to run
for total 24 hours with the highest option 9-cell, the built in 3-cell and
another 3-cell that came original with the laptop. This I did to be able to
work on a long yacht cruise with no extra power and required to get backlight
almost to minimum and to downclock CPU a little bit.

Now, to get there there are tools that can tell you what is using up the
battery and some howtos on the Internet. I don't remember details so it is
best if you go look it up yourself.

If you are using i3 you are generally well set up to easily get over 10h of
operation.

As to touchpad these are all disappointing on all ThinkPads but probably
especially on T440s where it is something called "clickpad". The entire
touchpad is a button and you need to press it and try to move your finger
while pressing HARD to drag things, for example. Dunno who thought this is a
good idea. I always travel with a mouse and a mouse pad to be able to work
comfortably:) Still, it is easier to use built in keyboard and a mouse than
the reverse, luscious touchpad but keyboard to replace miserable something
shipped with Macbook. I don't like typing on something that feels like a solid
pane of aluminum with some markings on it.

~~~
jeffbee
I find that I can tune the battery life on a ThinkPad to be pretty amazing,
but it is hard to get my change to stick after a reboot or even a suspend/wake
cycle. One of the things that seems to make a big impact is PCIe ASPM. But
where do you change your config files so it's always on? At least on Ubuntu
there are numerous config files that _formerly_ controlled power management
settings, are still referenced in Stack Overflow answers, still exist on the
filesystem, but don't actually _do_ one damn thing, which is infuriating.

Used to be able to just drop commands into rc.local but now it's not as
simple.

~~~
lmilcin
I have a bunch of scripts that run on every start and wakeup. Some of those
scripts do things like configure my machine depending on where I am (for
example, detect presence of my home WiFi).

~~~
jeffbee
It doesn't seem like you'd be able to do that on wakeup. Don't you have to put
those kinds of commands in a hook that runs after a wifi link state change?

~~~
lmilcin
I am not sure what you mean. As bad as it is, systemd actually supports
running stuff on wakeup. One figures, it has support for everything.

~~~
jeffbee
What I mean is that when the machine wakes up, it's not associated with a wifi
network until later, so isn't it a race if such a thing runs at wakeup?

~~~
boring_twenties
OK so we sleep for 30 seconds and try again, maybe give up after 5 or 10
iterations of this. What's the problem?

~~~
lmilcin
Or have a script running on when network comes up and you check if you just
freshly came from the sleep.

------
jeroenhd
> Can't debug issues in Safari without borrowing a Mac

> Can't do iOS development

Not _legally_ , no. These can be worked around with a VM, just like with the
Windows issue. It sucks, but Apple is never going to support their development
toolchain on any other platform.

All in all, I think this is a pretty positive review for an "I switched to
Linux" blog post. Usually they're more negative about the lack of finish a lot
of Linux tools use, but the author of this blog seems to be more tolerant
towards the small things in order to gain the big things.

~~~
bogwog
The homebrew/jailbreak community have a custom toolchain called Theos
([https://theos.dev/](https://theos.dev/)) which enables you to cross-compile
to iOS devices without a Mac. I don't know how legal it is, but it's really
frustrating that we aren't seeing more efforts to develop tools like this
since so many companies and individuals are scared of pissing off Apple.

~~~
rkangel
I think you're going to struggle to publish to the App Store without a mac of
some form. There's too much signing and stuff that requires apple devices for
authentication.

I solved this with a Mac Mini that lives at home on my desk and was only used
for the occasional bit of testing, debug and publishing (I was building using
Flutter).

~~~
benologist
You can make a virtual machine very easily but it performs very poorly:

[https://github.com/myspaghetti/macos-
virtualbox](https://github.com/myspaghetti/macos-virtualbox)

Or you can lease them online:

[http://macstadium.com/](http://macstadium.com/)

GitHub has some kind of Mac hardware or virtualization for their Actions too
so you could probably wire something up to build on GitHub:

[https://github.com/marketplace/actions/setup-
swift](https://github.com/marketplace/actions/setup-swift)

------
tkainrad
Welcome to Linux! ;)

I have been using as my sole OS (except for some very occasional gaming on
Windows) for 10 years. The longer you use it, the happier you become with your
setup imo.

There is a very detailed blog post about my setup that has grown over the
years: [https://tkainrad.dev/posts/setting-up-linux-
workstation](https://tkainrad.dev/posts/setting-up-linux-workstation)

It is about Ubuntu, but many sections apply to all distros. The most important
productivity boost for me has been to switch from Bash to Zsh. Mainly because
of some great plugins for Zsh, such as z, zsh-peco-history (better history
search), zsh-autosuggestions, and zsh-syntax-highlighting. The blog post has
copy-paste ready instructions to set it up.

~~~
laksdjfkasljdf
> Bash to Zsh

Always remember that the whole debacle of people even moving away from Bash is
because Apple and others are afraid of GPLv3. They dread having to contribute
back to the open source projects they profit from.

Most of the things I see for Zsh have been possible (and more portable) on
Bash for decades. It's just the new javascript-like hype for Zsh that is new,
not the capabilities.

True, Bash have lots of baggage, but half the portability and performance
trickery is also because of that baggage. It's impossible to have the niceties
Bash offer without some of the tradeoffs, and every new shell learned that the
hard way.

------
diminish
What are the cons of mac?

for me:

\- Sluggish UI

\- Inadequate package manager

\- Unintuitive ways to install stuff

\- Slow and large updates

\- Can't do Linux development

\- Can't try server tools

\- Slow boot-to-work time

\- Hard to add memory and ram

\- Limited interfaces

\- Hacker unfriendly

\- Can't have a minimal desktop

\- High memory usage of base system

~~~
FoomFries
I'm curious how you arrived at some of these conclusions.

\- Sluggish UI -> I've never experienced this in the last three years of using
my 2017 MBP.

\- Inadequate package manager -> Somewhat nebulous, most package managers on
Linux are available on Unix.

\- Slow and large updates -> I honestly don't pay much attention as I have
updates install automatically while I'm sleeping, but what size differences
have you noticed?

\- Slow boot to work -> Never experienced this, boot is less than a minute
regularly.

\- Can't have a minimal desktop -> Beyond hiding all icons and the dock, what
more are you looking for?

