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thinkpad T420 user here running archlinux.

i agree with none of these points, actually, except #1, which i wouldn't know about because i'm not using dual-mode graphics card.

"2. inability to use multiple monitors" < incorrect. i use a docking station with a dell u2711 hooked up to it. pressing fn+f7 switches correctly between external, internal, and external+internal with no problems.

"3. some ports being unusable" < incorrect. every port on my thinkpad is usable, including the ports on the docking station.

"4. audio glitches" < incorrect. my audio works better with my u2711 (via display-port audio) than it does over my macbook air (via display-port audio). why? because i can control the volume via the volume control via linux+pulse whereas OSX artificially restricts me -- it tells me i can't control the audio levels via mini-display port unless i'm using an apple display.

"5. hand patching required to keep the laptop stable" < incorrect? by this, do you mean updates? don't all OSs benefit from updates? if you mean configuration, udev (now systemd-tools) found everything correctly on my thinkpad on the first go. this was the case when i recently ran ubuntu 12.04 off of a flash drive as well.

"6. poor support for X11 even with simple intel integrated graphics" < incorrect. i have the intel HD3000 on my thinkpad, which runs everything pretty much the same way that my macbook air (with the intel3000) runs them. flash video at fullscreen with no tearing, etc (in fact, flash runs better on linux than it does on my macbook).

regarding battery life, i did have to do a bit of tinkering there. but that's because i'm a bit power-consumption obsessed. i used powertop to show me what needed fine tuning, then wrote a power management script that changes my computer's parameters depending on whether it's plugged in. the result: an idle 7w power consumption (with wi-fi on). that's roughly the same power consumption i get from the macbook air, which is an ULV chipset. battery life for windows on my T420 is ~10 hrs. with linux,...~12hrs.

"no competitively priced linux laptops"? my T420 was $1000 with a 2520M processor, 1600x900 resolution display, 160GB intel SATA 3 SSD, and 8GB of RAM.

Exactly. My primary device is a daily updated (with aptitude) Debian testing on a T410 and have exactly none of the specified problems, though I too don't run a dual-mode graphics card. Not sure where the parent post got their info.

Lenovo took a big step down from IBM when they took over the brand, but for my money they are still the best non-mac laptops out there for a Linux user.

If they are "best" is immaterial. Linux is a poor laptop experience.

And you don't have a dual mode graphics card and probably only have VGA out, so you really don't have dual monitor support except in entirely unsatisfactory or projector contexts.

You also almost assuredly get battery life that is worse to a comparable windows 7 installation with Lenovo customizations.

  You also almost assuredly get battery life that
  is worse to a comparable windows 7 installation
  with Lenovo customizations.

Why is this though? This has been the case for a while, but I'm unclear as to what optimization happens on Windows/OSX that doesn't happen on Linux. It's usually attributed to the Windows/OSX manufacturer drivers, but what are those drivers doing differently? Anyone have even a general idea?

The most recent Linux kernels make big improvements there. My linux laptop battery life went from ~4hrs to ~8hrs when I upgraded from Ubuntu 11.10 to 12.04. The reason is a few patches added to the kernel in 2012:

http://www.h-online.com/open/news/item/New-Linux-kernel-fixe...

That article is from Feb 2012 and mentions two big power-saving problems with the kernel, the first one patched, the second (RC6 power-saving feature in Sandy Bridge) unpatched as of the article's publish date. The second has since been patched as well, for huge power gain.

By the way, I agree that recently things can get better. I stopped trying to get the Linux laptops in Jan after about 5 months of wrangling.

Even with powertop and and eye for cutting things, odds are you are ending up with worse battery performance than a Lenovo-supported drop of Windows 7. Which is sad because it's not great battery life for not great performance, the T420 is also a pretty underpowered machine for developer use.

I'm not going to fisk your post otherwise. I have better things to do. I will point out that due to the way Lenovo updates models over time, it's entirely possible for mutiple people to buy "T420s" and end up with different-enough components that you'd need to tweak drivers to get things to work right. So "Your T420" may not be someone else's "T420."

