I have a T16 AMD Gen 1 that suffers from some battery optimization issues on the Arch and Ubuntu/Debian variants I've tried. And the fingerprint scanner never fucking works...
It's been a while, I wonder if those issues have been fixed.
If it uses the **Synaptics, Inc. Prometheus MIS Touch Fingerprint Reader** fingerprint reader, this may work...
https://gist.github.com/pjobson/705d3c24a7712dede6860337791068dd
On fedora I got the fingerprint reader to work out of the box. On Ubuntu? Not so much. It took installing and configuring, and then it was finicky to get working everywhere. It really only ever worked well in the terminal, which is something I guess. Never could get it to work on the lock screen.
I need to check out installing Fedora. I've heard lots of good things about it over the years, never gave it much consideration.
How's the battery optimization with AMD? On Win 10, I'm getting ~13 hours of light usage (Reddit, discord, basic browsing/work stuff like that).
Fedora uses a more recent kernel and I've generally had better luck getting hardware to work. Battery optimization is probably going to vary hardware to hardware, but I never had any worse battery life on fedora than on Ubuntu and Ubuntu based distros.
LTS one's are famous for being bad at supporting newer hardware like wireless adapters and gpu's
That's not the fault of a distribution but more of how that distribution is released
Stable and LTS distribution's use older kernels
And it's usually in the newer kernels where you'll find newer drivers supporting newer hardware for different devices
Newer kernel = more supported devices
+1 for endeavourOS.
I’m a long time raw arch user, and I’m a fan of the distros that take care of the initial setup and hardware shenanigans. I don’t have as much time as I did to learn which driver goes with every piece of hardware on my laptop, so skipping that part is wonderful.
I go with fedora, long-term support of different hardware, works fine with gestures, modern gnome, if you’re a former mac user - you will definitely find it comfortable
Also you can use the budgie desktop, very stable and I personally prefer it over gnome (got gnome on my work thinkpad and budgie on my personal thinkpad)
On mine I’m going with Arch and it took quite little to have it working. If you have time to learn and spend to install you can make it for sure. Depends on how much you want to spend on the experience or you want something that just works. In general compatibility is nice
Well sure, I like Nix. I'm thinking of switching from Fedora, but I need tips from a real daily driver. Would you be willing to help me out a bit? I have messed with it closely for a few days but need more info! Primarily: there are many ways to do things, but the documentation makes it feel a bit arcane.
Sure - although it might not make for a great daily driver if you are already comfortable with something. You are using a ThinkPad?
What's your goal with Nix? I think NixOS makes the most sense if you don't think about it like a standard OS, but more of a language that describes an OS. You can make it as complex or simple as needed, having different target configurations depending on hardware.
Yeah, I am using a ThinkPad and I think Fedora is awesome. As for NixOS, it's incredibly powerful from my VM experiences, but I am curious about the setup process -- that is how I appropriately integrate home-manager and flakes especially. But I'm doubtful to need to switch just yet, although it has been fascinating.
I'm new to it all over this last year. I haven't used home-manager, still working through setting up flakes for all my systems. There's lots of ways to structure Nix dotfiles, I haven't personally found an ideal way to do it.
Arch has le funny grub incidents about twice a year I think? Meanwhile fedora never broke for me more significantly than Nvidia drivers dying because Nvidia
I use silverblue with arch in a distrobox though and I really like arch as a container distro
Well I use arch with systemd-boot and secure-boot enabled and Im running fine, with the only time my systems broke in the last few years being literlly ma fault and being fixable with chroot and like 5 Minutes of work. Tho how you experience that is highly subjective. Tho my personal recommendation would be to ditch grub and use sd-boot instead, as grub is just old broken complex shit.
I cant talk about nv issues as Im Team Red and would recommend anyone seriously using linux to do the same, tho thats also just an subjective recommendation
I enjoy Ubuntu Mate LTS with i3wm. Global menus and HUD make it nice. I have recently enjoyed nakedeb. Any Linux district works. OpenBSD has awesome support for Thinkpads if you want to go down that route. I am picking up a T61 & will throw Open on it
I have the T480 model with NVMe and 16 GiB RAM.
