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Comment by ngngngng | Hacker News Reader

Disclaimer: I like the touchbar. I swapped escape and caps lock, installed Pock, and never looked back.

This is my last MacBook. Xubuntu on a Thinkpad x1 carbon works great for everything I do, at a fraction of the price, with a keyboard the doesn't stop working with dust, and with more than just USB-C.

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I just got an x1 extreme, and although it takes a bit more fiddling than an x1 carbon to get running with Linux, it's an amazing experience after my macbook air. Hackers, if you want to move away from the mac ecosystem, take a look at thinkpads running linux.

I was wondering if you could please provide some more details about the fiddling? Were you having issues with the graphics card, audio, sleep mode, etc.?

It looks like a great laptop, and I'm tempted to get one instead of a new MacBook. But it might also be dangerous to get the latest model if Linux devs haven't had time to support it yet.

Thanks for the recommendation! I'm still using a 2012 MBP. I think it's still fast enough and has plenty of RAM (16GB). I also replaced the battery last year. But I think it's time to upgrade to a better computer.

I tried to purchase a new MacBook Pro last week, but they refused to accept my payment for some reason (even after multiple calls to Apple support and my bank.) I'm living in Thailand so it's probably something to do with fraud prevention, but I didn't get any answers.

I think my order problem was a blessing in disguise, because I recently saw that they are releasing a much better keyboard for new MacBooks in 2019/2020. I wish they would also get rid of the touch bar and bring back the MagSafe charger, but at least there's there a better keyboard.

But now your comment (and some replies) have convinced me to start looking at a Thinkpad x1 carbon, and maybe going back to Ubuntu. I don't do too much iOS development any more, but hopefully I can still get MacOS running in a VM if I need it. I was also using Sketch quite a lot, but I've switched to Figma now (which runs in a browser.) I also saw that there's an unofficial Electron app [1]. I think I can probably do everything else I need on Linux: Chrome, Terminal, VSCode, Slack, Spotify, Skype. Looks like I can even run Line desktop app [2] (chat app used in SE Asia.) The Docker storage driver has been painfully slow on my Mac, so it would be nice to start incorporating Docker in more of my development and testing workflow.

I'm just not looking forward to all the random issues I'll need to figure out.

[1] https://github.com/ChugunovRoman/figma-linux

[2] https://askubuntu.com/a/517944/8485

Wasn't aware of Pock before your comment. This looks really cool, thanks for the tip.

https://pock.dev/

I also have a x1 Carbon 5th gen. It's been my favorite laptop I've ever owned. I run Arch Linux on it and it runs so nice and easy, charges super fast, has all the ports I use.

I can definitely recommend everyone who has been disappointed by Apple to come to the Linux/Thinkpad ecosystem. It's not difficult to switch. Give it a try! :)

> Xubuntu on a Thinkpad x1

Was this install pretty painless? I'm due to buy a new laptop and Thinkpads are where I'm thinking about moving to. The x1 carbon and the T480. It's too bad that models after the T480 don't have a removable battery.

Most flavors of linux are pretty painless on thinkpads. Although I wouldn't recommend using anything other than a thinkpad if you can't put up with some things not working.

I'd like and use the touchbar more if it was quicker. Occasional 5 second and frequent 0.5 to 2 second lag on the escape or a volume key is very frustrating when physical keyboards should be very fast.

I see myself going down this road as well. I have an international trip coming up that is a little risky for my MBP so I am going to pick up a beater Thinkpad and install Arch. If that works out well my next laptop will likely be the Thinkpad X1 carbon series. They seem like good machines.

Same! Got a ThinkPad carbon X1 Gen 3 as a "pilot" for 300 euro, and then when I realised I could easily work with Linux as a daily driver I bought a ThinkPad T480. The Thing is a beast.

Do people use Hackintoshes on other laptops or is that still an exercise in frustration? The main reason at this point I still use MBP's (apart from employers buying them) is macOS.

Check out other people’s successes on r/hackintosh and use that to influence your purchases. You might need to replace WiFi cards or other specific components but following the subreddit’s Vanilla guides worked really well for me last week on a desktop. I see lots of brands of laptops that it works on too.

Has anyone experience with System76 laptops?

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