Lenovo announces the first Arm-based ThinkPad | Hacker News Reader

Lenovo announces the first Arm-based ThinkPad

arstechnica.com

264 pointsgripfx248 comments

>The ThinkPad 13s will start at $1,099

This $1099 config better have 16GB Memory and 512GB by default. Otherwise it is a machine that cost about the same as MacBook Air M2, with lower Display Res, slower CPU and GPU and No Touch ID. This is perhaps for the first time in history Apple has a better "spec" machine for the same price. With the scale of iPhone and iPad, Apple is now at a point where the whole PC industry can no longer compete. And that is excluding things like speakers, trackpad, and thunderbolt port.

>A spokesperson told Ars Technica that its business customers are being more open to the aspect ratio.

Biggest lie ever. People want 16:10, but for years the industry shove 16:9 to your customer because it was the cheaper panel.

> Arm Cortex-X1 cores at up to 3 GHz

For Context, the Single Core GB5 Scores

Arm Cortex-X1 cores at up to 3 GHz = ~800

Apple M1 ( A14 Core+ ) = ~1700

For PC Laptop counterpart, a 800 GB5 score you are looking at something like AMD Ryzen 7 4700U if it was limited to run at ~10W. So not too bad. Apple is the outliner here.

Well thankfully Apple charges so much for 512gb SSD that it isn't actually cheaper to buy the Macbook Air.

would linux support be better this time around with ARM considering we have had years of raspberry pi and similar devices support?

i would love to know if linux can shine on arm for desktop use out of the box

This is something that scares me. Since linux had a large dominance on ARM, it was common to vendors to make drivers for their devices. By making drivers, I mean get the driver properly mainlined. Of course, there always existed the mostly proprietary and closed board support package but it was to their disadvantage and there was a huge incentive to write drivers.

My fear is that, with windows becoming popular on ARM, this incentive will disappear and linux support on these machine will be weak.

would it be like a situation where they would have to do less work because of existing linux support rather than building new windows support? dunno this looks like another mess then

> Biggest lie ever. People want 16:10, but for years the industry shove 16:9 to your customer because it was the cheaper panel. Any background on this? I always assumed 16:9 became popular because of videos.

It's easier to run LCD production lines if all the panels are produced on the line at the same aspect ratio. Given the prevalence of 16:9 video panels, this made it easier to produce 16:9 panels for laptops. (So, you're essentially correct.)

Does that apply across sizes?

I'd expect laptop screens, having a different pixel density, to be manufactured on different lines so that having the same aspect ratio as some other size wouldn't count that much.

If the Pixel density differs ( a lot ) then yes it doesn't matter. But you still need economy of scale. This doesn't matter as much now because current LCD panel industry is essentially left over by Smartphone market. So you get a lot more flexibility than trying to print millions of the same 16:9 panels.

Do you have any sense what share of the LCD panel industry goes to phones?

No up to date number ( Because I no longer care as much ). Before pandemic and chip shortage the trajectory was OLED will be cheaper than LCD by 2022/ 2023. That is excluding other benefits like thinner display so you could fit larger battery and higher res ( spec ) numbers for better marketing. It is only a matter of time before LCD get completely squeezed out on Smartphone.

I have a MacBook Pro with 3456 × 2234 (around 16:10.5) resolution and it is perfect. I don't know why people would want laptops at 16:9 at all. I can play videos just fine on this thing and the other 95% of the time it's a better resolution for doing things like coding and spreadsheets.

New MBPs are exactly 16:10 for full-screen, non-"notch-aware" apps - the screen is basically 16:10 below the notch, plus the two side areas. Rather neat solution imho.

Right, but I don't even notice the notch is so small. In most cases it feels like a 16:10.5 and I'm loving it.

On a related note, how much I wish 1440 / 1600 vertical had become dominant for PCs, rather than just "bigger number better".

It's so much more of a performance : sharpness sweet spot than 1080p - sorry, I can see pixel effects on a typical laptop - or 4k - which even desktops typically don't drive well.

When it's choice between something like a 16:10 1440x900 and a 1600x900 16:9 screen I'll pick the latter every time, more resolution is more resolution. A 4K screen would give you more "space" than your MBP offers.

>> I don't know why people would want laptops at 16:9 at all.

I don't believe almost any of the HN audience does. The vertical crampiness of almost all the laptops is what makes a second monitor practically mandatory for me.

> 95% of the time it's a better resolution for doing things like coding and spreadsheets.

Depends on the use case. my wife (accountant) lives in Excel, and I set her up with two 21:9 monitors side by side (42:9 overall) and she loves that setup compared to the one she has in the office.

If you are authoring 16:9 content, something like 16:10 allows for some UI controls to be displayed along with 16:9 video at native resolution during previews. When programming, more space is better. So for creators, 16:10 is unambiguously better.

> When programming, more space is better. So for creators, 16:10 is unambiguously better.

I don't think that's how space works.

A 16:9 screen is wider than it is tall, so if you’re programming that means fewer lines of code visible at a time.

> A 16:9 screen is wider than it is tall, so if you’re programming that means fewer lines of code visible at a time.

A 16:10 screen is also wider than it is tall.

I'm not sure if I'm being trolled.

Number of usefully displayable lines is not defined by the x:y ratio.

Further, any half-way decent 16:9 monitor can, in a matter of moments, become a 9:16 monitor.

EDIT: I am aware we're talking about a laptop display, so orientation isn't flippable - but OTOH if you're trying to develop code on a 13" monitor at 1200 pixels high - your problem is not a ratio one.

16:10 is less wider, and thus gives you more vertical real estate.

If it helps you understand better 16:16 would be a perfect square.

That's not how 16:10 monitors work. Every one that I've seen has the same pixel width as a 16:9 screen but more vertical pixels. 2560x1600 vs 2560x1440 for example, or 1920x1200 vs 1920x1080.

These are standard panel sizes. No one is making a 1728x1080 panel to get to 16:10.

True, but if you're having two windows side by side, the wider 16:9 will give you more horizontal space to do so.

