mcc
It is getting increasingly awkward that my only daily drivers are a Win10 machine and a laptop based on antiquated MacOS. I should get a simple Linux laptop.
Last time I tried to do this though it turned out any laptops that run Linux with full hardware support out of the box are pretty expensive.
clacke
mcc
I was like, it's ok to have just an old laptop! Anything I need to do I can ssh to the Windows 10 machine or the [virtually useless] mac mini! And then I started doing things that require interacting with USB devices connected to a machine I am physically in the same room as at the moment
![Chris [list of emoji]](https://gnusocial.jp/avatar/76364-48-20230220155936.webp){kind=small}
Chris [list of emoji]
I hate to be That Guy, but every time I've bought a laptop, I've managed to get it to sufficient usefulness within a couple of weeks of tinkering. Which is a pain but I typically then get 3-5 years of (mostly) trouble-free operation out of it, so it seems like a worthwhile deal.
That being said, NVIDIA GPUs are a huge headache and my Linux experience is a lot better with AMD or Intel. Since I don't do GPU intensive stuff, YMMV.
mcc
@suetanvil I have to admit I am accustomed to devices where I just turn it on and install my applications and it does not require tinkering
mcc
MINUTE 0: Okay, this is it. I'm going to buy a new laptop to run Linux on. I'm going to set only one rule for myself: It must NOT be a Lenovo.
MINUTE 1: *Opens https://frame.work ; looks at prices*
MINUTE 2: *Typing "Lenovo Thinkpad" into Google*
mcc
I wonder, if I went on tilt and decided to buy this laptop *this weekend*, if I could do this in a way it arrives before next Thursday.
mcc
@jgg I don't know what I want. I want to not regret my purchase, and I want to pay little enough money that if I regret my purchase it's swallowable.
Curioso 🍉 🇺🇦 (jgg)
Oh, I see: you want a Thinkpad...
Curioso 🍉 🇺🇦 (jgg)
The cheapest laptop I found that carried an SSD out of the box 5 years ago: Lenovo Ideapad 320.
The display is terrible, no proper graphic card, and I seriously think I should have upgraded the 8GB of RAM the first day, but it still works like the first day. RAM aside, I don't need anything more.
mcc
@jgg Which lenovo model is the 600 euro one? Looking over the thinkpad models I'm struggling to find anything under $1000 USD
Curioso 🍉 🇺🇦 (jgg)
I always buy a Windows laptop, boot Ubuntu in it (no install), test everything, and if something doesn't work as-is, i return the laptop. After a decade doing it, no support issues. Except for energy management, which has always been terrible, if any. But that's not easy to test, and, from what I hear, it doesn't seem to be any good in Linux anywhere.
Incidentally, my current laptop is a 600€ Lenovo. You can imagine what I think of frame.work prices.
mcc
@browren With Lenovo, it appears each of "X1", "T14" and "T14s" could each refer to at least four very different computers
BroWren
@mcc If you don't mind a suggestion - you might do better looking/using Linux distro hardware certifications, instead of the vendor's list.
For instance, Ubuntu is certified on *an* X1, not sure if it's the one you've linked: https://ubuntu.com/certified/202102-28710
https://ubuntu.com/certified has a search engine and a list of systems we've run Ubuntu hardware cert on. Maybe your distro has something similar? (It's likely to work on Ubuntu certified systems, anyway).
mcc
Incidentally while I'm already flooding the TL, this one weird and incredibly cheap "detachable" "business notebook" where you just tear off the keyboard to turn it into a tablet is super cheap and sounds absolutely *fantastic* https://www.canadacomputers.com/product_info.php?cPath=710_4425&item_id=245452
But I don't even *find* the "ThinkPad X1 tablet" on Lenovo's "supports Linux" list so I haven't been considering this one. https://support.lenovo.com/ca/en/solutions/pd031426-linux-for-personal-systems
mcc
WAIT. I ONLY JUST REALIZED "THINKPAD" AND "THINKBOOK" ARE TWO DIFFERENT THINGS. MY BRAIN WAS NORMALIZING THOSE TWO WORDS INTO THE SAME WORD. OH NO. OH NO
mcc
How much of the advice I've gotten over the last several hours was useless because I was mentally collapsing statements about thinkpads and thinkbooks into the same thing. Also do both thinkpads and thinkbooks come in both 14 and 14s variants?!
mcc
Thanks to the power of the Internet, I can experience choice paralysis with 13,000 people watching
mcc
What I want: The touchpad works real good and it feels good
What the online store pages can tell me about: Here are a series of numbers that you must have memorized the Intel and AMD product catalogues of the last 8 years to mean anything
mcc
Okay. After staring blankly at many pages, I think these are the models I'm considering. They're all Windows but I'll be immediately wiping for Linux. Note these prices are in CAD. Shippers: Amazon, Canada Computers, Canada Computers, Lenovo.