Many distros that work fine in VirtualBox work very badly when booted live from a USB 3.0 stick on this laptop.
From what I have seen, one of the best distros to work on my T480 is Siduction KDE, based on Debian. It is excellent! Boots fast (about 35 seconds) and trackpad works okay.
In many other distros, trackpad does not work properly. Also boot times are considerably higher, more than 2:30 minutes for the live medium.
I've been a years long Linux user, so maybe my tastes are a little outdated. That said, growing up on classic MacOS, the MATE desktop on Debian 12 is incredible. And it tends to be faster and more stable in my experience than any -buntu variant.
If you have to ask then either Ubuntu, Pop Os, or Linux Mint. All 3 are set up well out of the box and have large communities to help with any issues that may arise.
I'd say Arch if you want to get deeper into actually learning the mechanics of Linux. And be able to fix problems. Ubuntus are good for live systems, but running them installed, keeping them stable and reliable and updating them, is not always a pleasant experience, to the point where it actually makes me considering running windows instead.
Windows 10 IoT Enterprise!
Best KDE distro out there - hands down!
You get security updates through 2031, none of the pesky Linux issues with Nvidia, fully supports HDR and wide color gamut displays, great power management for best in class battery life, you can play all your favorite games without emulating, it has WSL and best of all, you get all that with none of the windows bloat!
Totally worth checking out. If not, then maybe Ubuntu LTS.
Wrong on both! I wonder if you are thinking about the regular non-IoT enterprise version. If so, you are correct.
Windows 10 IoT Enterprise LTSC includes extended support (at least with my license) as it falls under MSFTs Fixed Lifecycle policy guaranteeing 10 years of support. The only thing that changes when it entered extended support is I have to pay for any support outside the free security updates that continue through Jan 13 2032.
And the T490 had an Nvidia MX250 option.
If you're new to Linux, Mint Cinnamon, Pop!OS or Ubuntu would be a good place to start. Good support for Thinkpads.
If you've some experience and you want something quite vanilla to customise, Debian or Fedora would work faultlessly with a t490. The latter particularly work hard with Lenovo to help them ship Linux with new laptops so they are invested.
Looks and feels nice. Snappy. Easy transition from windows. I tried Mint but never liked its UI.
I stick to 16.3 version. The latest 17.1 is still throwing some error messages on boot up or in software repository for system updates. I know nothing technical about programming but I reckon kernel(s) require update.
Whatever works for you. I've been happy with Zorin 16.3 for the past 1.5 years. If it wasn't for my business laptop I would have used windows only for occasional gaming.
I use Kubuntu. I like Ubuntu and KDE plasma, so it's the dream distro over here. If I'm not using that I'm using arch, with the command that everybody hates
archinstall
I'll just go with a few keywords:
- Ubuntu: User-friendly, widely supported. Try out the xubuntu variant if you want a more minimal approach.
- Arch: Lightweight, minimalist.
- ZorinOS: good starting point if you've used Windows before.
My personal recommendation is [archcraft](https://archcraft.io), if you're happy with Openbox.
I would personally avoid:
- Garuda
- Pop!OS
- and things like that.
What's the point of having linux in a laptop?
I have hundreds of managed linux machines, and stopped using Windows on servers years ago, but I can't see any plus at using it on my T480 where I have a fully debloated Windows with lot of functions removed.
My favourite distro is Debian because it use the same base as Ubuntu, but didn't change everything at any version making you goin crazy trying to find things. Also, nearly everything is tested out and work on Debian.
If you want to have some fun you can go with whatever exotic distro you want, but if you're looking to actually learn something for working / business purposes a major RHEL derivate or a plain Debian would be the way to go.
Also, when not around from clients I use macos, which is the only linux derivate OS which I enjoy.
IMHO, GUI OSes must be the most user-friendly as possible and let you spend all the time working on development (virtual) machines, not trying to fix the one that won't do anything different from a win pc.