\- High memory usage of base system -> Never seen this come close to the main
applications I use on a daily basis. What quantified results are you receiving
to notice this?

~~~
pravus
At least as far as the UI is concerned:

\- No focus-follows-mouse options means I can't layer windows in a way that
accelerates my workflows. Having to switch between windows constantly is a
giant speed bottleneck for me.

\- No keybinds for quickly resizing and positioning windows as far as I know.
I only use the mouse to quickly position windows and even then just use alt-
drag on my Linux desktop.

\- Animations. Anything that doesn't just instantly do whatever I told it is
wasting my time. I don't need pretty or shiny.

Of course this is my own personal experience, but I am extremely less
productive on Mac and Windows compared to Linux due to these and more.

~~~
dkarl
After eight years of using Macs exclusively for desktop and laptop use, I
still can't get used to the counterintuitive focus management. I'm scrolling
up and down in an app, start using the keyboard, and the keystrokes go to a
different app! Arg! It just does not compute for me that I can be interacting
with app A, move my mouse to app B, start interacting with app B, see my
interactions have effect in app B, then start typing and find that my
keystrokes are going to app A.

------
submeta
I love the idea of having a Thinkpad running Linux. But there are a dozen apps
on my Mac that I would miss terribly. DEVONthink, OmniGraffle, and many more.

I was thinking about getting a used ThinkPad for Emacs + Org plus terminal
only. A companion for writing in Emacs/org and for doing dev work (Python,
Lisp, Bash). This article made me revisit that plan. (Been using ThinkPads
from 2006-2015 and loved the experience. Solid rock hardware and best
keybord.) But I can‘t think of getting rid of my Mac as it is adding so much
quality to my day to day life.

~~~
TuringNYC
I've never thought of MacBooks for the apps specifically, but I checked
OmniGraffle which looks like a great replacement for Visio. Visio is one of
the few things that keeps me occasionally attached to PCs.

Could you please share the other Mac-only apps that you'd miss, i'd love to
see!

~~~
submeta
Software that is unique to MacOS: \- HoudahSpot (search files / documents) \-
DEVONthink (document management system) \- Ulysses app (a markdown writing
app; I know there are many, on many platforms) \- iA Writer (another markdown
writer) \- Alfred App (automating) \- Keyboard Maestro (automating) \-
AppleScript (automating) \- MailMate \- Things3 (task management) \-
OmniOutliner \- OmniFocus \- OmniGraffle \- PDF Expert (reading / annotating
pdfs) \- iTerm \- aText (text macros) \- Timing App (auto time tracking) and
many more.

------
acd
I went the same route from Mac to Lenovo Thinkpads. I have not looked back
since. Did the Linux swap due to Mac OS X memory pressure issues with
virtualization. Basically Mac OS X got a ported feature from iOS where they
froze background application memory so that apps would be quick to restart and
resume but that did not play nice with virtualization where you want all the
memory you can get.

Anyhow since most development is nowadays done for Linux server running Linux
on the desktop makes sense. Docker works better on Linux with port mapping.

For the battery time mentioned in the article one can swap batterys on Lenovo
and there is a 9 cell battery which should get better run time hours.

------
dhosek
Things that I like about being on a Mac:

\- The ABC - Extended keyboard layout gives me easy access to diacriticalized
letters like é or č as well as typographic characters like – and –

\- long battery life. I'm currently sharing a charger between my work laptop
my personal laptop and my iPad and life is easy.

\- access to mainstream software like Office, Adobe etc.

\- I can easily use my iPad as an external monitor while I'm away from my
desk.

\- The trackpad is so much more usable than any Windows laptop I've been given
from work

\- I don't need to spend much time getting stuff in a workable state. Other
than disabling caps lock and selecting ABC - Extended as my keyboard layout, I
don't feel the need to do much customization on a new Mac.

~~~
se32point1
Counterpoints for Linux:

\- Compose key blows your "ABC - Extended layout out of the water." It's more
powerful than anything else.

\- ... I never really use my XPS 13 without a charger, because I don't really
travel around much, but it also has USB-C like all the "cool stuff." I would
imagine with some tweaking I can get better battery life but I know it does
last a while on standby.

\- You won't get mainstream-mainstream stuff on Linux, which is probably a
problem for some, but for day-to-day usage many Adobe alternatives exist
(Blender, Inkscape, Krita, GIMP), along with commercial and professional
things (DAWs (eg. Renoise, Reaper, whatever), and DaVinci Resolve)

\- /shrugs VNC maybe? Although there are some pretty small monitors out there
that should work. (I use HDMI monitors). Advantages of not being in the Apple
ecosystem is that there is more freedom.

\- Use a keyboard and mouse. It's faster. And more useful. There are only so
many things you can do with a trackpad.

\- You don't need to do much customization on Linux either (especially
something like Pop!_OS or Ubuntu). Things are a lot better (not perfect, but
better) than they were before. Nothing like Windows where you have to
uninstall the bloatware though

~~~
dhosek
\- I looked up the keyboard shortcuts for compose key and it seems like it
takes a lot more typing to get to the characters I need than ABC - Extended:
To get an acute accent I type opt-e o, for example, to get ó. The same on
Linux is compose-'' o. Everything requires at least two characters with
compose held down. There are a handful of characters/diacriticals that are
shift-opt to reach, but the most common ones are less typing. Also muscle
memory makes a difference.

\- Many of the alternatives to mainstream stuff have compatibility issues.
Maybe this is better now than the last time I've dealt with them last, but
part of why I use word is that I need to send documents to people who use word
and I'd rather not have surprises (smaller thing but still significant—Word
for the Mac shows the word count at the bottom of the window. Word on Windows
doesn't (or at least didn't the last time I used it) and Pages on the Mac will
show wordcount only in a mini window.

I'm much more productive with a trackpad. MacOS also includes a number of
shortcuts on the trackpad that don't work as well with a mouse (even Apple's
magic mouse).