This is provably the case for my T520, and supposedly the case for the T61.

Actually, you're mostly wrong on that last point. We are an enterprise customer of Lenovo's for both laptops & desktops and they are quite good about maintaining stability within a model range for at least 9-12mo, and they always tell us at least a quarter in advance of any changes... and they provide imaging services if a customer wants to pay for it (Windows or Linux). There's still enough IBM alive at Lenovo for them to care about engineers.

Their consumer facing division cared little for me or my problems. Evidently I didn't pay enough for support, even though my problems were all well within the first 90 days of purchase.

I've had some of the worst customer service I can imagine from them, both at the policy and individual level.

But it is ABSOLUTELY the case that my T520 has a slightly different configuration than most of the T520s I come across. There is no argument allowed here: this is fact. It's also ABSOLUTELY the case that Lenovo couldn't replace my latpop with a new one because I ordered a very popular processor option that was repeatedly out of stock. Twice now I've been offered replacement downgrades without even so much as an offer of credit. Twice I've refused, and twice I've gotten back a laptop with the same exact problem.

So perhaps I am just not enterprisey enough.

> the result: an idle 7w power consumption (with wi-fi on). that's roughly the same power consumption i get from the macbook air, which is an ULV chipset. battery life for windows on my T420 is ~10 hrs. with linux,...~12hrs.

That's pretty sweet. Any chance you could post that script on Github? I've been tweaking my linux laptop power settings too and would love to take a look at it.

Ahh, yes. Thanks for asking.

It occurred to me I probably should have included this info in my original post only after the window for editing it had passed. I'd previously written a bit about how to optimize the Thinkpad power consumption on another HN post here:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3564400

FYI, I find that the kernel flags are necessary even with the latest kernel. I'm currently on 3.3.8-1-ARCH and experimented with turning them off because the power regression that started in kernels > 2.6 was supposed to have been fixed and merged back into the kernel code. But I found that passing the pcie_aspm=force flag at boot time still results in a significant savings. Indicating that the regression (for at least my configuration) might still be there.

If you have an Intel video card, then check out the other kernel args I'm passing as well for additional power savings (and there are more parameters you can play with outlined here http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=intel...)

I experimented with a few different combinations before settling on the ones I posted in my HN link, but they're what gives me optimal battery life on my T420.

Despite what the other poster had said, I'm getting battery life now that's significantly better than what I get booting into Windows on the same machine, which usually stays at around 9-10 watts idle. I'm getting 6.8-7.8W

Without any optimization, my battery life was much less than I'd expected to get from the 9-cell (~7 hours). But with the power management script and the kernel flags, I can get 13 hours with light use and 10-11 while doing development (i.e. apache, mysqld, eclipse, multiple browsers, etc... all running).

edit: FYI powertop2 was the beta release of powertop at the time. the source has been merged back into powertop so you can just use that.

I can't stand this crap. Do you own a Thinkpad? I'm typing this on a T61 and items 2-6 on your list are complete garbage. I have never experienced any of those things. It's not that I just don't care, I do care. If that much was wrong, I wouldn't own the thing any more (as an aside, what the hell does "hand patching" even mean?)

As for item 1, this was dealt with in another thread a few days ago. Optimus can be made to work, but it isn't convenient (run a script then reboot to switch). But if you're planning to "build a Linux laptop", why would you buy one with Optimus? It actually causes problems on Windows too, speaking from personal experience.

Linux is not for everyone. Let me repeat that. Linux is not for everyone. But if you want to use Linux, which I do, there are excellent options for doing so at very reasonable prices and Thinkpads are an example of that.

I currently own a glitchy T520 that Lenovo has been increasingly reluctant to service as it periodically refuses to turn on. It's been in the shop 4 times.

2-6 on my list are not complete garbage, they're all problems I or other friends I've worked with have experienced with various Lenovo boxes over the last year or so. I actually got Bumblebee/Ironhide working on my T520 without issue, but I couldn't ever do what everyone else could do: get the DisplayPort out to drive an external display. So effectively I was limited to VGA-only for a second monitor (and running Ironhide in such a condition caused a system freeze).