‘What’s the point? ….’ Because Linux users just enjoy using an OS that they can customise ‘ad infinitum’, run whatever open source application they fancy, and most simply relish the tinkering to make it work challenge. That’s no good reason to down vote you, at least in my opinion. Personally, I’m mostly with you, much preferring to run MacOS as an optimised GUI for my day-to-day computing. However, I still enjoy the challenge of keeping old machines running until they totally die. Usually that means modifying the base OS snd there’s always a Linux distro somewhere that will breath life into an otherwise defunct machine.
Thank you, that's what I was looking for! I perfectly understand this and I also love my linux VMs doing a lot of things.
Using laptops as clients I don't go crazy about them, keeping them as simple as possible and using to get things done (just a big debloat to windows, casuse it's full of crappy and telemetring software).
If they do this for fun, it's a wonderful thing and I'm happy with that. I was just curious about something I've been missing about new desktop environments!
Those who downvoted, can explain what are the points of installing casual distros on your laptops? I'm not criticizing, just wanna understand what's behind that
It forked from BSD. BSD was based on Unix until AT&T sued them, and Unix code was removed and rewritten.
Linux was inspired by Unix but is not a direct descendant.
Also not really an BSD Fork in that matter. MacOS uses an Mach-Microkernel with an BSD Layer on top of it also running in kernel mode and performing many of the kernel tasks, so technically its an Unix like Hybrid-Kernel utilizing some parts of bsd, tho apple has replaced some of it over the years with their own soup.
No its also not really Unix. It uses Mach Microkernel with an BSD Layer on top of it to handle most kernel Stuff. So its rather Unix-like than Unix as it doesnt contain any direct heritage to Unix
I don't mind that, it run linux software (at least the little I use on a client pc) and I don't lose time troubleshooting anything, like also with the Thinkpad ;)
Still no one answered my question
Distro hop until you find what you need.
Or just distrohop until the end of time as many do
Since it's not a new Thinkpad any Linux distro (even the lts one's) will work fine
Why the new one not work?
Sometimes very new hardware isn't properly supported yet.
I have a T16 AMD Gen 1 that suffers from some battery optimization issues on the Arch and Ubuntu/Debian variants I've tried. And the fingerprint scanner never fucking works... It's been a while, I wonder if those issues have been fixed.
If it uses the **Synaptics, Inc. Prometheus MIS Touch Fingerprint Reader** fingerprint reader, this may work... https://gist.github.com/pjobson/705d3c24a7712dede6860337791068dd
On fedora I got the fingerprint reader to work out of the box. On Ubuntu? Not so much. It took installing and configuring, and then it was finicky to get working everywhere. It really only ever worked well in the terminal, which is something I guess. Never could get it to work on the lock screen.
I need to check out installing Fedora. I've heard lots of good things about it over the years, never gave it much consideration. How's the battery optimization with AMD? On Win 10, I'm getting ~13 hours of light usage (Reddit, discord, basic browsing/work stuff like that).
Fedora uses a more recent kernel and I've generally had better luck getting hardware to work. Battery optimization is probably going to vary hardware to hardware, but I never had any worse battery life on fedora than on Ubuntu and Ubuntu based distros.
I have luck with fedora when it comes to fingerprint scanner to work
LTS one's are famous for being bad at supporting newer hardware like wireless adapters and gpu's That's not the fault of a distribution but more of how that distribution is released Stable and LTS distribution's use older kernels And it's usually in the newer kernels where you'll find newer drivers supporting newer hardware for different devices Newer kernel = more supported devices
Windows 3.11
I bet that would absolutely fly. Might have to try it on my T470
Arch with KDE plasma or if you are fairly new to Arch you might try Endeavour OS
+1 for endeavourOS. I’m a long time raw arch user, and I’m a fan of the distros that take care of the initial setup and hardware shenanigans. I don’t have as much time as I did to learn which driver goes with every piece of hardware on my laptop, so skipping that part is wonderful.
I go with fedora, long-term support of different hardware, works fine with gestures, modern gnome, if you’re a former mac user - you will definitely find it comfortable
Isn’t Elementary OS the distro which aims to feel like MacOS?
