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Comment by acct1771 | Hacker News Reader

Related: what older models are known to work well with Linux/are preferred by users here?

Do any options have open boot/something close?

I literally hoard good condition X220s, dreading the day when they're no longer fast enough for my needs (hopefully a long way off still). It's the last (going by manufacture date) laptop I enjoy using. The keyboards are superb, the build quality is excellent, perfect compatibility with modern Linux distributions and the battery lasts 4-7h of real world use (6 and 9 cell versions, respectively). You can get models in perfect condition for 300-400 euros on eBay, and they still make new keyboards, batteries, etc. for them. It's the perfect laptop for those of us who dislike chiclet keyboards, the thin > all design fad and all the other maladies of modern laptop design. With Sandy Bridge i7s and 16gb RAM, they're powerful enough for my needs and thankfully let me write and debug AVX-capable code (with the usual profiling caveats associated with the SB architecture).

As for open boot, I understand the X220 supports both coreboot and libreboot, but I don't use either, so I can't comment on it in detail.

I bought my X220 from a friend for a hundred bucks thinking it'd be a fun toy to install Linux on, but it has become my daily driver. My only gripe is the flimsyness of the plastic just above the ExpressCard slot.

It's much better with a card inserted. Infact the ExpressCard-slot made me choose an X220 over the X230. It can be used to connect an external GPU!

.. this

I have bought a couple of newer Thinkpads but they end up reverting to my x220. x230 is almost as good but doesn't have the old school keyboard.

On reddit.com/r/thinkpad there is huge following for moding them.. My only recommendation is to ensure it you have an SSD and load up on RAM.

You can, nowadays, use a BIOS patch and an X220 palmrest to put the X220 keyboard into an X230.

Hate to bother you, but could you point me to the exact model (eBay or whatever) you're talking about?

I'd love to find one damn laptop that we know works well.

Lenovo ThinkPad X220 [0] with an IPS display and i7, so it also has one USB3 port. I guess this is a quite safe bet as a daily driver, if you don't want to invest into the new models.

By saying that, the 2018 generation of ThinkPads finally includes excellent panels. If you get the new X1C or T480(s), you can choose a bright IPS panel with a good resolution. With the old ThinkPads, especially X220/X230 you just need to be VERY sure you DO NOT get the TN panels.

[0] https://www.ebay.com/itm/Lenovo-ThinkPad-X220-Laptop-Core-i7...

I love how good the IPS panel looks, but unfortunately it is rather fragile compared to the TN version, there are so many of them out there with bright spots from pressure damage.

Personally I care more about ruggedness (my X220i is my travel computer) than color fidelity. Compared to my old Acer Chromebook 13's absolutely horrible TN panel, the one in the X220i is actually quite decent.

The screen from the Lenovo Twist is a drop-in IPS upgrade and entirely shielded by a protective touchscreen that's removable. I have a slide deck that explains the procedure in detail: https://anddevw.com/gdgsf-chromepad-chromium-for-thinkpad/

From what I heard, it's vulnerable to pressure from the rear, like if you jam it in an overpacked bag. But that's the original panel, I don't know about the Twist panel, thanks for the link.

Still, from what I gather the IPS panels suck a bit more power than the TN panels (not a huge difference, though), and for my use (travel PC getting lugged all over the world in hand luggage) I'm primarily interested in ruggedness and battery life. I use it to browse and read email, with the occasional Youtube video, not for anything color critical. I would be much more interested in upgrading the mediocre built-in speakers, apparently you can use the speaker from a Nexus 6P for a nice boost in volume and quality.

The speakers really are exceptionally terrible, but upgrading them seems like a lot of work for not a lot of improvement. There's a detailed guide to the speaker upgrade over here: https://petrosprojects.blogspot.com/2017/12/thinkpad-x220-sp...

I upgraded the TN panel on my i5 X220 to a matt IPS 18 months ago. It was about £50 from eBay; and a careful 5 minutes with a set of electronic screwdrivers. (All quite easy, you just have to be very very careful when removing the ribbon cable, to not slice one of the thin wires.)