One more thing about display sizes and aspect ratio:

Since display sizes are usually given by the length of the diagonal, those aspect ratios that are closer to a square (1:1) will have a bigger area for the same diagonal. With the same diagonal length, a 16:10 has a ~5% larger area than a 16:9, and a 4:3 has a ~12% larger area than the 16:9.

This is a nice tool for display size calculations: https://displaywars.com/

>True, but if you're having two windows side by side, the wider 16:9 will give you more horizontal space to do so.

I don't know about you, but I don't read two pages of text at the same time.

You've never referenced documentation while writing or programming anything?

Alt+tab

In most cases that I've seen, a 16:10 vs 16:9 display has the same pixel width (the 16 part) part and more vertical pixels. So you were never actually sacrificing width as you claim.

I've had 3 16:10 panels in the last 10 years and this was the case each time: 1920x1200 (vs 1920x1080), 2560x1600 (vs 2560x1440) and now a 3840x2400 (vs 3840x2160).

16:10 monitors were out of fashion for most of the last 10 years, but are making a comeback lately.. They were hard to find for a while but worth the effort imo.

> In most cases that I've seen, a 16:10 vs 16:9 display has the same pixel width (the 16 part) part and more vertical pixels. So you were never actually sacrificing width as you claim.

Sure, that's true for the pixels (which might also be the more important part), but the actual width (inches) is still bigger on a 16:9 (for the same diagonal).

Sure but you said that when viewing documents side-by-side a 16:9 would give you more space, when really it's the same amount of pixels, and a trivial amount of physical difference (less than an inch on a 27" panel).

I was just clarifying that this is technically true but not really a noticeable difference on that axis.

> the actual width (inches) is still bigger on a 16:9 (for the same diagonal).

That's hypothetical, they don't have the same diagonal in the real world. (e.g. 15.6" laptop displays are 16:9 while 16:10 ones are 16", and they have the same width after all http://www.displaywars.com/15,6-inch-16x9-vs-16-inch-16x10)

A lot of people on this thread seem to think one way is better than the other, but I'm happy with the market being a mixture of devices. I prefer wider and shorter screens because I always have multiple things on screen at once and want to see them all - but I appreciate other people work differently.

Given the same diagonal size, a more-square display has a greater total area. So a 16:10 13" display has more area than a 16:9.

We should stop using diagonal size metric for display. It's fine for TVs that have fixed aspect ratio, but confusing for multiple aspect ratio.

Agreed. Along with that the ambiguous 1080p, 1440p, etc. monikers. So much shorthand assumes the aspect ratio. Plenty of displays that are 21:9, 16:10, 3:2, etc.

That said: diagonal size with an aspect ratio, e.g. “13" 3:2”, is fine.

If you're authoring 16:9 content, you can display 1080p video at native resolution with UI controls on a 2560x1440 monitor, which is also 16:9.

16:10 in a vacuum is a useless metric. Real world stuff like actual resolution, screen dimensions, font sizes, scaling, etc. only make 16:10 ambiguously better.

I get why 16:10 is preferable (I'd like 4:3 even more, or even 1:1 on a desktop), what I don't understand is the incentive to push 16:9. Is it just because less pixels -> fewer expenses.

Or 3:2 even better

And old-skool 4:3 is even better (unless you use the panel for a lot of video). :)

It's a shame we're been wandering for nearly a decade, still trying and get back to what we already had.

The thing with lenovo is that advertise inflated prices. Everything is 50% off in a few months around black friday. The list price is only for press releases. Besides, thinkpads are sold primarily in bulk to companies who also get the discounted rate.

Not in this market. We're usually buying thinkads in bunches of 20 every few months, and are struggling to get any (decent ones), never mind 50% off.

Thinkpads for some reason are disproportionally cheaper in the US. A lot of countries in (south) east asia are a lot more expensive. Taiwans own electronics brands are cheaper in the US than they are in Taiwan.

With taxes?

no the MSRP is simply doubled in regions they do that, and effective prices are exactly the same as elsewhere. Like a midrange model might be listed as $4999.99 stricken with an "up to 65% off launch celebration offer" and a "bonus" 15% off auto-applying coupons, and all combined the price might line up into e.g. a $1045.69 for an i5/16GB. That sort of BS. It's actually one of aspects that had improved about ThinkPads since the Lenovo handover.

I got all my ThinkPads for discounted €450 in Germany. All my MacAirs did cost >€2000 and had horrible keyboards

The RRP is also there to appease retail partners selling direct to the public

> This $1099 config better have 16GB Memory and 512GB by default.

Doubtful. But they’ll make up for it by having it be on sale 24/7/365. I love my thinkpad but the buying process is awful.

Maybe on the consumer side, but the enterprise side I love them. PSRef is by far the best tool any mfg has ever made for comparing models for an enterprise selection. I am still shocked no other manufacture creates a tool.

Yeah but you can constantly get deals on the new MacBook Air for ~$850. It’s just such an amazingly good and affordable laptop.

Those are usually for the baseline models. But, other than meager storage, I think it's still a great deal.

> This is perhaps for the first time in history Apple has a better "spec" machine for the same price.

This was also true at times after Apple switched to Intel — for example, around the time Apple went SSD-only they were considerably cheaper _and_ faster than the competition who were either shipping HDDs or using slower low-end SSDs using HDD-optimized interfaces. The main confound has been that they weren't selling crappy but super cheap machines or large laptops, so you could find products in those classes which were faster (at twice the weight / half the battery life) or much cheaper and a lot of people would make comparisons for things which were really in different classes.

The difference now is that we've hit the point where it's easier to do those side-by-side comparisons because everyone is using SSDs, solid case designs with decent thermals, etc. so there isn't an obvious confound like weight or build quality to complicate the comparisons.

> People want 16:10,

4:3, please.

Why not 1:1?

Too square. Seriously: https://www.quora.com/Why-did-TVs-give-up-their-square-for-r...

Tldr: our peripheral vision extends width wise more than it does height wise. That 4:3 was popular at all was an artificial of display technology not being able to take advantage of that. Now, of course for using a computer vs just watching movies or playing games, 4:3 makes a lot of sense, but I think we’d see 3:4 (portrait letter size) before 1:1.