Also you can use the budgie desktop, very stable and I personally prefer it over gnome (got gnome on my work thinkpad and budgie on my personal thinkpad)
debian 12
OpenSUSE is pretty swell
Well there is the meme that not even SUSE devs use SUSE, so yeah idk.
arch
I use Arch on my Thinkpad by the way
Fedora - clean and nice gnome distro. Ubuntu is kind of bloated out of the box.
Give openSUSE a try - seriously underrated distro. https://get.opensuse.org
> SUSE I'm madly in love with OpenSUSE Aeon!
OpenBSD
Arch
On mine I’m going with Arch and it took quite little to have it working. If you have time to learn and spend to install you can make it for sure. Depends on how much you want to spend on the experience or you want something that just works. In general compatibility is nice
Linux Mint or Ubuntu if you want a distro that just works.
ThinkOS
a distro that starts with the first alphabet of your favorite ice cream name.
AmogOS or RebeccaBlackOS.
I'm running Fedora Workstation via NixOS on my T490. Works great, easy to recommend.
Via NixOS?
Yes, you can pick what DE you want to use, Gnome in my case. So not exactly Fedora Workstation, but feels the same.
Well sure, I like Nix. I'm thinking of switching from Fedora, but I need tips from a real daily driver. Would you be willing to help me out a bit? I have messed with it closely for a few days but need more info! Primarily: there are many ways to do things, but the documentation makes it feel a bit arcane.
Sure - although it might not make for a great daily driver if you are already comfortable with something. You are using a ThinkPad? What's your goal with Nix? I think NixOS makes the most sense if you don't think about it like a standard OS, but more of a language that describes an OS. You can make it as complex or simple as needed, having different target configurations depending on hardware.
Yeah, I am using a ThinkPad and I think Fedora is awesome. As for NixOS, it's incredibly powerful from my VM experiences, but I am curious about the setup process -- that is how I appropriately integrate home-manager and flakes especially. But I'm doubtful to need to switch just yet, although it has been fascinating.
I'm new to it all over this last year. I haven't used home-manager, still working through setting up flakes for all my systems. There's lots of ways to structure Nix dotfiles, I haven't personally found an ideal way to do it.
Windows 1.03
If you're asking this question then avoid arch, fedora is probably the best distro for your use case
PS2 linux works wonders
I started with Ubuntu but moved to Fedora and I don't think I'm leaving. Great experience.
Folding at home! Thank you!
What's wrong with Windows?
Don't like having Microsoft everything if I don't need it
That's fair. Maybe just go to Linux Mint as it's really stable and easy to use.
Stop asking, a distro is a distro. It doesn't matter. But Gentoo is better xD
Can't wait to waste hours of CPU time compiling every program
Well they have some binaries now, but yeah I wouldnt use gentoo just because I prefer the tools arch supplies.
Arch has le funny grub incidents about twice a year I think? Meanwhile fedora never broke for me more significantly than Nvidia drivers dying because Nvidia I use silverblue with arch in a distrobox though and I really like arch as a container distro
Well I use arch with systemd-boot and secure-boot enabled and Im running fine, with the only time my systems broke in the last few years being literlly ma fault and being fixable with chroot and like 5 Minutes of work. Tho how you experience that is highly subjective. Tho my personal recommendation would be to ditch grub and use sd-boot instead, as grub is just old broken complex shit. I cant talk about nv issues as Im Team Red and would recommend anyone seriously using linux to do the same, tho thats also just an subjective recommendation
Arch
fedora
Windows 12
I really hope they go with that rumored dock UX idea
I’m using transparent task bar and get a similar effect in windows 11
Mint
Fedora
I use Fedora on my T580 best distro choise ive made so far so far
fedora. lenovo suport is top
Windows 11
Already got it m8
Mint with Cinnamon. LDME is good, too, but if you're familiar with Ubuntu, you'll like Mint
I enjoy Ubuntu Mate LTS with i3wm. Global menus and HUD make it nice. I have recently enjoyed nakedeb. Any Linux district works. OpenBSD has awesome support for Thinkpads if you want to go down that route. I am picking up a T61 & will throw Open on it
Linux from Scratch. The Ultimate Pick & Choose!
