Lenovo’s ThinkPad 25 anniversary edition laptop leaks | Hacker News Reader

Lenovo’s ThinkPad 25 anniversary edition laptop leaks

theverge.com

18 pointsemdashcomma14 comments

This is generally considered to be quite a letdown based on the leaks. The only thing retro about it is the old style keyboard. They slapped the old keyboard on a T470 from the looks of it, which doesn't quite warrant all the hype they drummed up. They ran a series of surveys and blogs.

16:9? Not classic. Nvidia graphics? Not good for Linux users. Pass.

The NVidia graphics one might just be an option.

It says it's based on the T470. I thought T470s worked well with Linux?

Yeah it does, I have Linux on a T460 and T470. It's just with Nvidia graphics, there's the whole Optimus/Bumblebee mess to deal with (unless that's improved recently?)

Intel graphics are way more Linux-friendly OOTB.

It's not perfect, but I switched my main distro a few months ago and the proprietary Nvidia drivers are still a little bit of a pain to install, but totally doable, and work great. The non proprietary nouveau drivers still have trouble interfacing with my card, but looked better than on my last install about a year ago, so baby steps.

Nvidia graphics with the actual binary drivers are great for Linux users. What are you talking about?

Plus, this is a modern Intel-based laptop, so I'd strongly bet that it's implemented with Optimus and therefore has Intel graphics driving the display and ports, just like on the T460p.

"Nvidia graphics with the actual binary drivers are great for Linux users."

The binary drivers are pretty invasive (they replace quite a few libraries and such, if I'm remembering right from when I originally setup my current gaming rig), and they were really slow to support KMS and Wayland (but apparently that's changed within the last year or so).

Nvidia is also typically a showstopper for non-Linux free operating systems (like, say, OpenBSD) which tend to not have any possibility for Nvidia-provided binary drivers. Considering that the safe bet for OpenBSD is basically "buy a ThinkPad", a "retro" ThinkPad with Nvidia graphics is kind of a downer.

Meanwhile, my ordinary T470 with Intel graphics works reasonably well (suspend/resume aside, but I can live without that) on OpenBSD's -CURRENT branch, so if this "retro" ThinkPad is just a T470 with Nvidia graphics and a non-chiclet keyboard, then it ain't like there's much reason for me to really want it.

>Nvidia graphics with the actual binary drivers are great for Linux users. What are you talking about?

Not by a long shot, particularly on laptops. Avoid optimus and nvidia like the plague. Battery drain, screen tearing, and other fun problems abound.

I'm in the line for a new laptop soon, and this is really enticing!

my first thought was that it was leaking data to the company. Lenovo's reporting home or doing other BS seems to be something I've seen quite a bit of.

Looks like the image of the laptop is photoshopped, the keyboard is "wrong". IE: its the old and more popular keyboard.

I can't tell if this is a troll post or if you are being obtuse, considering what this laptop is called.

Well it looks like it's 25 years old, so they've got that going for them.

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