I'd note that some of it is also that I've been trained into the shortcuts
that I have on the Mac (both keyboard-based and trackpad-based). Muscle habit
goes a long way towards keeping someone on a platform.

~~~
se32point1
Ah, so compose isn't actually held down. What we do is we press compose, then
release, then do the combination we want. In this. Now, for ó, it's not
actually compose (⎄ is compose's symbol) "o, it's ⎄'o, with an apostrophe, so
it's not as bad. Indeed, there, are some pretty bad ones, like ⎄`+o, which
gives you ờ (a Vietnamese letter), but it's still usable. The point of compose
is the sheer number of combinations it has. Finding a new combination on
[https://www.x.org/releases/X11R7.7/doc/libX11/i18n/compose/e...](https://www.x.org/releases/X11R7.7/doc/libX11/i18n/compose/en_US.UTF-8.html)
is almost magical.

I mean, I'd just use PDF, but I get the need for Word. In that case... Office
Online is an option? You can probably write up everything in a solution like
LibreOffice (which is _not_ as abominable as people make it out to be, and
some of the horrid bugs it used to have have been fixed, but it's not perfect
either), and export to DOCX, then check it through in Office Online and it
should be good. LibreOffice does have word count in the bottom as well, which
is a nice addition

Linux also supports trackpad gestures, although they are prone to not being as
smooth or whatnot. Since I spend my life on the keyboard I use that instead,
and it's just as productive. I find it annoying to go reach for my trackball.

Indeed, yes. Although I should probably take that into account too since I'm
switching to a 60% keyboard that doesn't have arrow keys, and I'm going to
have to relearn a lot of stuff. In the end, as others have said, switching to
Linux feels bad in the beginning but you grow to love it as time passes. Sure,
it has issues, such as these, but it also has other strong advantages.

------
x87678r
I was looking at larger laptops to run Linux but they aren't cheap so MBP
doesn't look such bad value. I want 15in screen with higher than 1080
resolution, 16GB memory, good battery life and there really isn't much less
than $1500 from the main brands that will run Linux well. Any suggestions?
Otherwise the MBP16 looks not such bad value as I know it'll be reliable.

~~~
fsflover
[https://shop.puri.sm/shop/librem-15/](https://shop.puri.sm/shop/librem-15/)

~~~
sneak
I was going to get one of these but the lack of USB-C charging turned me off
from it. It’s 2020.

------
dcminter
I used to use Thinkpads until I decided to switch when the Lenovo Superfish
thing happened more-or-less in conjunction with the sharp decline in keyboard
quality. In terms of reliability and compatibility they were always very
solid, and I got great price/performance results by buying last-year's top of
the line models second-hand and then maxing out whatever could be upgraded
(memory + disk) from there.

After that I switched to Dell XPS 13s starting with the 9350, buying new.
There was an initial issue with the WiFi adapter being unsupported (as I
recall the `developer edition` with Ubuntu supported was more expensive but
also had a better supported WiFi card) which initially required me to build a
custom kernel module (I think? It was a while ago) but support appeared very
soon after in mainline Linux. Subsequently I've had no major compatibility
issues - except that support for multiple monitors where the laptop is HiDPI
but the external monitors aren't is very poor (the Thinkpads I owned weren't
HiDPI - I don't think this is a Dell issue). Edit: Battery life is mediocre on
all the XPS models I've had.

Just lately I've been using a work-issued Dell Latitude 7490. I'm enjoying
this a lot. Support is solid, the screen isn't HiDPI so multi-monitor usage is
fine, its battery life is good enough to get me through a working day without
plugging in (sometimes I don't even notice I haven't plugged in), and it has
plenty of ports (including USB C, HDMI, and Ethernet).

I've used Macs on and off in the workplace but couldn't get used to them. If I
needed to do CAD, Graphic Design, or other things where open source software
doesn't cut the mustard I guess I'd go for a Mac, but happily I just don't
need to these days (the broad move to Web apps helped a LOT, particularly the
move to GSuite for a lot of stuff that would previously have required MS
Office).

Just my 2¢.

------
mapgrep
I am in the same boat, except my daily laptop is a ThinkPad X1 Carbon instead
of a T480, coming from a specced out Macbook Air 11. My feelings are
remarkably close to this. For anyone who spends a lot of time in emacs,
browser, the terminal, with media editing as a secondary concern, I think it's
a great setup. The ThinkPad hardware is stellar.

I would underline what he points out about the battery being a relative
shortcoming though. Which is important for anyone who likes being away from a
power outlet for a good while.

I think linux has historically really lagged on controlling battery use, Apple
has exploited its tight hardware/software integration for years in this
regard, and I only see this spread widening frankly. The ARM Macbooks will
likely be absolute marathon runners in comparison to any linux laptop, at
least for a good while. I'd love to be wrong.

------
lettergram
There's a lot you can do to improve battery life...

T480 - Larger battery cell (I get >20hrs of use).

Then there's a bunch of configuration options:
[https://austingwalters.com/increasing-battery-life-on-an-
arc...](https://austingwalters.com/increasing-battery-life-on-an-arch-linux-
laptop-thinkpad-t14s/)

On my new T14s after the latest updates and a much smaller battery, I can
still easily get 8 hours at ~2.5lbs weight, 16 cores, 32Gb RAM.

------
bogwog
I love Thinkpads and I love Linux. My current "daily driver" laptop is an old
X220T from 2011, which is a tablet hybrid (including touchscreen and Wacom
pen/digitizer). I don't use it because of nostalgia or a love for retro
computers, I use it because it's still an excellent experience all these years
later. No modern laptop in the current price range can beat it.

I don't know if that's because the build quality was so great back then, or
because Intel dropped the ball this past decade. I'm guessing it's a little of
both, which is why I'm kind of conflicted right now: I love Thinkpads, but I'm
also super interested to try out the new ARM-based Macbooks.

~~~
boogies
> No modern laptop in the current price range can beat it.