The display is vastly superior. Everything is more crisp, and it is brighter.

The X220 is still fast enough for Chrome / YouTube / Netflix without spinning up the fan. Running a high res external display is a bit too much though; the fan kicks in most of the time.

fwiw the X220 does not support Libreboot, but the X200 does.

The X220 works great with Coreboot.

Yes. I was addressing the parent comments claim that it works with Libreboot, which it currently does not.

I got a screaming deal on a mint condition X220i a little while ago. It's only the i3, but it has 8GB RAM, 128GB SSD, dual-band wifi, completely tricked out as far as the previous owner could do. It's plenty fast with Linux Mint for what I need to do, including a bit of gaming. Darkest Dungeon and other 2D games that run well on Linux aren't too bad on system requirements (although they do sort of kill the battery life), and there's a whole host of old games I can still play, I'm not trying to run GTA IV on it or something.

I would like to get an 802.11ac card for it at some point and that's about it. It came with a 6-cell battery with 70% capacity left, and I've put a new 2Power 9-cell battery in it, getting around 6-7 hours battery life as you say. I would sort of like to have an external charger so I could always have both batteries topped up, but they seem to be rare as hen's teeth.

In my opinion, the X220 is probably the best Thinkpad ever made. The i3 isn't a problem, I used a T42 for years and years despite its slow-ass Pentium-M, and I only sold it because a lot of Linux distros started going 64-bit only.

A Coreboot X220 is exponentially better than a stock X220. On top of a drastically reduced boot time and better battery life, Coreboot allows booting from the ExpressCard, which makes booting from a USB3 possible on the I5 models. Another big plus is that Chromium OS works perfectly on a Coreboot X220, right down to the fully functional built-in SIM modem.

I've used an X1 Carbon, X60, W500 and now T25 with Linux, and they just all work perfectly with Linux. Whatever the distribution, the laptops are superb programmer's workhorses.

I have both a X220 and a T530 and they both work perfectly with Linux (Mint on one and Solus on the other).

I can also vouch for the T530 working perfectly (Ubuntu).

My only issue with the T530 is battery life, I barely get 2 hours on a full charge (not sure the replacement battery is very good, however).

It's worth running 'powertop' and seeing what it recommends. I've then put a set of suggested shell commands into a script which I run. On my X220, with WiFi and Chrome and medium brightness, consumption is about 10 W.

Thinkpads can also support not charging the battery to 100% / over-cycling it, which can help prolong battery lifetime:

    sudo modprobe tp_smapi
    echo 40 | sudo tee /sys/devices/platform/smapi/BAT0/start_charge_thresh
    echo 80 | sudo tee /sys/devices/platform/smapi/BAT0/stop_charge_thresh

I seem to recall the folks behind Solus (the distro I use) remind people not to use TLP because it leads to lock-ups or unwanted behavior and it ends up not being worth the trouble. Not sure if powertop is any different, I may give it a go.

Powertop echo's the shell command it is doing to effect the change. Most of it is just changing defaults in /proc. You can experiment yourself. For instance, I find that making the audio-codec go power-saving leads to pops and crackles over headphones.

Mint on an X220i is absolutely flawless for me as well. The only thing I had to do was to install the Intel microcode driver, and that isn't even strictly necessary.

I bought a refurbished t430 from ebay for like 250€ with ssd, 8gb ram and 9cell battery. Just upgraded the ram to 16gb and installed Fedora, it's the perfect laptop for me (~10-12h of battery life)

I am not planning on changing or upgrading it until it dies.

Web dev / data scientist.

I can agree with you. I own a t440s. My only qualm is the touchpad but other than that it's great for web dev.

I have a couple of t430s models. One is a backup server and I use the other for coding mini projects.

It’s fine, but my work laptop is a 15” rMBP and I know which screen, pointing device and battery life I prefer.

I understand but you have to admit there is a pretty big difference in prices between the current one of the t430s and a 15" rMBP.

I have a 4th gen X1 carbon.

Install of Linux mint was simple and it’s been running well with no issues.

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