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Comment by hapless | Hacker News Reader

It is worth mentioning that Lenovo has a very significant "Certified for Linux" program. Virtually every laptop model has at least one "Certified" SKU.

http://lenovo.com/think/linux

This is the major reason I ended up with a PC instead of an MBA -- I was just going to install linux on it anyway.

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Note that it is Ubuntu etc certifying the laptops. You can't buy the laptops with the certified version of Linux on them, and for the model I own (T430s) the only version they list (11.10) is end of lifed in ~3 weeks. However Linux is likely to just work on Lenovo Thinkpads, although binary drivers may be problem if you pick an Nvidia GPU.

I'm also a member of the Thinkpad faithful. Other than screen resolution (grrr) and bezel size, they are delightful machines. It is trivial to change/update much of the hardware - they don't solder memory down, nor SSD drives. And Linux works perfectly - the only thing it doesn't support is the fingerprint reader which ironically is made by a company Apple bought not too long ago.

Even 5 years back when on a Dell laptop which came with Vista the Dell support guys worked hard to fix my problems even though the ladies on phone used to warn me "sir, we don't support Linux on that laptop". I am on MBA now, don't know how to they treat Linux on a computer they will with Windows.

>>Thinkpad faithful. Other than screen resolution

The only option I had other than MBA and was ruled out for this very reason!

Just as a heads up to those thinking of buying an X1 Carbon, the RAM is soldered in on that model, and the SSD is a non-standard size making it difficult/impossible to upgrade.

very good point, you literally get what you pay for (and are stuck with it).

I am really liking my x1 carbon and it performs very well with linux.

I do wish I had stretched for the 8gb of ram but the 4gb has never been an issue (despite me sometimes running windows in a VM), however my general toolset is quite light (mostly command line based) so YMMV.

They're the standard laptop at Red Hat.

Thinkpads are amazing with Linux.

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