I don't know what's the solution. I'm trying to get back to linux but then my suspend doesn't work, touchpad feels sluggish and my battery lasts 2 hours instead of 7+.
Not to mention things like https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25843874
Not to mention things like https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25843874
I can use my t440s (7yo) for over 24 hours on three batteries, internal 3 cell, and external 3 cell and 9 cell. I use it for light development, reading PDFs, some web, etc.
There are also laptops that are more Linux friendly than others. It is best to buy laptop specifically for Linux use and do research before the purchase.
I've used it on many laptops including a fully specced Dell XPS 13 (which burned out after a small spill on the keyboard)
My tip is to always have IPA, distilled water and tools to disassemble and clean your laptop.
Safest method is to use distilled, deoxygenated water (aka electronic water) to remove most contaminants, followed by 99% isopropyl alcohol or 96% ethyl alcohol to remove the rest and also water.
Don't skimp on water and alcohol, submerge the board and use brush while submerged, to pull and dilute contaminants.
Just never use tap or mineral water. You can use regular distilled water as long as you do it quickly, but unless it is deoxygenated it will be corroding so don't leave it in water for long.
Alcohol is there mostly to dilute water so that it dries out very quickly. Without alcohol water could stay under components for a long time and kill or damage your board.
Alcohols can damage some plastic components, so don't keep it in alcohol fo too long, either.
It is also normal to wash a board in ultrasonic cleaner after any rework or at the end of production process (especially in small scale production).
On the other hand if you own an expensive machine that can be reasonably disassembled (ie. almost anything else than a Mac) and you plan to use it for a long time and you don't have any other insurance against spill, then you might be able to save a lot of money with a very small amount of effort.
My laptop was fully beefed up Lenovo T440s and I live in Poland. In Poland, this laptop represented about 3-4 average monthly salaries. Not much compared to half a day of effort to disassemble, clean and reassemble again.
Half a day assumes you have no idea what you are doing and you are need extra time to figure out what to do, find videos on Internet, figure out why you can't pull a part and what still keeps it in place, etc.
For a person that knows what they are doing this is half an hour of effort.
It's indeed annoying. More so that it generally is solved but is to be found somewhere in the fragmented linux ecosystem.
I had no issues with my laptop and it worked better than windows which turns it into a jetengine for some reason except for bluetooth earbuds for which i needed a fork of pulseaudio or so....
There are, of course, rough spots. But overall Thinkpads are just so much better machines.
For example, GNOME Files (formerly Nautilus) and the GTK file chooser are not even as good as competitors from the 1990s (like the Mac or Windows equivalents). GIMP and Inkscape are also noticeable steps down from the equivalent software we used in the 1990s (not just the well-known Adobe products, but also products from Corel, Macromedia, etc.)
My impression is that the Linux desktop is playing catch-up with the Windows and Mac desktops, but since Microsoft and Apple have better funding it’s an impossible job—the target is moving too fast. In an effort to catch up with modern UIs, features that used to work are getting broken or the UX is degrading. The GNOME 2 -> GNOME 3 switch is just one example. I’m not saying GNOME 2 is better than GNOME 3 overall, just that large-scale changes are moving too fast and the polish and long-term fixes are coming too slowly by comparison.
Linux is usually my primary desktop and when I switch to my Mac it feels like a breath of fresh air.
It's more than doubled battery "life" (== time to discharge) for me.