hey fellow computer enthusiasts,
I know that a lot of you are fans of Thinkpad laptops for running linux.
I know nothing of Thinkpad models but i see there are a lot of them. is there a quintessential model of Thinkpad that i should be looking for?
i have no real *need* for one other than I just want to have a fun little linux laptop to suppliment my macbook laptop.
and/or slowly move away from the macbook? possibly? potentially?
Great timing.
Last week I bought my first Thinkpad, a T460 16Gb 500GB SSD version, and I just love it.
It came with Windows 10, but I put Debian 13 GNOME on it and it flies.
The T460 is a very basic model, no keyboard backlight for example, but with an awesome feeling keyboard, responsive trackpad and, of course, the little red joystick in the middle of the keyboard.
My background, though, has been Apple Mac's since 2007.
2007 20" and 2009 27" iMac's. A 2010 Mac Pro 5,1. A 2010 13" Core Duo MacBook Pro, a 2015 15" i7 MacBook Pro, a 2021 13" M1 MacBook Air and 2022 13" M2 MacBook Pro, and every possible Apple gadget available at one point or another.
I've used Open Core Legacy Patcher on several of them when upgrades were unsupported by Apple.
However Linux on a Thinkpad is a real game changer. It is brilliant.
I now have my, 14" Debian Thinkpad T460, a 2010 13" MBP running dedicated Kali Linux and my 2015 15" MBP running, of all things, GhostBSD.
I'm very happy to be free of Apple's corporate crap and ecosystem tbh.
My advice...
Go for it.
@avoca
WOW!
You are exactly the ideal scenario i was thinking about!
I've been using apple macbooks since 2012 as well and have pretty much every apple *main* device currently being made. i've also installed linux on my 2012 macbook pro a while ago and i did enjoy it but the battery performance was so bad on it compared to the native OS and the trackpad scaling was really bad. i ended up reverting back to OSX because i needed stuff that did not work on the arm based macs.
I have a arch desktop setup now but i almost never use it as it shares the same monitor and desk space as my gaming PC and i'm always playing games if im sitting at that specific desk.
> I've used Open Core Legacy Patcher on several of them when upgrades were unsupported by Apple.
That is something i had never heard of, interesting. it's good to know i'll take note of that for the future if ever i need it.
thank you for the recommendation i'll see what i can find on the local used market. and thanks for the encouragement to go for it seeing that you had a very similar path and enjoyed the outcome! I'm more excited now.
I paid A$190.00 for the Thinkpad and everything just works properly.
However, I rarely use my gear battery only, so can't comment, but I will add that you can 'hot swap' battery packs on the fly with the Thinkpad. So, take 20 with you if you want.
@avoca yeah it’s hard to compare anything to the efficiency of the Arm Macs in terms of power and battery longevity. So I know not to expect anything crazy. But I wager than it’ll be better handling battery power and sleep than Linux on my old MacBook.
I also preordered the clicks communicator phone that was announced at CES because I was a big fan of blackberry back in time and love physical keyboards and it was the first time I wanted to explore something that is not an iPhone.
So in an ideal world if I can detach from Mac AND iPhone it would be a fantastic end of year goal.
But I hold no high expectations. For now this is a supplemental toy.
I went all-out 'no Apple stuff' for about a year.
Ditched all the gadgets.
I had, at various times, a Pixel 8a with GrapheneOS on it and a Samsung s9 with LineageOS on it.
Both great, but I now have an old iPhone XS as well, because if you're in anyway plugged into the real World of business, you are screwed with either Google Android or iOS, and well, pre-AI iPhone's are so much more familiar to me.
So... good luck with that.
Thanks,
detachment of the big corpo ecosystems has been a long standing goal for the last few years, but both laziness, complicitness and dayjob makes that hard.
it's also hard to moonlight as a linux FOSS warrior and daylight as a corpo dev.
it's like only doing heroin during work hours.
another "toy" that i would love to get as a substitute to the big corpo ecosystem tools is the pebble watch. but i genuinely find the apple watch a great training watch for my sport training and i wear a mechanical watch daily so its def not a necessity. I just want to hack it and make my own watchfaces.