> This is perhaps for the first time in history Apple has a better "spec" machine for the same price.

Eh, honestly the baseline MacBook Air has often been pretty good value in the past relative to the competition.

Is that price with or without a rootkit?

It is rootkit free, they still haven't migrated it to work in ARM. Will come in a later automatic update.

> People want 16:10

That's, like, your opinion, man.

Give me a high end mobile workstation with 4:3!

You can generally buy a ThinkPad at 2/3 or even 1/2 of the list price.

I think I'll always associate anything that runs on Qualcomm (thought it's not just them) as temporary due to its short lifespan and lack of vendor support based on my experience of buying Android phones, tablets and media devices. I think this is already true of some (all?) Chromebooks that actually have expiration dates.

This is probably not a fair comparison since it's a laptop and windows-based, but it would take a lot to win me back with how much money, time and effort i have lost over the years with these products... not to mention the amount of ewaste has been generated.

Even more true with my experience with Motorola (Lenovo); $600+ phone stops getting support/updates after 6 months of ownership... trade-in value of $28. Never again.

Then again, seeing Intel with some serious competition warms me up a little bit. Also the thought of an ecosystem of blossoming Linux distros for ARM laptops/desktops makes me excited.

I stopped buying Qualcomm smartphones years ago. There's no way I'd by a laptop with one of their chips.

What an unfortunate choice by Lenovo.

>What an unfortunate choice by Lenovo.

Well they didn't have much choice here. MediaTek, Samsung, and the rest are equally bad. The ARM SoC market is flooded with chips designed to have the shortest SW support lifespan possible.

Maybe Nvidia can get its shit together and put out a competitive ARM chip.

The fundamental problem is the refusal to publish driver source. Nvidia is one of the last companies on earth I'd expect to do that.

MTK has the advantage of somewhat available (leaked) design information and source code, and there's a pretty thriving Chinese developer community --- at least around their phones/tablets.

Sadly, I don't think Qualcomm is even any worse than average. I don't think for example MediaTek, Samsung or Nvidia are doing any better.

I think even the Pinephones with their Allwinners and Rockchips aren't perfect, with both models being based on I believe older SoCs (although the Rockchip in the Pro has been modified, afaik).

I'll happily take worse hardware with good community support over fresh off the line stuff that's up to its eyeballs in broken corporate crap.

Interesting. I was recently looking to upgrade my personal T480s which I use for development, but didn't see anything in Lenovo lineup that were reasonably light/powerful/quiet/cool enough to make put in the order. I've grown so sick of laptops constantly hissing at me when I do something more complicated than browsing the web. My work issued Dell is basically unusable in a quiet room without headphones. So as an impulse buy I sidegraded to M1 Air instead just to see what the fuss is all about.

Well, I'm not really wanting to go back to regular intel/amd laptops now, I have been spoiled.

I got the T14 Gen1, basically the direct successor of the T480. What I notice is when I put the power profile to balanced it's very quiet. But of course does not power up all the way. Fast enough for my needs, but of course might not be a solution for everyone.

I was looking at T14, but I'm used to having slim laptop, s variants have been slightly powerful but lighter and with slimmer profile. The thing with M1 is that the difference with 8th gen i5 in my T480s is for some workloads 2x, if not more. And difference in some Lightroom tools is easily even more. M1 is amazing. Plus, it's quiet. I didn't know I missed silence so much. It's hard to go back now.

If you have a T480s now, why do you want to upgrade? It's quite modern.

It only takes maximum of 24GB RAM. Right now I'm ok with it but I'd like to have some future proofing at some point, everybody is going crazy with containers nowadays. I've been moving my work off the desktop and while I can upgrade NVMe as I please I'm stuck with memory limit.

I'm pretty sure it can take 40GB RAM, see e.g. here: https://www.reddit.com/r/thinkpad/comments/bb1xwm/t480s_upgr...

I also have 64GB on my work T480 (non-s) despite "max" being 32GB.

The Lenovo-reported max RAM specs often do not take into account newer larger memory modules released after the laptop (or at least I believe this is the reason for the discrepancy).

There seems to be some discrepancies in this area, this is the CPU in my T480s (with 40GB RAM): https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/sku/124967/...

Even Intel says it can maximally have 32 GB of RAM.

Intel has been absolutely incorrect on this a few times. Quite often there is a conflict in ranges that the ACPI spec included in the system firmware can't deal with, but if an operating system is clever enough it can work around the problem.

It may require some ACPI trickery, but it absolutely is doable. If the firmware guys are super lazy it may just work without ACPI trickery.

Check out an example here: https://www.downtowndougbrown.com/2019/04/adventures-of-putt...

That link was an amazing read, thank you for sharing, I will not admit that I understand all of it, but it was a nice adventure to read through.

I have 40GB ram in my T480s, but it is single-channel.

I have also put a NVMe in the WWAN-port, I found out that the Transcend MTE452T (TS512GMTE452T) has the right M.2-port (B+M), and it is a compatible NVMe-drive and not a SATA-drive which some of the disks of that form factor is.

Thanks for the info, I'll have a look. Transcend is weird in a good way, over the years I have bought some hard to find config drives from them, like 512gb msata 5 or so years ago.

My Thinkpad E14 Gen3 is quiet most of the time. My T470p is boiling my hands and the fan is constantly whirring (I still like it :)).

But I agree, Apples MacBook is of a different kind. The only time I heard the fan was when playing Metro Exodus and when I ran cinebench :). My MacBook Pro outperforms every other computer in my possession.

But I'm still interested in this Thinkpad, because I'm not too happy with macOS anymore. But I assume there are too many limitations with Windows for ARM as well :). And considering the price of this Thinkpad, I'm probably just buying another MacBook, which has better battery life and better performance (and probably a better screen, Thinkpads often have terrible screens imho).

> Thinkpads often have terrible screens imho

True. I was not interested in Intel Macbooks because the pluses even with that great screen didn't win me over from of thinkpads but M1 has changed the game for me. The battery and performance improvements are just too good to ignore.

I have an M1 but never use it at home, the battery is only really useful if I need to spend a few days on the road away from power.