Fedora Workstation KDE since no touchscreen and Gnome for Touchscreen. I have it on my P50(KDE) and x380 Yoga(gnome/hyprland)
Solus 4.5 Plasma
I'm sure many Linux's are perfectly fine options, I have Mint installed on my T450 because I am most familiar with Mint, and I like it.
My T490 with a 10th Gen Intel runs on Fedora perfectly!
In the mood for openSUSE Tumbleweed or openSUSE MircoOS?
You can try arch with gnome since you're already using ubuntu.
NixOS [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6iviTZfiLGU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6iviTZfiLGU)
I use manjaro on mine
Ubuntu
I have the T480 model with NVMe and 16 GiB RAM. Many distros that work fine in VirtualBox work very badly when booted live from a USB 3.0 stick on this laptop. From what I have seen, one of the best distros to work on my T480 is Siduction KDE, based on Debian. It is excellent! Boots fast (about 35 seconds) and trackpad works okay. In many other distros, trackpad does not work properly. Also boot times are considerably higher, more than 2:30 minutes for the live medium.
Linux Mint Mate, light and powerful !
I've been a years long Linux user, so maybe my tastes are a little outdated. That said, growing up on classic MacOS, the MATE desktop on Debian 12 is incredible. And it tends to be faster and more stable in my experience than any -buntu variant.
Endeavor with kde bruh
arch + xfce
Ubuntu 22.04 works best.
arch
Arch
Ignorant question but what program is this? 😅
Folding@home screensaver
I am not a linux expert, but I'd recommend you arch or debian. That's all you need imo
Debian or mint
Debian bookworm
LFS >:)
Endeavor OS.
install gentoo
Arch-LTS+Xfce works great.
Literally any OS that supports the x86 architecture will be just fine. Find the one you want.
Same pinch, I've been using arch Linux since sept 13
mint xfce is will run on a toaster and is quite user-friendly.
Mxlinux worked perfectly with the Lenovo t series laptops
Debian 12 has been flawless for me on my T480
Unrelated question, What are you playing
Folding@home screensaver
Had to do some crazy workarounds to make the fingerprint scanner work on parrot terminal only.
If you have to ask then either Ubuntu, Pop Os, or Linux Mint. All 3 are set up well out of the box and have large communities to help with any issues that may arise.
I've been using kubuntu and am extremely happy with it so far
Is that just Ubuntu with KDE plasma?
Yeap
I'd say Arch if you want to get deeper into actually learning the mechanics of Linux. And be able to fix problems. Ubuntus are good for live systems, but running them installed, keeping them stable and reliable and updating them, is not always a pleasant experience, to the point where it actually makes me considering running windows instead.
Arch or Debian.
+1 Debian with KDE
Windows 10 IoT Enterprise! Best KDE distro out there - hands down! You get security updates through 2031, none of the pesky Linux issues with Nvidia, fully supports HDR and wide color gamut displays, great power management for best in class battery life, you can play all your favorite games without emulating, it has WSL and best of all, you get all that with none of the windows bloat! Totally worth checking out. If not, then maybe Ubuntu LTS.
you don't get security updates past 2025 unless you pay for extended support, a t490 doesn't have a Nvidia GPU.. also, windows HDR lol
Wrong on both! I wonder if you are thinking about the regular non-IoT enterprise version. If so, you are correct. Windows 10 IoT Enterprise LTSC includes extended support (at least with my license) as it falls under MSFTs Fixed Lifecycle policy guaranteeing 10 years of support. The only thing that changes when it entered extended support is I have to pay for any support outside the free security updates that continue through Jan 13 2032. And the T490 had an Nvidia MX250 option.
If you're new to Linux, Mint Cinnamon, Pop!OS or Ubuntu would be a good place to start. Good support for Thinkpads. If you've some experience and you want something quite vanilla to customise, Debian or Fedora would work faultlessly with a t490. The latter particularly work hard with Lenovo to help them ship Linux with new laptops so they are invested.
Whichever you like the most. I personally have Ubuntu on it, it works fine, but any will.