> I'm also super interested to try out the new ARM-based Macbooks

I’m having a hard time choosing between an old Thinkpad and the Pinebook Pro
for a GNU/Linux laptop. Thinkpads have a better battle-tested durability +
repairability reputation and Libreboot is a significant selling point to me.
But x86 seems like it’s just beginning to fade into the past in favor of
source-available ARM in the present and open-source RISC V in the future, and
the Pinebook isn’t exactly terribly flimsy (magnesium-alloy outer shell, maybe
inspired by Thinkpads) or expensive ($200).

~~~
boring_twenties
I like my Pinebook Pro, but it is slow compared to my T420, and maybe even
slow compared to my X200.

The Thinkpads will also work out of the box with basically any kernel from the
past 10 years, whereas the Pinebook requiers a patched kernel, patched u-boot,
and a third patched component I didn't even know existed and don't remember
the name of.

It's a pretty awesome device for $200 but it can't replace a real laptop IMHO,
and hardware support is under active development.

------
dddddaviddddd
There's work to make the touchpad better
[https://bill.harding.blog/2020/06/22/linux-touchpad-
project-...](https://bill.harding.blog/2020/06/22/linux-touchpad-project-
update-progress-on-multitouch/)

------
JJMalina
I didn't know about Darktable or Kdenlive, so I'll have to check those out.
Peek is awesome for GIF recording.

I've been using a ThinkPad X1 Carbon running Xubuntu since 2016. Before that I
was using a MacBook Pro.

The things I like about this machine/Linux are \- It's light \- The keyboard
is great/better \- The battery is really good coupled with the low resource
usage of Xubuntu (except when I have Zoom, Docker, and lots of Firefox tabs)
\- Don't have any trouble with audio when using Bluetooth \- I don't have to
worry about MacOS breaking my dev environment \- Setting up dev environment is
a breeze

Things I dislike \- CPU is not as powerful as a MacBook Pro \- The most recent
X/Ubuntu broke wake up from sleep \- Some software doesn't have a Linux
equivalent (Webex) \- If you want to dual boot Linux and Windows, getting full
disk encryption on X/Ubuntu is challenging \- Plugging into a non-hidpi
monitor is janky because it can't change dpi per screen \- Speakers on this
machine suck

For me doing strictly software development, the benefits of a stable and easy
to use environment outweigh the warts of Linux.

If I were to get a new machine I'd consider Lenovo again. The new Dell XPS
also looks great. I might also give Windows and WSL2 a try in my dual OS
desktop. Windows feels a lot smoother compared to Linux (on a very powerful
desktop though), but it's constantly notifying you about things which is a
distraction.

~~~
lostdog
I'm on my 3rd X1 (4th if you count my work laptop), and I would be completely
happy, except that it's USB-C ports are somehow broken. Both machines have
flakey connections to both USB-C docks I've tried, sometimes dropping
keystrokes or network packets. It's obnoxious to use, and there's no clear way
to debug or diagnose the issue, and sadly I think my next purchase cannot be a
Lenovo.

~~~
JJMalina
That's a good point. Sorry to hear that. I have the 5th gen which has a USB-C
power port and another USB-C and two other USBs. The USB-C power definitely
wiggles a lot when it's plugged which makes me concerned though I haven't had
a problem. The new Dell XPS 15 has an aluminum chassis, so I wonder if that
would eliminate this issue. [https://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/dell-laptops/new-
xps-15-lapt...](https://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/dell-laptops/new-
xps-15-laptop/spd/xps-15-9500-laptop/xn9500cto200s#features_section)

------
fsflover
> Can disable webcam in BIOS when not used

Purism sells laptops [0] with real hardware kill switches for camera _and
microphone_. Welcome to the future.

> Maintenance: T480 is not slim and this is for the better. I can
> replace/upgrade most components by myself.

Slimness has nothing to do with repairability / upgradeability. Purism laptops
are slim and perfectly repairable. (I'm a happy owner).

[0]
[https://shop.puri.sm/shop/librem-15/](https://shop.puri.sm/shop/librem-15/)

~~~
wazoox
My Lenovo IdeaPad has a sliding cover for the webcam. It's about the same size
as a MacBook, sports 32 GB or RAM, an 8 core Ryzen and 2 M2 SSDs for ~900€.
The trackpad is fine, and the WiFi reaches about 300Mbps. I'm quite happy with
it (too bad they put a large black band at the bottom of the screen instead of
a 16:10 one...)

------
butz
> Can't debug issues in Safari without borrowing a Mac

You can debug layout issues to some extent using GNOME Web (also known as
Epiphany). It uses same webkit engine as Safari.
[https://webkit.org/downloads/](https://webkit.org/downloads/) way at the
bottom.

------
princevegeta89
I always find polished Linux DE's like cinnamon, Gnome 3, Pantheon and unity
to be top notch and more usable than OSX.

I'm surprised Mac OS has never had an overhaul of the look, on their windows,
buttons, icons or anything. On the other hand, I absolutely find it to be
nightmare to navigate in Finder - the shortcuts are a mess.. and there is no
address bar at all! Other than that I also do find Mac OS to be slower than
Linux due to some bloat. On an overall scale, software availability is almost
on par with Mac OS. The only drawback for Linux is graphics applications like
Photoshop aren't just either available, or not hardware accelerated properly.

~~~
tgv
\- You can get the directory structure in Finder windows.

\- The short cuts are not a mess, they're just not what you're used to.

\- macOS may still look similar to previous versions, but, to my taste,
anything touched by gnome is a macOS ripoff that looks downright oversized and
is either gaudy or too dark.

\- Today I tried to get a database manager for mongodb on Ubuntu 20.04 that is
more than a wrapper around the command line. Nowhere to be found. And let's
not mention video editing, music making, and gaming.

You prefer Linux, fine, but please don't diss the rest.

~~~
princevegeta89
Gnome is a ripoff? I haven't ever come across this anywhere. It's been around
for a long long time really. It's near perfect for what it is, and it's also
nicely customisable.

Regarding the shortcuts, I found Enter, Backspace, using Space Bar for
selecting, etc. to be simpler compared to holding down cmd+up/down, and other
combinations.

------
neng
The Mac trackpad is very good. Was a key reason I left to Macbook after 10
years of running Linux as on my workstation.