My daily driver is an Intel 1185g7 based Laptop which I can work a whole day without charging if needed (tops out at about 10 hours), and anymore than that doesn't really add any value. If Linux support gets better on the M1 I think I would consider switching but honestly when I put them side by side I don't notice a big performance difference. The M1 just uses a lot less power to get that performance.

> My daily driver is an Intel 1185g7 based Laptop which I can work a whole day without charging

Which laptop model is that?

I've got a 6th gen X1 carbon and under windows the thing has the fan on high all the time. Switched to Linux (mint) and I went a couple months before I heard the fan, doing all the same things. I don't know what windows is doing these days but it isn't doing it for me, the end user.

T460s user here, on Windows (and Hackintosh, for the sake of bad comparison), my system idled ~40-45c and the fans also ran constantly. Put Linux on it, add auto-cpufreq, and then it idles ~27c (30c with external display). No fans unless I launch games, have heavy network usage for >5 minutes, or compile something.

I'd probably give the Macbooks (or this new Thinkpad) a closer look if I didn't work with Docker constantly. As it stands though, ARM and x86 are still not like comparisons, and still not even remotely capable of the same workloads. I have high hopes for the future of RISC arches, but we're undeniably trapped in an age of x86 dominance.

Why is Docker an issue?

Well, for starters, virtualizing anything on MacOS is a pain in the butt. It's an open secret that Docker on Mac has performance issues, kernel interface problems and general compatibility hiccups that don't exist when the host is running Linux. Then there's the fact that quite a number of Docker containers aren't ARM-ready, and even the ones that are won't be an accurate portrayal of how they'll behave on other arches (most systems I deploy to are still x86).

Like I said, ARM may well have it's day, but right now it's just full of compromises that I simply can't make. So long as x86 benefits from the same big.LITTLE architecture that ARM has been transitioning to, I don't think I'll really have much use for another arch until RISC-V hits the mainstream.

Guess it depends on your use. I’ve been using Docker on an M1 Mac without issues.

On Windows, did you use the Lenovo provided software to manage cooling? If you did a fresh install of Windows and didn't install the OEM fan and CPU tooling, but then did install CPU tooling on Linux, its not quite a fair comparison.

I've got a 460s and it will run pretty warm if you let it. If you tell it to not run so hot it'll keep the CPU throttled down a bit more aggressively and keep it cooler. That generation of Intel CPU was always a bit on the warm side when it wanted to actually do anything. Especially anything related to video encoding/decoding, using stuff like Zoom or Meet or Teams really makes the machine get warm.

I did a fresh install, but Lenovo's management software has been notoriously bloatware-ish, so I was apprehensive to keep it on my system. I was never really claiming for it to be a fair comparison either, even if this thing somehow ran hotter on Linux I'd probably wouldn't use Windows anyways.

The machine can definitely run pretty hot if you crank the performance profiles though, that's for sure. I've managed to hit 70c while playing music/running CPU intensive games on an external monitor, and I definitely think you could push it further with more CPU twiddling. For regular use though, a hearty underclock still renders the device usable with low temps and a good amount of battery life extension.

On the other hand, I use a Windows on a Intel m3-6y30 machine and the fan hardly ever runs despite it being a fairly anemic system by today's standards.

One has to think that all these users who can't seem to configure and operate Windows properly are probably not configuring and operating Linux (which exposes much deeper control and complexity to the user) properly either. "It's a poor craftsman that blames their tools", after all.

Btw, how is E-series doing for you? I've had X and T for last 20 years and I wouldn't've thought about getting E. I've thought of them as too fragile to lug around. Years ago I broke one early 14" Yoga plastic bottom just packing it too tightly so I've stayed with T's and X's.

My E14gen3 feels absolutely solid and sturdy. I mean, the E14s are not _that_ cheap :D. I wanted a Ryzen CPU, keyboard backlight and a fingerprint sensor. Also the keyboard is great. Battery life is great as well.

I think it's not only about arm vs x86. I have a work provided Thinkpad and work provided Macbook Pro (with Skylake CPU) and I prefer to work on the Macbook for the same reason. It's completely silent 99% of the time, whereas Thinkpad has fans blazing 99% of the time and getting very hot. When I look in task manager, it's the usual suspects - corporate bloatware disguised as data protection and antivirus software, taking 40-50% CPU time when idling. Add Chrome and few apps and you got 90-100% CPU usage most of the time.

> hen I look in task manager, it's the usual suspects - corporate bloatware disguised as data protection and antivirus software

Similar experience here. If I only had experience with ThinkPads from work I certainly would hate them. Slow, loud and shitty screen.

My T14 Gen1 I run at home at balanced power mode runs quiet and fast. NVMe I could switch, ram upgraded to 32GB, fingerprint reader and windows hallow, all for ~1100 EUR

The difference between laptop with mandatory corporate cruft and same hw without it is quite something. My personal laptop is weaker spec wise that work issued, but is so much snappier.

Apple also sets up very different fan curves from most of the PC industry. They won't turn on the fan until it hits 95 C. This keeps it quiet but it affects performance and maybe longevity.

OTOH, Lenovo turns on the fans when the laptop is sleeping in a backpack.

Also worth noting that most vendors have a way to adjust the fan curves. Sometimes right in the bios, often times through an external utility.

I recall at one point there was someone doing some work getting the Legion Fan Control app working for non-Legion Lenovos, but I cannot for the life of me find the link now.

My personal T480 is silent most of the time. Though I now have an M1 Mac from work, and my next personal laptop will likely be an M1 as well based on my experience with it so far. Not just the chip: Apple finally created the perfect form factor IMHO, with just the right screen aspect ratio, port options (Magsafe plus USB-C charging!), and keyboard.

FWIW, I switched from X270 to X13 Gen2 AMD (5850U, 32GB) recently and the difference has been night-and-day - even just web browsing on X270 caused audible noise, while X13G2A is practically completely silent unless I do something very demanding.

So maybe look into T14s Gen2 AMD (which may be pretty similar to X13 Gen2 since they share the HW maintenance manual). But YMMV of course, and I have no experience of M1.