Do any of these jump out at you as unusually good deals or unusually bad deals? How do I even tell the difference? I think I'm leaning to #2 or #3 (advantage: touchscreen, plus they're Canada Computers so I can do returns/exchanges in person)
mcc
A lotta people recommended I buy refurbished and I'm open to that but when I started looking refurbished the choices were even more scanty and erratic than buying normal. My head is swimming, I do not understand the difference between a ThinkPad 14, a ThinkPad 14s, a ThinkPad 14 with Touchscreen and a ThinkPad 14 Yoga (or, sometimes, a 14s with Touchscreen, or possibly a 14s Yoga I lost track)
anyMouse
@mcc @browren There are like 10 X1's and like 6 X1 Yogas now.
There used to be a time when for like 10 years, most of the models made sense. X230 was Premium material lightweight 12 inch machine with 3rd gen Core-i, T480 was regular well built 14'' workhorse with 8th gen Core-i cpus, T480s was same but thinner, lighter and less upgradable, or E570 was the cheap one with 15 inch screen and 7th gen cpu.
mcc
Wait wtf just happened
mcc
I went to the store and was like "I'm thinking of buying this thing from the website. Do you have anything similar I could try the touchpad?" and they're like "we have that laptop. that exact laptop. here" and I was like oh could you open it and let me try the touchpad and they're like no. But you can buy it and return it in 15 days no-fault if you don't like it. And I was like OK??? And now I have a thinkpad
mcc
It like… spawned
mcc
@stilescrisis It's made completely of cardboard!!!
stilescrisis
@mcc So... how's that trackpad??
mcc
@aeva I asked and they said yes!
aeva
@mcc is that 15 day no fault still valid if you wipe it and put another OS on it 🤔
mcc
@aeva Maybe they were lying but the thing is, it's a physical store, and it appears to be elective on individual salespeople whether to accept a return, and they have let me return shit they *ABSOLUTELY* should not have let me return in the past
aeva
@mcc oh cool
mcc
@zandra i'm not taking it into the woods!! i'm gonna relax and read comic books
mcc
The really funny part is I'm driving up into the woods all weekend so the reason I was laptop shopping today was so I could order today and then have it next week when I get back. But now I just have the laptop. But also I can't possibly set it up in the woods without Internet so I guess I'm just… leaving it in the box until I get back. I guess this means I've got all weekend to decide what I'm going to name it.
Alex Zandra
@mcc oh thinkpads are *great*! enjoy your weekend in the woods with your strange new device
Kenneth
@mcc You have your priorities in order.
J3RN :emacs: :haskell:
@mcc I'm rocking a 6 year old Surface Book 2 that arguably did the whole "rip off the keyboard" thing best since it doesn't require a kickstand and the keyboard also has a huge battery and a GPU in it.
Sadly the Surface Book line was discontinued years ago and the machines out there are a bit old now.
mcc
@j3rn What made me excited about this as opposed to the SUrface Book is it's just a normal ThinkPad keyboard whereas the Surface rip-off keyboards looked a little flimsy. Like practically a screen protector
mausmalone
@mcc I'm late to this thread but this made me lol. I hate Lenovo's current naming. I wish they'd just stuck to dividing their laptops into customer groups (i.e. business laptops, home laptops, student laptops)
mcc
@mausmalone yes
… … there's also a "thinkpad business" but it's unclear this actually corresponds to anything
mausmalone
@mcc Lenovo just makes no sense to me at this point. This is the same page - the "Business" page. There's no real justification for trying to classify the Legion as a "Business Laptop" - keep scrolling and they have Chromebooks. Just totally disconnected from reality.
Tom Forsyth
@mcc I thought the "10 core" Intels were a bit goofy-sounding - it's 2 big proper cores (2 threads each), plus 8 little ones (single-threaded, max out about 1.8GHz?). I mean how useful could those little cores be?
But actually they're REALLY FAST. What happens is if you do have multithreaded workloads, you get limited by memory bandwidth, not clock speed, so the small cores are surprisingly useful.
mcc
@TomF The thing that worries me is how does the OS decide which processes to run on the big cores and which to run on the small cores. A review of this technology suggested that on Windows, the answer to this question is "incorrectly"
mcc
@lambdageek Wait. "Thinkbook" and "thinkpad" are different?! D:
lambdageek
@mcc Dunno if the deals are good or bad, but we have a ThinkPad T14 (no idea what generation) in the house and it's pretty good for Linux. (personally I like T14s better - the T14 feels bulky. But there's a price premium).