I may go back to Linux someday. I miss focus-follows-mouse. Apple sucks at
some things, but gets more core capabilities right.

~~~
nunb
Mac trackpads are unmatched (yay/boo Fingerworks!) but you could always use an
external mac touchpad. In any case, shortcut keys are abundant in Linux
desktops, and a tiling wm (I like the default one in Pop OS) really changes
the game.

------
time0ut
Personally, it has been really hard to justify the Apple premium the past few
years. My company upgraded us to touchbar MBPs a few years ago. I am thankful
as it helped me avoid the mistake of buying my own.

Instead, I went Thinkpad+Linux(Lubuntu) for an iteration. Excellent machine as
the article details. I was very happy with it for a couple years.

I wanted something with a beefier GPU though, so most recently went to
Asus+W10Pro+WSL2. I was skeptical at first, having been off Windows for a
decade, but it is pretty decent. There are some minor annoyances, but not
enough to push me back to full Linux yet.

------
tarkin2
I often think about returning to a Linux laptop. Things, generally speaking,
tend to “just work” on a mac, but it fails for a poweruser, even with various
tools such as hammerspoon, since I oft want to morph the GUI to my liking -
something apple and its gui fanaticism clearly doesn’t abide. The only thing
that keeps me here is safari testing and occasional iphone development, two
things that are unpleasant but necessary for my job; I hope I’m not forced to
upgrade my mac and it’s the last mac I buy for at least half a decade more.

------
rbanffy
A sweet spot I found is a generic laptop (a good Dell or Thinkpad, with the
least imaginative hardware possible so Linux runs happy) and a Mac desktop
(can be an iMac or a Mini) for the Mac-ish stuff.

You need to pay attention to what can and can't be upgraded, however. The
newest Mini can't have the storage upgraded (you should probably buy it maxed
out), but can upgrade the memory to 64GB, so it's cheaper to get the 8GB and
then upgrade it yourself. The 21 inch iMac can't be upgraded, so YMMV
depending on what you get.

------
greatgib
Most of this blog post looks like to be a standard user personal experience
report.

Most items make sense in this context I think, but there is one point that
surprised me:

<<Emoji support is not 100%>>

Wtf! In my opinion, that it worths mentioning that, shows at what point Apple
marketing brain fucked the Apple device users...

You buy a 2k$ computer, with dozens of high speed CPUs, for what? Putting
stupid smileys everywhere? And in addition, this is more an application
specific issue than a system one. Where do you use them? Emails, professional
word documents?

~~~
D13Fd
If you're on a Mac, you use emojis in iMessage texts.

------
hashedout
Macbooks have nailed down the basics when it comes down to the user
experience:

1\. Best touchpad period.

2\. Good overall keyboards (Ignore the 2016-2020 butterfly keyboards)

3\. Best sounding speakers.

4\. Every display has 400+ nits of brightness with good color accuracy.

5\. Very good battery life per watt-hour of the battery and lasts better with
time as well.

The package is what make the macbooks great. I don't have to go through a list
of laptops and go through pros and cons of laptops and there are a LOT of
cons.

You may think that bad sounding speakers or 250 nits screen is not a very big
deal but just try using a macbook for a while and you'll see how these these
make a drastic change in the user experience.

People go on about how macbooks are over-hyped and expensive (they are!) but I
think that what they offer is a level above anything else on the market.

I am using a MBA 2015 for my dev purposes and sometimes the 8Gigs of RAM feels
like it could use an upgrade. (I want to upgrade but it is so much expensive
moving on to the new ones). I've tried so many laptops and none of those
impress me. This is the only reason that Macbooks, even though they cost a
bomb, last for well over 10 years.

Edit: It "seems" windows laptops are catching up, but please list one laptop
that would be usable after, say 8 years. For eg. a MBP 2012 will still work
very good in 2020 compared to any of the laptops from even 2015. Are there any
windows laptops in 2020 that you can say the same for?

------
kylecazar
Cool. I'm running Linux on a Dell Vostro I purchased during their quarterly
business sale as my daily driver -- I can't believe the machine I got for the
price, and strongly encourage people to look at these sales..

How big of an issue is it to target iOS as a platform on a PC these days with
the rise of Flutter, etc? I'm looking to get into app development, but don't
have a Mac, nor would I like to buy one if I can avoid it.

~~~
DownGoat
Depends on the app I guess, but you can get far without needing a Mac with
flutter etc. Sadly I think there still is some restrictions for some Apple
hardware for the developer part of the app store. I'm not super familiar with
that part, but we had some issues with some Apple legal terms which could only
be accepted on a authenticated device, which means you need Apple hardware.

~~~
anta40
No.

Whatever solution you pick for iOS dev: Flutter, React Native, Xamarin etc
etc, in the end we will always meet the same thing: iOS SDK. And iOS SDK only
runs on Mac, unlike Android.

Unless Apple decide to port their SDK to Windows/Linux (which I believe will
not happen), you can't practically avoid Mac.

------
loosetypes
Is there a metric for battery performance while the machine’s asleep?

That’s been my only gripe in moving from a MacBook Air to an XPS running
Ubuntu a little over a year ago.

Battery life is comparable in active usage. But if I close my XPS lid and
then, for whatever reason, don’t use it for a day or two, I’ll be at zero
battery.

I don’t remember this ever being something to even think about with my Mac
laptop.

~~~
asciimov
The issue is that you are sleeping the computer vs hibernating it.

Sleep is still powering the ram. Hibernate writes the ram contents out to a
file and shuts the computer off.

It often takes some tinkering to get hibernation to work, if at all.

That is why your computer kills the battery in a few days.

------
cc23
As a C++ backend/distributed systems engineer, I cant imagine working on
anything except Linux.

I even use Linux on my personal laptop. It's a Thinkpad actually. Yes, the
touch pad on Mac is better. But Linux is just so much quicker and lighter, and
really the only major annoying thing I've run into is electronically signing
PDFs.

------
j45
Devs can spend a lot of time getting Macs and Window computers to behave like
Linux.. especially given the idiosyncrasies that pop up with docker on them.

It does seem reasonable to develop on Linux.. for Linux.

I've heard of a few recent experiences specifically using Ubuntu 19/20 on a
Thinkpad X1 Carbon/T4xx of some type resulting in a really nice experience,
including optimized battery life.

While Ubuntu might not be my desktop of choice, it does seem to have done the
most that I can find to work well on laptops from a battery life/driver
support/sleep perspective.

I have it loaded on a desktop and it's working flawlessly, and I continue to
try and find an issue with it. As a development environment, it may be
something to consider seriously.

Part of me is wondering if an Ubuntu/Linux laptop could open up a way to use
an iPad as a secondary computing device that where I could continue to enjoy
the things that I wanted there.

------
scottlocklin
I made that decision in 2011 or so; still use the same thinkpad hardware, and
it's still faster and better than the 2017 mbp I was issued by work.

Even if it was a shittier experience (kubuntu is vastly better than osx in
every pertinent way), I'd continue using the thinkpad for the trackpoint and
keyboard.

------
tyingq
_" Battery time is not like Macs. ~ 5 hours (after one year)"_

There are different battery choices of 72, 48 and 24 watt hours. I believe the
72 watt hour battery "bulges" a bit and makes the laptop not sit flat.

Edit: You could also disable the MX150 GPU if you don't really use it.