Be aware the screens on X13 and T14/T14s are pretty lacklustre for colour reproduction

They have some screen upgrade options, fwiw

Have a T14s Gen1, can confirm that compared to the T470 it replaced it's lighter and quieter under load.

I wouldn't do image editing on anything in the line but for dev work the T14 has been great.

I'm enjoying my new yoga slim 7 carbon with 5800u! silent most of the time with lots of open programs.

Also a truly beautiful oled screen, whereas new thinkpads tend to have terrible screens.

Also about 1kg, almost perfect windows laptop.

That's curious. Browsing the web is the only thing I do that gets my work MacBook (and my personal X220) hissing at me.

If these ARM-laptops supports the ServerReady platform, I guess it should be possible to just UEFI boot a plain Debian or Ubuntu Arm64 ISO on these machines, without need to tailor a specific image?

If not, I'm going to be dissapointed.

Edit: According to a reddit-comment[0], ARM ServerReady, UEFI and ACPI are all requirements for Windows on ARM, so if this thing runs Windows, we should be able to assume all those other things are in place too. Unless someone has locked the SecureBoot-settings, these laptops should be able to run Linux too without too much trouble.

[0] https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/k3av65/when_will_arm...

Excellent! I might just have to get me one of those.

But do they run Linux?

ThinkPads were always great for Linux and I've been happy with them ever since I can afford them (6 years now).

https://getfedora.org/en/workstation/download/

Fedora 35: aarch64 DVD ISO should work.

Just FYI, we run our entire production api on arm on AWS. Its pretty rock stable and mature. The stability of ARM on linux is pretty much a solved problem at this point.

Are there really no more model specific images required?

generally not. unless Qualcomm is doing something very different.

aarch64 works in all chromebooks - and also the AWS Graviton platform in production.

there's a nice repo that AWS maintains for this - this should be very helpful. https://github.com/aws/aws-graviton-getting-started

We are basically in the endgame here.

Just Fedora or any aarch64 distro? I thought aarch64 meant raspberries.

aarch64 means 64-bit ARM, which apply to anything from server-grade hardware to smartphones to raspberry pi's.

well generally i recommend Fedora as being rock solid and also includes cutting edge (but not bleeding edge) linux infra.

but i suppose any aarch64 distro

Thank you for recommending Fedora. However, I'm on Void for the past 7 years now (whew time flies!). I'm not planning on switching to any distro that has systemd.

I suppose I could still use the live environment as a Linux bootstrap for installing my favorite distro, though.

i would recommend that you be very careful here. You want a distro that explicitly has ARM as one of its official targets. Because there are a lot of moving components here - bootloader, system init, etc that all need to be targeted to the new arch.

If you are not on the Triple Trouble (Fedora, Arch, Ubuntu)... I would recommend you wait until your distro catches up.

Fedora is guaranteed rock stable here. Amazon Linux was originally based on RHEL and still have a lot of cross-upstreaming going on. For e.g. RHEL has support built in for 100 GBPS networking on Arm (https://access.redhat.com/solutions/5691381).

Sorry, but no. This is the kind of misinformation that causes people to wind up with $2000 paper weights.

ARM in the cloud and ARM on the desk-top (aka, SBC and Laptops) are nearly entirely different ballgames - certainly from a user UX perspective. Basic boot support, standards around device tree, actual driver support, firmware, quirks, ecosystem challenges due to vendors and the nightmare of a gazillion kernel forks.

I was actually shocked to see that Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 already has upstream support, but AFAICT that's not a tablet/laptop chipset. And the one that is again seems to only be seeing Windows support. The other mobile chipsets with decent suppor are few and usefuls even fewer - maybe three and that's including Librem/Pinephone.

Maybe you can find me an example of the 7c/8c running, anywhere? There are at least some DTSI for some 7c boards, but again, absolutely zero consumer hardware in the wild. I spend time every month looking and the options for running a proper upstream kernel, on an Android based laptop or kernel, and every time "upstream support" is added as a crtieria, the options drop to zero.

I've never wanted to be wrong so much before, but again, I look into this pretty regularly and am involved in some development efforts that expose me to some of these realities first hand (I run everything on aarch64 except my gaming PC). It's sort of amazing, actually, to boggle at how much collective time has been spent by some many random devs at random companies and then painstankingly re-discovered by OSS folks, especially for phones/SBCs.

(granted, if you can boot upstream, it's all downhill from there these days)

> There are at least some DTSI for some 7c boards, but again, absolutely zero consumer hardware in the wild

See Snapdragon 7c Chromebook hardware. There's quite some of those available. The Galaxy Book Go using the same SoC uses Windows on Arm64 instead.

Quite a lot of those Windows on arm64 SoCs also ship on Chromebooks, ensuring Linux support at some point.

These windows on arm devices are UEFI/ACPI, not uboot/DT. They should work, if someone puts the effort into porting all the drivers, and working around all the quirks they are sure to have. Why QC doesn't do this, and get them SystemReady certified is a mystery.

I'd encourage you to do your own research on this. The kind of research where you assume you're getting a soon-to-be-abanonded piece of techno-capital-consumerist ewaste, and critically evaluate anecdata against a rubrik composed from spending time researching the hairy corners of the space. This comes from a bleeding heart optimistic burned almost too many times.

Here are some items to look for: - a device tree for the chipset for your device - a u-boot fork or patches for the chipset/device/both - a Chromebook built with that chipset, due to how ChromeOS development is done - any sign of commitment from the chipset manufacturer

This topic is a lot like early Android bootloaders before... one of the early Motorola devices. Before there was a set of expectations/framework-support/etc for unlocking. That first unlockable Motorola device, there was 9 months of every wise-guy on the Internet swearing it was just a matter of time. And often it is, but only due to what amounts to luck.

Hint: there's a reason that every single Linux enthusiast isn't running a ARM laptop. There's a reason that Linux folks are excited about the Linux on M1 project even though it means jumping through hoops and reverse engineering and playing ball with Apple.

"The ThinkPad 13s will start at $1,099 when it comes out in May."

It's too expensive for an ARM device.