I seem to recall I had to mess with Debian images with additional non-free firmware to get it going (for the wifi, I believe), though
I'm not sure if ThinkBooks are good - I stay away from anything Lenovo innovated after they bought the line from IBM.
lambdageek
@mcc "ThinkBook" is some Lenovo invention.
The history of ThinkPads is that they tend to be boring business machines with boring business features like the ability to open them up and upgrade the ram or replace the SSD (they also used to have easy to replace batteries but I think they're all glued on now - at least in the lighter-weight models).
ThinkPad is what you want
mcc
@lambdageek ew. i thought non replaceable battery was an Apple thing exclusively. isn't the battery the quickest part to fail :(
aeva
@mcc I went through that exact train of thought earlier this year, and ended up giving up on buying a new laptop
mcc
@aeva This happened to me earlier this year also but then it happened a second time and the second time I got a laptop
aeva
@mcc a cautionary tale
jmelesky
@mcc I’m not sure where you’re located in realspace, but I know lots of places have a local nonprofit that does electronics recycling and refurbishment, and they will often sell old used laptops that have Linux installed and configured on them.
If you don’t have one, my local (FreeGeek, in Portland, OR, USA) happens to have an eBay shop where they sell some of their stock: https://www.ebay.com/str/freegeekportland/Computers-Tablets-Networking/_i.html?_sacat=58058
Rachel Greenham
@mcc I’m sure you thought of it and there’s a reason not to, but what about the laptop with the antiquated macOS? Linux usually loves to run on slightly older mac hardware and wouldn’t need to be antiquated.
lambdageek
@mcc by the way, AFAICT webgpu on Linux is still science fiction. So if that's a thing you need, Linux is gonna be disappointing
mcc
@lambdageek I've been doing it on my desktop PC with an NVidia card! Also remember "targeting the Rust wgpu package" works in many configurations "running in Firefox" does not, bafflingly enough since they're literally the same code
Thomas
@clacke I buy used notebooks , but if I were to buy a new one, I'd either get something that ships with Fedora or Debian (so you know the drivers are all upstream) or from a Linux-only vendor like Tuxedo
clacke
@tfb @mcc They don't have those here, so I bought one that ships with Linux in other markets, but shipped with Windows here.
It worked ok in Linux (Ubuntu). After a year it worked well in Linux.
mcc
@T045T @TomF @reedbeta I think my MacBook would start acting normal again if I just replaced the battery, but Apple discontinued the battery shockingly quickly so no official service center will do this for me
T045T
@TomF @mcc @reedbeta reading those stories makes me believe I‘m haunted by reverse gremlins… I‘m on an iPhone SE (2020) that works fine, and a mid-2015 15“ MBP, which is also okay.
Well, except for the fact that Apple really doesn’t like you running third-party SSDs in macbooks these days, which means any OS update bricks the macbook 🙃.
But with the stock SSD it would just soldier on, I‘m certain.
mcc
@TomF @reedbeta my experience is not anyone else's. But my experience is that MacBooks work great for exactly 2.5 years and then suddenly overnight develop multiple horrible, unfixable power/battery problems and oh well!!! Guess it's time to buy a new MacBook!!?
Tom Forsyth
@mcc @reedbeta This is also my experience with iPhones. FUNNY THAT.
Tom Forsyth
@reedbeta @mcc The thing is I hear this stuff about literally every single sort of laptop, including Macs.
I once got off a plane, reached for my bag and almost scalded myself because the MacBook inside had apparently been running its fans at full speed the whole way. Literally too hot to touch.
So I think it's just a tradition or an old charter or something?
Nathan Reed
@TomF @mcc My thinkpad had an *incredibly annoying* feature that it would randomly dim the screen after ~20 seconds of idle time (but not always). I only just recently figured out how to disable that (it's a hidden service that came pre-installed).
I've also had no end of trouble with sleep mode. It will wake up randomly and not go back to sleep, draining the battery. It will sometimes shut itself down for no reason even when plugged in. It will sometimes refuse to sleep when I close the lid.
Tom Forsyth
@mcc So what did you get, and is it actually good? Because I need a new laptop myself, and I've been leaning towards the ThinkPads.
clacke
mcc
@clacke @T045T @reedbeta @TomF Well, next time I'm in Germany I'll ask you where that is
clacke
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