~~~
hashedout
What is up with windows laptops battery? Even though a brand new laptop could
last for 14 hours it degrades so much after an year.

------
asciimov
Some tips from someone who's been doing this linux laptop thing for a long
while now (6 year's ago, I replaced my aging MBP with a cheap HP)

0\. TAKE NOTES! Make a setup doc that keeps up with the issues of setting up
your computer. ie... I have to do some funky things to get my onboard speakers
to work, I never remember how to do it, but my notes remember it for me.

1\. The trackpad will suck. Just get an external trackball or mouse, use it
instead.

2\. Pay for a good built-in keyboard.

3\. Make sure you can swap your network card. I have my preference on
manufacturer. For historical reasons I typically replace whatever it comes
with.

4\. If graphics matter to you, avoid NVidia GPU's.

5\. Avoid laptops with restrictive bioses. (wifi whitelists, wont let you
change boot order but supports two drives, etc)

~~~
stinos
Wrt note taking for setting up software: I gave up on that in favor of a shell
script for initial setup, and pretty much everything else is in Ansible. Works
for almost everything, does take some work and sometimes needs updating. But
also serves as notes by itself. Anyway the main advantage over notes for me is
that I don't have to copy-paste a bunch of commands from notes anymore, and
that large parts of it are common to multiple computers I use.

~~~
asciimov
Shell scripting is good when you can use it. Some software I use is manually
patched and that doesn't lend itself to automation.

The notes are also geared for the times I move distros or change a major
component in the system. I include what I did, why I did it, where the info
came from, and why I removed it or decided to go a different direction.

------
antb123
t470s currently but have been using linux and thinkpads since the mid/late
90s.

Battery life isn't great agree. My solution currently is a USB-C portable
battery which I get an additional full laptop charge. In the past x220 and
t60(p) were favourite models.

Other annoyance (still!) is sleep seems to work on certain kernels and not on
others.

Was on ubuntu forever but slowly may move back to debian as I don't like snap
packages.

Mouse is Logitech MX Anywhere 2S

Only suggestion currently on getting an laptop is usb-c, ips screen, nvme
drive and lots of ram. In fact the CPU doesn't matter much. I used the x
series for a decade but now moved to t series and they have gotten lighter and
are good value.

~~~
the_af
> _Mouse is Logitech MX Anywhere 2S_

This mouse has seriously become my favorite ever. Outstanding battery life,
very comfortable, it works on any surface I've tried, and it works great on
both macOS and Linux.

------
jononomo
I simply cannot get over using non-Apple trackpads. The trackpad is such an
important part of a laptop's user interface. Obviously I wouldn't drive a car
with flat tires, so why would I use a laptop with a crappy trackpad?

~~~
nr2x
Under appreciated is that macOS is largely a touch-based system now with the
magic trackpads. If you configure three-finger drag in accessibility settings
you never have to click. Granted it’s not a touch _screen_ , but in my view
it’s a touch- and gesture-based system. Using a non-Apple trackpad feels like
going back in time and using touch screen devices with keyboards (eg Win 10
laptops) is incredibly annoying.

~~~
dullgiulio
I have been using double tap to select (and simply drag) on Linux for years,
never had to click. And my touchpad is far from magic...

------
k__
Half-OT: I'm using a MBP13"(2013) for years now and really like it, but it's
not upgradable and it's getting cumbersome to do some more intesive things
with it.

Would you recommend buying a new MBP or getting a laptop?

~~~
benologist
I find my dual-core 2013 to still be alright if I SSH into a six-core NUC to
work. Visual Studio Code makes this super easy to do and almost exactly the
same as working locally, it can be done without it too. I used a remote VM
this way as well for about 9 months while wondering what to buy and on wired
connection it was also pretty seamless.

[https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/remote/ssh](https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/remote/ssh)

~~~
k__
I use remote VMs too, but they aren't good for FinalCut Pro and Ableton Live.

~~~
benologist
Have you tried Thunderbolt accessories? You should be able to add NVMe storage
and AMD graphics that might speed things up. I couldn't try this out because I
have an nVidia eGPU, but using Apple's TB2-to-TB3 adaptor I can actually game
quite acceptably in Bootcamp.

~~~
k__
I will try that, thanks!

------
ekianjo
I have several thinkpads (5) and run them all on Linux. Agree that the battery
life is not optimal, even with TLP. Keyboards are typically excellent, but the
brand of the keyboard can matter a lot (there are usually 2-3 different
manufacturers of Thinkpad keyboards and they don't feel the same). Maintaining
Thinkpads is usually a pure joy: super easy to open up, easy to replace RAM,
sometimes CPU (depending on the model) and storage. And they are robust (will
survive a fall).

Software wise, apart from some rare exceptions (X1 Gen 7?) everything works
out of the box on most distros.

------
NewOrderNow
There are so many small things that really frustrate me with the Mac and
understandably considering I am back on Linux. However, I have a 2010 15"
MacBook Pro that I bought used. It is god awful to work on, but I can still
run scripts, ssh, browse the web (for the most part), and play emulators.

This is thing is slow and bordering useless, but I genuinely never had any
tech product for 10 years work for well. 10 years, only changed the charger
and HD once. Everything else is still working, including a really nice touch
pad.

~~~
dijksterhuis
> This is thing is slow and bordering useless, but I genuinely never had any
> tech product for 10 years work for well. 10 years, only changed the charger
> and HD once. Everything else is still working, including a really nice touch
> pad.

Same here! I still do web browsing, mail and audio editing on my 10 year old
15" MBP. My FireWire audio interface still hooks up perfectly all the time.

The 2010 MBP range honestly seem like the last ones that were built to last.
I've upgraded the OS HD to an SSD (made a world of difference) and replaced
the CD/DVD with a second 1TB storage drive.