But Apple's aren't? I agree with you but they are pricing it relative to what they can get away with and Apple set the starting point for ARM based laptops.

Apple might still be selling Intel systems alongside ARM systems. But they’ve made it clear which side is the future. Their performance also isn’t a loss.

Probably the biggest factor though is in Windows land cross architecture comparability will be a much much bigger issue. If your legacy app only works on intel then arm is useless.

The M1-based Macs are faster, lighter, offer seamless compatibility, run iOS software, have better screens and better battery life than modern comparable laptops. It's also faster than this Snapdragon chip. And starts from $999.

It also runs a really good Unix OS. This laptop still won't run Linux out of the box.

WSL2, as good as it gets.

While I agree WSL2 is pretty good, and it's great that it's available on Windows, you still have to put up with the day-to-day annoyances of the OS.

The general UX is the main reason why I don't use Windows. I actually gave it an honest try in 2020. I was pretty excited about Windows terminal, the inclusion of OpenSSH (I always hated Putty) and even went on the insider channel to test out WSL2, with Docker desktop and everything. And it was better that I had remembered.

But I just gave up after a few months. The laggy search in the start menu, which I had to fix with some registry change to prevent it from searching the web (!?). The random "quick access" folders in the explorer, which also required registry wrangling to remove. Bonus points for all these reverting randomly after an update.

The hidden taskbar, which would become permanently visible in case a window demanded attention, and no way (that I've found) to disable this behavior. However, it seems fixed on Windows 11.

The windows which would look active, with a blinking cursor and everything, but wouldn't actually be active, and input would go to some other random window. New windows starting up behind the active window, etc.

And my favorite: turning on the computer in the middle of the night for some reason if left in hibernation. I had set the GPO to NOT turn on to uninstall updates, so no idea what it was up to.

> I always hated Putty

It has a redeeming quality: it supports Tektronix graphics.

> and input would go to some other random window

Specially annoying when the input is Control-W.

> turning on the computer in the middle of the night for some reason if left in hibernation

Corporate laptop does that. I always assume one of its overlords summoned it.

I moved back from a Linux zealot into Windows, because the day-to-day annoyances of the OS running on Laptops, and for graphics programming, are much more berable on Windows.

Running Linux on VMs since 2012, since VMWare made it painless to do so.

It's funny how varied experiences can be.

I've been running Linux on my work laptops since 2018, after a long stint on MBPs. They've both worked perfectly, even though the manufacturer doesn't support Linux at all. The only thing that didn't work was the fingerprint reader on the previous one. On the new one it works, but I don't use it since it's not in a practical position.

I'm getting the same kind of battery life as on Windows, Bluetooth headphones work great, it actually sleeps when I close the lid, etc.

The current one actually worked better on Linux than on the pre-installed Windows. For some reason, Windows couldn't get the brightness all the way up, even on battery power and "performance" mode.

I don't do anything graphics-intensive, though. I'm quite happy with the integrated GPUs. Although on my desktop, I have a Radeon that I use for gaming, and it also works great. But it's true that I specifically avoided Nvidia to not gamble on Linux support.

For the curious, the laptops are HP ProBook 430 G5 and 845 G8.

Nah. Why would I run Windows when I can just run the OS that I actually want?

Depends on how much fun you want supporting 100% of the laptop hardware.

Just get a good laptop and you'll be OK.

That's why I buy System76. They make _Linux_ hardware and they actually support their products. I don't have time to play system integrator.

macOS is a Unix. Is WSL2?

Depends how much UNIX you consider Linux distributions to be.

> It also runs a really good Unix OS. This laptop still won't run Linux out of the box.

That's misleading - these Macs don't run Linux well at all. I would love to see Linux fully and properly supported on these great new chips, but let's not pretend that is already the case.

No, but they still run a Unix pretty well.

Apple earned it - they don't charge you just for the laptop, it's for the entire ecosystem - For example, you can run iOS apps on Apple's ARM device. And what exactly does Lenovo bring to the table other than embedded spyware (which they've been caught in the past for)?

Seriously hard to justify $1000+ for this crap.

References:

[1] https://www.inverse.com/innovation/36136-lenovo-settles-spyw...

[2] https://www.cnbc.com/2018/10/05/lenovo-tumbles-after-report-...

Windows also has an ecosystem, arguably made even larger with WSL2 and Android apps. This new ARM laptop is offering a fanless design and (they claim) 28 hours of battery. Don't forget that Apple have also sold plenty of "crap" laptops for four figure sums until relatively recently (e.g. customers beta testing new flawed keyboard designs).

How does it compare to a $999 Macbook air?

https://www.apple.com/macbook-air/

Isn't the apple device more powerful spec wise?

The M1 is literally the fastest laptop processor on the planet, by a large margin.

Current-year MBPs are a whole 'nother class of device.

This ThinkPad is going to chug in comparison to an x86 laptop because Lenovo doesn't have the technical capability or clout to design a whole new, hyper-fast ARM part and basically make arbitrary demands of the supply chain to get it into users' hands, the way Apple does.

This is full featured mobile laptop. Praise for Lenovo not to release cheap crap.

I like this trend, I'm currently looking at next gen Surface Pro X as a replacement for my 2018 MBP.

I'm almost there with using remote development on super beefy Windows desktop (waiting for Rider remote development support) - I want a mobile device that's powerful enough for client apps - but I want to offload heavy lifting to a tower that I don't have to listen to whizzing next to my face.

I'm not sure why they keep forcing the laptop form factor on this - tablet is much more flexible, you can add the keyboard folio if you want it but I prefer using dedicated keyboard/mouse when I'm using it for anything nontrivial, and tablet is more practical in most other scenarios.

> tablet is much more flexible, you can add the keyboard folio if you want it

Maybe it's just me, but I have the first generation Microsoft Surface Go, which I mainly used as a tablet device, but occasionally attach the keyboard to it when I need to do more extensive typing.

Over time, I discovered the connectivity between the keyboard and the tablet became worse, until it finally failed, and the tablet did not recognize the keyboard. Trying a new keyboard did not fix the problem, so I assume the problem is with the connector on the tablet.

For now, I've bought a BT wireless keyboard, which I can use with the tablet.