Not acceptable. And the one game I do enjoy, Minecraft? Renders unreliably without Ironhide. So... yeah. I had display problems.

Not to mention despite the most assiduous reading of FAQs, consulting with powertop-savvy-friends, and appealing for help on twitter I never got more than four hours of light-use battery life from my T520 with the stock battery.

This, of course, ignores the nightmare ordering process, the late delivery, the snippy service, and the inability to FIX my machine despite having sent it back a few times now.

It's great you have managed to build a decent experience for your specific requirements. I'm glad, I don't wish my pain on anyone. And I really do wish it was better, I miss XMonad dearly. I miss a JVM with good performance dearly. I miss a sane linker dearly. But if your expectations are, "My laptop is fully supported and gets good battery life and does things a macbook would be good at doing" then you will be disappointed with Linux on the laptop, and Lenovo will not be an impressive vendor.

I apologize for the curt reply. There have been a number of these "Linux" threads lately on HN and the disinformation (on both sides) bugs me to no end. Clearly you've had some troubles and you have a right to be annoyed.

For reference, and perhaps for the use of others, Canonical maintains a list of hardware that works, along with information about what doesn't work. I have found it handy in the past. It can be found here: http://www.ubuntu.com/certification/desktop/

Your points on the Thinkpads sound entirely valid - I merely meant that it's possible to get Linux pre-installed on a laptop with a decent form factor (Thinkpads haven't changed substantially in years, clearly they have some fans). I've only ever used Linux on W520s, so I guess I've got a bias.

> Currently, there are no competitively priced linux laptops.

I think ZaReason, System76, and ThinkPenguin all offer decent machines for prices that beat their Dell, HP, Sony, and Mac counterparts. It's just a question of whether or not their offerings meet your needs.

Using a Linux VM on a Mac (or Windows) is definitely a good solution.

> Using a Linux VM on a Mac (or Windows) is definitely a good solution.

Just to be crystal clear: I did not say it was a good solution. In fact, it's often wholly inadequate. However, it is better as a time investment than trying to get a workable Linux laptop solution.

I've been running Ubuntu and windows on Thinkpads for years on the "that doesn't work so I don't do it" basis and am perfectly happy. So happy, in fact, that I can't even remember what feature doesn't work on my current machines, if any (X61 and R61). You make a valid point and certainly it would be wonderful to see better integration, but still: 1. performance certainly "feels" better than running windows on the same machines, 2. I spend my day typing and the MacBook's keyboard feels like going back to my ZX Spectrum 3. the 5-6 hours battery I get from an 8-cell are enough for me, thank you.

I'm glad you're happy with your box and have found a cost-effective way to use the OS you want to use.

I had different expectations shaped by my use of macbooks and trying to recreate feature parity with any Linux laptop as a basis was difficult enough to render it impossible.

P.S., I think it's pretty ugly that we only get 5-6 hours from the extended-cell batteries. With the extended batteries they're comparable to macbook pros not running extended batteries.

Fifteen years down the road there's nothing I regret more than the time spent fiddling with what would soon become obsolete technology for very little performance gain, if any. Nothing is perfect: you make a choice based on what's really important for you and commit to it, warts and all.

P.S. for the record, these are 30$ fake chinese extended-cell batteries I'm talking about ;) In the extremely rare cases where I need more than 5-6 hours autonomy, I carry a spare. If you have enough, why should you bother that there's something else out there that performs better?

I tend not to skimp on the cost of construction for my caustic, flammable energy storage medium.

I'm running the newest Ubuntu on my T410 and I'm not having any of those problems. I used to patch my xorg to get some extra middle button functionality, but even there the default was that it just worked like it did in Windows and with the newest Ubuntu everything worked just like I wanted out of the box.

Now, if you get the crappy Realtek wireless card instead of the Intel wireless, or you get Intel graphics that were released less than 6 months ago you can have serious problems, but if you know to avoid those two things you shouldn't have any trouble.