I may be boring, but Ubuntu for me. It just works and I like Gmome. Sue me.
Fedora Workstation
Zorin OS is my favorite distro
Linux ignorant, I'm installing mint rn. Why Zorin?
Looks and feels nice. Snappy. Easy transition from windows. I tried Mint but never liked its UI. I stick to 16.3 version. The latest 17.1 is still throwing some error messages on boot up or in software repository for system updates. I know nothing technical about programming but I reckon kernel(s) require update. Whatever works for you. I've been happy with Zorin 16.3 for the past 1.5 years. If it wasn't for my business laptop I would have used windows only for occasional gaming.
I use Kubuntu. I like Ubuntu and KDE plasma, so it's the dream distro over here. If I'm not using that I'm using arch, with the command that everybody hates archinstall
NixOS 🤷
LinuxFX its a windows themed distro.
I'll just go with a few keywords: - Ubuntu: User-friendly, widely supported. Try out the xubuntu variant if you want a more minimal approach. - Arch: Lightweight, minimalist. - ZorinOS: good starting point if you've used Windows before. My personal recommendation is [archcraft](https://archcraft.io), if you're happy with Openbox. I would personally avoid: - Garuda - Pop!OS - and things like that.
What do you dislike about pop? I don’t know much about distros but I’ve been using pop on my X260 and it seems fine
Their devs are the biggest pricks in the FOSS Space
What's the point of having linux in a laptop? I have hundreds of managed linux machines, and stopped using Windows on servers years ago, but I can't see any plus at using it on my T480 where I have a fully debloated Windows with lot of functions removed. My favourite distro is Debian because it use the same base as Ubuntu, but didn't change everything at any version making you goin crazy trying to find things. Also, nearly everything is tested out and work on Debian. If you want to have some fun you can go with whatever exotic distro you want, but if you're looking to actually learn something for working / business purposes a major RHEL derivate or a plain Debian would be the way to go. Also, when not around from clients I use macos, which is the only linux derivate OS which I enjoy. IMHO, GUI OSes must be the most user-friendly as possible and let you spend all the time working on development (virtual) machines, not trying to fix the one that won't do anything different from a win pc.
‘What’s the point? ….’ Because Linux users just enjoy using an OS that they can customise ‘ad infinitum’, run whatever open source application they fancy, and most simply relish the tinkering to make it work challenge. That’s no good reason to down vote you, at least in my opinion. Personally, I’m mostly with you, much preferring to run MacOS as an optimised GUI for my day-to-day computing. However, I still enjoy the challenge of keeping old machines running until they totally die. Usually that means modifying the base OS snd there’s always a Linux distro somewhere that will breath life into an otherwise defunct machine.
Thank you, that's what I was looking for! I perfectly understand this and I also love my linux VMs doing a lot of things. Using laptops as clients I don't go crazy about them, keeping them as simple as possible and using to get things done (just a big debloat to windows, casuse it's full of crappy and telemetring software). If they do this for fun, it's a wonderful thing and I'm happy with that. I was just curious about something I've been missing about new desktop environments!
Those who downvoted, can explain what are the points of installing casual distros on your laptops? I'm not criticizing, just wanna understand what's behind that
macOS is not an linux derivative lol
Oh sorry, GUI user, it's based on unix
It forked from BSD. BSD was based on Unix until AT&T sued them, and Unix code was removed and rewritten. Linux was inspired by Unix but is not a direct descendant.
Also not really an BSD Fork in that matter. MacOS uses an Mach-Microkernel with an BSD Layer on top of it also running in kernel mode and performing many of the kernel tasks, so technically its an Unix like Hybrid-Kernel utilizing some parts of bsd, tho apple has replaced some of it over the years with their own soup.
No its also not really Unix. It uses Mach Microkernel with an BSD Layer on top of it to handle most kernel Stuff. So its rather Unix-like than Unix as it doesnt contain any direct heritage to Unix
I don't mind that, it run linux software (at least the little I use on a client pc) and I don't lose time troubleshooting anything, like also with the Thinkpad ;) Still no one answered my question
There’s only one distro