For that reason, I've soured on tablets with attachable keyboards, and looking for a small (13-14 inch) 2-in-1 laptop for working on the go.

My wife had a Yoga 2in1 and I've been underwhelmed with the experience, "tent mode" is cool but as a tablet it's too chunky, as a laptop it's underwhelming.

In my experience - the only time I use attached keyboard/mouse is when I'm at the office and I need to join a call in the conference room or a call booth in co-working space - other than that I use external BT mouse and keyboard exclusively. For those use cases I think I could get away with using a touch screen, maybe if I needed to present - but I'd just pickup my keyboard/mouse in that scenario.

How was the ARM take over settled down? https://semianalysis.com/the-semiconductor-heist-of-the-cent...

X1 cores? ARM launched the X2 core back in May of last year. It's already in the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1. Interesting to see why Qualcomm would sandbag the laptop chips with last-generation cores.

Has Windows gotten any better at running x86-64 Windows software on ARM hardware?

The last time I saw this tested, it was more likely to fail than succeed, but it's been a while.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OhESSZIXvCA

It is a shame this is based on X1 cores not X2 cores. Feels like they are trying to rip off people.

Lenovo always seems to be about a half year behind the generation of chip you actually want.

I'm curious if they even considered the A78C, the variant with a similar cache (except L2) that replaces all LITTLE cores with big and possibly costs less to license as it's probably a roadmap core like the A78. It's chronologically a step behind but could unlock better performance (than A78+55) with a negligible/nonexistent hit to battery life.

Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3 is 4xX1 + 4xA78, with no A55s.

I eat my statement. That looks like a better configuration than an octa-A78C, but only if the licensing cost is the same or you REALLY have a need for the latest extensions.

So, it actually is X1C and A78C.

https://blogs.windows.com/windowsexperience/2022/02/28/mwc-2... references PAC support, which is only in the C variant of those cores.

Good catch. I wasn't even aware there was an X1C! Then again, my daily driver is a 1 or 2 core Cortex-M. On special occasions (once a month or so) something more exotic lands on my desk.

I know nothing about ARM, but I think it's time to learn.

Am I right in saying you need to compile the OS and all applications to run on ARM? If so, I bet at least one thing I use daily wont work, and I don't want to commit to a laptop like this unless I know it will be a full replacement for my Intel machine.

Whats the state of this in Ubuntu?

Applications need recompiling to run nativly on ARM. However you can still emulate x86 for programs that need it (with a speed penalty).

Ubuntu has great support for ARM. However the is an extra dimension that Arm laptops are also _much_ less standardised then x86; I would wait to see hardware compatability this this precise device.

> I know nothing about ARM, but I think it's time to learn

Is it? Unless you’re routinely working with assembly it’s essentially irrelevant, unless you’re writing low-level multithreaded native code (aka you’re directly working with atomics and barriers).

Though obviously if you assume customers are or may be switching hardware, it can be useful to test or bench on ARM to get some inkling as to their eventual experience, or make sure you’re not relying on ISA details.

Don't get me wrong, ARM is neat and all, but your comment’s assertion that “it’s time to learn” doesn’t seem motivated by anything real, any more than “it’s time to learn” about RISCV or PPC.

> Am I right in saying you need to compile the OS and all applications to run on ARM?

Technically you could run emulated, although that has a non-trivial cost.

> If so, I bet at least one thing I use daily wont work, and I don't want to commit to a laptop like this unless I know it will be a full replacement for my Intel machine.

You could always get an ARM-based devboard (e.g. a raspberry pi or similar) to play around, that’s hardly a major investment, although obviously it is what it is.

An other alternative is to use ARM-based “cloud” systems.

but does it run Linux?

If not now, likely soon. The chip itself is already supported and even its GPU is implemented since 5.15. Similar chips in other laptops don't fail entirely. https://forum.manjaro.org/t/samsung-book-s-with-8cx/52818/3

I give it another 2 months and I'd bet someone boots the basics at least. (Assuming the laptop is reasonably powerful and has enough users / interest) They mostly need to make sure the device tree is correct.

There's little upside on this. The chip is not faster than an Intel equivalent, and the laptop isn't cheaper either.

That's barely even an encouraging sign. For example, where are the folks running linux on the previous gen 7cx devices?

> (Assuming the laptop is reasonably powerful and has enough users / interest)

7cx devices are not popular and I haven't seen anybody excited about them. M1 got serious reverse engineering work done because it's worth owning in the first place, but not every random Arm device will get that.

Will it be equipped with Microsoft Pluton insecurity chip?

ARM has had trust zone for years now.

Pluton is separate from TZ.

Pluton is another core which is a security module---in this case, a Microsoft product. TZ splits data and instruction access into insecure and secure classes on the original core---letting a little information pass from one side to the other without revealing the inner functionality.

There are plenty of Arm SoCs with Cortex-A cores plus an onboard Cortex-M-based trusted platform module (TPM). There are also already Arm chips using Pluton, such as the MediaTek MT3620.

Trustzone isnt a coprocessor though? Meaning you have to initialize it. As far as i understand it its a more fancy MMU?

Unfortunately I don't think Lenovo has the market dominance and/or desire that IBM had in the early 80s with the PC to make their ARM platform the de-facto standard, which means this is going to be yet another of many proprietary platforms whose only thing in common is the instruction set. This is no doubt going to be very different from Apple's ARM platform, for example. Even the next model or revision might have some things completely different.

I still remember the days when "IBM PC compatible" meant (at the very least, a desire to) something.

If Lenovo releases the schematics and detailed architecture reference like IBM did with the PC, they might start another PC revolution; but I doubt they will.

At what point will there come laptops that have a slot for an extra battery like an 18650 or 26650 battery that can sustain a full workday extra? That would be nice, just to carrey a small spare battery.

Every USB-C laptop has this - charge it like you would charge your phone on the go, from a powerbank.

I would not take that wager. Just because it has a USB-C port doesn't necessarily mean it has support for anything other than basic USB device support.

Huh? How else would you charge this device?

There are laptops with USB C that still have a separate power port to charge.