Looking to move to a system 76 or purism as most of my development is
happening on a Linux desktop. I've been way more productive and enjoyed myself
more developing on Linux.

Not overly concerned about the trackpad conversations -- I like me so buttons
to tap. Only concern is battery usage, but the system76 lemur pro seems to
have that sorted pretty well.

------
nunb
I switched from a MBP to a Thinkpad for flexibility & performance: hexa-core
processor, 64GB RAM, 3 disks (NVME+SSD+HDD) running Linux (pop-os) with the
intent of running OSX in VMs. I didn't like the iOS-ification of OSX, and this
will let me run my beloved Snow Leopard, and even run some older aqua UI OSX
versions as VMs. I'll probably get an ARM MacBook when they come out, as MacOS
and iOS go well together... but 64GB is a HECK of a lot of Chrome tabs, and
the 3:2 screen is as good as on my Chromebooks. Linux has certainly matured
since I used it as my only desktop back in the comp.os.linux.advocacy days,
which is just as well as I can't be bothered futzing with x.org config files
any more. My X210 (nb51) "Thinkpad" gets about five hours battery life on a
dodgy battery, but if I can find a real TP battery that should rise to 10-15,
and I expect the ARM Macs to do 20-24 hours.

------
z9e
I'm actually considering either going with the T480p or an Asus for my next
work laptop (from a 2018 MBP) with Linux on it. I have a T470p though that has
a broken motherboard right after the warranty expired. When picking it up to
move it around, it shorts out and restarts, apparently this is a known issue
with the 470's. But I really fear Lenovo's reliability these days.

Has anyone else had reliability problems with the T series? How reliable have
the T480's been?

~~~
ahnick
I've been using a T480 (same as author) and it has been very reliable. I even
dropped it getting out of the van a while back and it landed on a corner of
the laptop when it hit the pavement. It has still been running just as well as
when I originally got it. :)

~~~
z9e
Good to know, thanks.

------
choeger
The interesting thing here is that the absolute biggest disadvantage is the
MacOS/iOS development. Apple's walled garden seems to be working as intended
;).

------
tarasmatsyk
I would put an asterisk near battery life as a downside, after switching to
mpro 2020 13 realized that I overlooked batter life which is 7h at max, 5h if
working aggressively (docker, builds), very disappointing. Macs always were
laptops with great performance - battery life for me, so be careful with
customizations and stick either to defaults or mpro 16 (which is like a plazma
TV for me)

PS. moving to 14" system76/thinkpad too this year

~~~
nunb
if thinkpad is an option do take a look at X2100: a thinkpad chassis &
accessories, but with modern internals. it's basically "Peak Intel", a swan
song for x86...

------
unethical_ban
The hardware on Mac is unparalleled. I can't hardly stand using my Thinkpad
touchpad after having a Macbook work laptop. I know the keyboard on the recent
macs have drawn criticism, but for me they work fine and I have fewer mistypes
than when I am on the thinkpad. And battery life on macos is great, when not
on Zoom. And Ubuntu 20.04 doesn't recognize my 2018 Thinkpad camera.

------
hankdoupe
I had suunto watch issues, too. I used openambit[1] for a bit, but at some
point, I was no longer able to get it to sync with my movescount account.
Eventually, I got a new watch that synced with my phone over bluetooth and the
issue was moot.

[1]:
[https://github.com/openambitproject/openambit](https://github.com/openambitproject/openambit)

------
stuff4ben
I'm seriously considering this since my MacBook Air is so pokey. I do use
Microsoft Excel though on my Mac, however it's through Firefox and I find it
perfectly acceptable compared to the desktop version I used to use. Anyone
know if Excel on Firefox on Linux works as expected? I'd assume it did, but
just wanted to make sure. Everything else I'm fine with.

~~~
actuator
I think it should work as expected, there is generally parity between
different OSs for Firefox. I use Google Sheets on my remote linux machine and
that seems to work fine. I don't like LibreOffice though.

------
fendy3002
> Touchpad is not close to Mac

I'm using l390 and the touchpad feels good for me. Never use mac, does mac's
touchpad is considerably better?

EDIT: formatting

~~~
midrus
Yes, Mac touchpads are light years ahead of any other trackpad.

I believe this is because they control both, the hardware and the software
side of it.

For me this is the only reason holding me from moving too.

~~~
thebean11
I never really got this argument, what exactly is stopping a manufacturer from
writing a great trackpad driver?

~~~
actuator
I have heard and read in reviews that Microsoft has more or less nailed the
touchpad in Surface laptops. So definitely there is scope.

~~~
gxx
I've been wanting to switch to Windows from Mac for years. The thing that
holds me back is the quality of the Mac touchpad vs any Windows laptop, and I
recently ordered a Surface Book 3 having heard how great the touchpad is. I've
already returned it.

The touchpad is pretty good but it's still not as precise as the Mac touchpad
- there is a slight hysteresis that makes it imprecise for short movements. No
amount of tweaking settings could overcome this. The only way to be accurate
at short range is to slow the overall pointer speed so it takes more than one
finger swipe to move across the screen. (If anyone from Microsoft is reading
this - why don't you fix it? It can't be that hard.)

The other problem with the Surface Book is the Home and End keys are not
accessible at the same time as the function keys - a show-stopper for smooth
editing and debugging in an IDE.

------
snide
3 months ago I made the switch to Linux (manjaro) with i3. I currently run off
an Intel NUC, which works perfectly fine, but I have a Thinkpad now on the
way. I figured I'd do a writeup because I'm a designer and that makes me a
little bit of a freak.

First, I was already a vim user for 8 years, so I was used to config files and
the terminal. I moved primarily after watching some videos about I3 / awesome
WM and browsing the /r/unixporn subreddit. Primarily I liked the idea of
designing my own OS from scratch, and the idea of being able to change
ANYTHING was really intriguing to me.

I guess it's important to note that as a designer this wouldn't have been
possible without tools like Figma and Framer being web based. Put bluntly,
Linux native design tooling isn't up to par with what I had on a mac, and
without Figma I wouldn't have been able to move over full-time. It's also
important to mention that while I classify myself as a designer, I design 90%
of the time in code, writing React + CSS. I realize I'm a little different and
this likely sways some of my feelings towards linux.