What's the efficiency of doing this over being able to change the laptop battery? I've done it a few times for my M1 Macbook Air and feel like it can't be much better than 50%-75% but it would be nice to know.

HP Elitebook G3 for one is not happy with power from a phone charger, idk don't have a powerbank to test.

Was confused about "ARM" written in lower case for a second and was imagining some futuristic device embedded in an elbow sleeve or bracelet.

I'm disappointed.

For Germans: ARM ist arm, aber besser ARM drin als Arm ab!

Very interesting that we see shift to ARM system from uniquely X86 system. I hope that in the future there will be also shift to RISC-V

How does this compare to X1 Nano? I'd been looking for a laptop, and the Nano seemed to fit my hand like nothing else. This one feels like a modified T line or a lineage of detachables rather than X series machines, is that the case?

Why are they doing this? Windows RT laptops flopped almost a decade ago due to the lack of software, and the landscape hasn't changed all that much AFAIK.

I'm quite certain it has. I believe Windows on ARM now ships with x86 emulation, allowing it to run any program (albeit more slowly). I'm not sure about the state of WSL on ARM, but Linux on ARM in general is a nearly indistinguishable experience from Linux on x86, with the exception of proprietary software which is for the most part relatively rare on that platform.

>I believe Windows on ARM now ships with x86 emulation

The last time I saw this tested, it was more likely to fail than work for any particular bit of modern 64 bit Windows software.

x86_64 support didn't exist due to Intel patents. That issue was resolved:

https://blogs.windows.com/windows-insider/2020/12/10/introdu...

That doesn't fix the problem of Microsoft adding it to Windows in a non-functional state.

The difference is that, relative to the days of Windows 8, they've significantly diversified the ways you can target Windows, directly and otherwise:

- IE is finally dead, and shipping a downstream Chrome build in the form of Edge gives Win10/11 not only a revamped WebView but platform-level support for PWAs (I cannot stress enough how much of an impact there is here just from how much the Web has evolved as a platform, and as a Linux user this cuts both ways tbh)

- To this same point there's also a first-party React Native build, allowing devs that are already shipping mobile apps to extend those to target desktops

- .NET has since been open-sourced, gone cross-platform, and picked up native ARM support

- Windows Subsystem for Linux, and now Windows Subsystem for Android, let you reach outside the Windows ecosystem entirely (the latter of which, interestingly, should also compound over time with the various efforts that Google is finally making again to make large form factors viable on Android)

- Project Reunion exists now, for the stated purpose of providing a common set of APIs that Windows developers can access

That last one alone, btw, makes the landscape inherently different from WinRT, which removed Win32 support entirely and only allowed you to run UWP apps.

I will definitely wait for the next generation for this product. I am still not convinced MS and Lenovo will support ARM long-term.

People want RISC-V, and no proprietary hardware.

Some people want that but actually they are a really small percent of people overall. On CrowdSupply the Librem and Novena laptop projects did not have more than 1k orders. Although it is a huge credit to both of those projects to develop new hardware products and be so successful to begin with.

In fact, this laptop goes in the opposite direction, it's not intended to be modified as much by the user. It's one that runs Windows 11 with some feature called "S mode" ('S' as in Secure). In S mode there is some kind of secure boot and apps can only be installed through the Windows Store. A user with admin rights can disable S-mode but it can then never be re-enabled after that.

So actually this laptop is not intended to be open at all, it is marketed for business where the environment can be more locked down and secure.

From that angle (and the angle in Tom’s Hardware) the screen panel doesn’t look very high quality :(

Tomshardware is such a ad filled cess pool of a site. I refuse to go to any pages of theirs. I’ve blocked them in my DNS. The tech reporting is garbage anyway besides the ad filled pages. A better site for this info is: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/02/lenovo-announces-the...

Setup piHole or AdGuard and remove the ads and tracking sites.

But also the articles are ads, like in general toms is just crap

This is the reason.

Why don't you use an ad blocker of your choice?

And Arstechnica insists on autoplaying the same utterly pointless video right next to absolutely every single article at all times.

Who needs 28 hours of battery? I mean the big step is that you can run a an extended working day, lets say 12hours, but at least after 16 hours you should be able to plug it in, shouldnt you; best next to the bed you are resting then.

Sure, but if the battery continues to last for an extended work day after many years of use without a replacement, that’s extremely appealing to me.

Yes, long life battery, or lighter laptop, that is important. So the logic is, if it lasts 28h when new it will probably last 12h when old?

>Who needs 28 hours of battery?

A nice advantage is in a few years when the battery wears down some you'll still have fantastic all day battery life compared to most other laptops.

Most people don't need real 28h, but the number is just a regulated measurement. You may get 14h.

How about they announce ThinkPads with a decent keyboard for a change? :-(

ThnikPads have propably the best keyboards around, definitly the best laptop keyboards I ever used.

You either have never tried a ThinkPad prior to the W530 (i.e. more than 10 years ago, when they significantly changed the keyboard for the first time) or you haven't used one of the "next-gen" models with "next-gen" keyboards that they have been building ever since and that get worse with every iteration.

I have used as far back as 15 years ago, have a back up one that is 5 years old (?), privately a X1 Extreme Gen 2 and a company L13. No significant difference in keyboards, all of those are, or were, great. Especially compared to HP or Dell. Not to speak about Asus...

I agree; the keyboards are fine. I do dislike the layout changes they've made compared to the "classic" keyboards, but it's still better than most layouts out there (and they fixed some design mistakes in the first iterations of it).

I have a T450 from 2014 or so. Its keyboard is worse than my T510 (old keyboard), but still quite a bit better than other laptop keyboards.

tbh I never minded the chiclet keyboard on the newer thinkpads, and I do also still use a W500

I haven't used any of the current-gen thinkpads, but the x250 (thats probably the most recent I've used) from 2016 has a very nice keyboard

Then you really need to try one of the X200's, X210's or X220's. Then you'll get my rant.

Peaked with the x220

I honestly thought this to be true years ago. I recently bought a MacBook and am completely sold on their keypads. Wouldn't be happy if that was my desktop keyboard but for a laptop it's the best out there.

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