In short, I've really enjoyed the switch. The window management alone has been
reason enough. Being able to navigate my windows with key commands, and
generally lay things out the way I see fit between polybar + i3 has been
fantastic. Don't like a certain shadow? Change it with picom. Don't like
seeing title bars on your windows? Change a config. I'm also a designer that
believes in heavy focus (think tab focus in a browser) so every window gets a
thick focus border. Everything is matched to a color-scheme that I like, and I
mean everything. I don't feel like I'm using Linux so much as I've used Linux
to build Dave OS.

I was able to migrate nearly $500 of annual tooling to home-made scripts and
services that I run through GCP. For example. I used to use cloud app for
screenshot / movie snippets. Any designer will tell you something like that is
their bread and butter... "hey what do you think of this?". I moved it to Peek
/ Flameshot + a 40-line bash script that watches a folder and uploads it to a
gcp bucket. It took me a half day of learning. At the end of it I had a funny
realization... why have I been paying for these simple services for years and
complaining about features they didn't have? Now I just add the features.

Performance is hit and miss. Everything I used to do in the terminal (which is
where I spend most of my time) feels faster. In general, I had to drop apps
and move command line. This was fun! I moved to buku for bookmarks,
taskwarrior for todo lists...etc. What I loved about this was it forced me to
engage more in the OSS community. I already do mostly OSS stuff for work, but
I was in my bubble. Linux forced me out, and I found myself talking a bit more
on Github, asking questions and the like. This was the thing that I've ended
up loving. In general I've been amazed at the amount of support I've gotten
from maintainers by just saying "Hey, I'm a designer, I'm not so knowledgeable
about the guts of this code, can you help me out"?

Slack and zoom are slow. They are pretty resource intensive apps and weren't
exactly speed kings on my mac, but they do feel noticibly worse on Linux. I'm
hoping this is due to my hardware, but I suspect the apps just aren't as
considered in Linux. I've really enjoyed AUR / pacman for package management
and it feels like brew, but for everything. The one thing I think Linux is
missing is a good calendar application that syncs with gcal. The terminal
based ones are a little overweight and underdesigned, and I can't find a GUI
one I like.

Anyways, I'll probably do a formal blog writeup at some point, and more
importantly make some videos of my setup, since it's probably interesting for
folks to see how a designer uses Linux, but I thought it'd be worth a quick
post to let others know its possible.

Hardware wise I had no trouble with my mac, mostly because I already had my
own custom keyboards and the like, but I'm excited about the new Thinkpad on
the way more for it's power-to-price.

------
puranjay
I moved to a Thinkpad from Macbook. Honestly, I love the form factor, the
keyboard, and the all black finish.

But the screen is still below par - 400 nits max brightness is too low. And
the trackpad is substantially worse than Macbook's.

I'll still keep it because it offers something that Macbook doesn't anymore:
reliability

------
kakakiki
I have been a windows/linux user for about as long as I can remember - because
cheap! For the 8 months I am using a MBP and absolutely love it. It is a
pleasure to look at it and use - except for the keyboard! The trackpad
experience is unparalleled IMHO.

------
jonpurdy
TL;DR: if on the fence about replacing a MacBook Pro with a ThinkPad, give the
2020 MBP a try. It's bought me another three years of time to stick with the
Mac and see how the ARM transition plays out.

I wanted to let others in my situation (longtime Mac user, avoided the
butterfly keyboards so much that I considered a Thinkpad with Linux) know: the
new keyboard in my 13-inch 2020 is amazing.

I upgraded from my 2015 to this 2020 a couple of weeks ago under duress: my
old machine failed me during an interview videoconference and I couldn't have
that happen again. Ran out to buy a new machine and return it if I hated the
new keyboard (I expected it to be somewhere between the old keyboard and the
terrible butterfly, but at least it has an inverted-T.)

It's spectacular. Key travel is awesome, and it's nice to have inverted-T and
dedicated escape key back. This machine is also way faster than my old one
thanks to (2x as many cores [thanks to 2018 model]) and the 10th gen stuff
(much faster RAM and graphics, etc.).

ARM is coming soon, but there's a lot of uncertainty about that transition and
I'm happy to have a highly performant machine that will last me at least three
years (when my AppleCare will run out).

------
bfrog
I find that running powertop on my Thinkpad I can go from modest battery times
of like 5-6 hours on my t460 to all day battery times. Really wish it was just
built-in to the distro or kernel in a more automatic way at this point.

------
mkj
Is it the Linux kernel or userspace programs that make Linux battery life
worse?

------
TomVDB
13 years after Apple introduced their groundbreaking trackpads, I still
haven't seen a worthy alternative.

It's the single most important reason for me to stay with a MacBook.

------
actuator
I noticed that T480 comes with a U processor. Is this configurable? For a
machine that is not going for that ultrabook thickness, M seems like a better
choice.

------
interskh
Has nobody mentioned Dell xps? I've been using xps for a few years with
archlinux.. It's been mostly great so far.

------
sriram_sun
My 2013 MBP is chugging along with Linux and OSX dual boot. I haven't logged
into OSX in over 6mo. Only upgrade was a 2TB SSD.

------
ideals
What are everyone's thoughts on buying a new MBP this year with the
announcement of Apple Silicon replacing Intel in the near future?

~~~
orangecat
Any Intel Mac is likely to be a paperweight in 5 years; if history is any
guide Apple will drop support sooner rather than later, and installing Linux
is tricky at best because of the T2 chip. Amusingly pre-T2 Macs may have
better longevity.

------
inoffensivename
I've been using the Lenovo X1 Carbon with Debian and I couldn't be happier
with it.

------
fnord77
if you have an iphone:

[https://askubuntu.com/questions/1127798/how-to-run-a-
iphone-...](https://askubuntu.com/questions/1127798/how-to-run-a-iphone-
backup-with-idevicebackup2)

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oliver101
Same experience but reverted to Mac because the hardware is unbeatable.

Had MacBooks since the white clamshells and eventually wanted to go full
linux. So bought the X1 Carbon and really regretted it. Screen and trackpad
were by far the worst by comparison.

So I’ve returned. Picked up a Mid-2015 15” MBP a few months back and haven't
looked back.

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kreetx
Is it not possible to run linux on the recent MacBook Pro's?

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numpad0
Why buy ThinkPad if you’re going to use touchpad anyway

