The framework laptop promises to be an upgradeable and repairable laptop, not quite the same philosophy that makes thinkpads great, but I wonder if newer thinkpads are good enough to prefer over a framework.
Lenovo has shot itself on the head since 2018. Take a look at System76 Virgo laptop as well. It will have these features:
- trackpoint mouse
- Open source Coreboot bios
- Hot swappable mechanical keyboard keys
- Fully open source (including motherboard)
- All the schematics in Github
- Up and down arrows not splitted in half
Louis Rossmann made a video about Virgo project: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4KoUAW3kyI&pp=ygUYTG91aXMgcm9zc21hbm4gc3lzdGVtIDc2
I haven’t used the System76 hardware, but their Pop!_OS distro of Linux is legit. It’s the second best distro I’ve used, and the first best for beginners.
I’m a noob at Linux, is popos better than mint?
I installed Linux hoping to increase performance of my thinkpad to run games like cities skylines better.
I think it is much better. I didn’t enjoy using Mint when I tried it out, but that was a few years ago. The Pop! Software Center works really well and allows you to manage all of your installed software from a central location. You can install most things that you’d need (including Steam) from there and keep everything up to date. They also have a unique grid layout for your display that you can either use or turn off. It’s kind of difficult to explain, but it’s basically auto-tiling of your open windows. I chose to turn it off, but some people love it.
Since Pop is built from Ubuntu you get a huge community for support and a large software library, but they’ve decoupled it enough from Ubuntu that it doesn’t have the tracking that Ubuntu has. Communication with 3rd parties is disabled by default and only enabled through intentional user action. They also have a bunch of custom keybinds that make it really easy to control your system if you’re into that sort of thing. They have a live image available, so you can put it on a CD or thumb drive and check it out without installing it. I think the live image uses the Gnome desktop environment, but you can always change that after booting up and logging in. Also their installer is probably the easiest of all the distros.
Check it out. You may love it. I’ve been using it as my primary desktop for about 3 years now and haven’t had any problems. My favorite distro is Arch, but that is very much active, old-school computing, so I keep it on a laptop, and use Pop on my main desktop gaming computer. Oh about gaming, they have a version that installs Nvidia drivers by default, saving you from having do deal with that yourself. That version even has automatic updates and rollbacks for the drivers.
Pop_OS! gives you benefits. It encrypts your storage drive by default with 1 password including login (which is rare in Linux) and the Pop Store for software install&updates is fairly better.
Besides for those, they’re pretty much equal and both uses xorg so far.
You can just format your usb stick with Ventoy2Disk and try Pop_OS! (or any Linux distro) in live mode without formatting or installing anything on your computer. With Ventoy, you just delete the .iso and drag new ones without re-formatting.
They’re building new immutable & Wayland-based CosmicOS in parallel with Virgo laptop.
framework said they’re not working on a trackpoint so I feel like my hands are tied, Virgo sounds intriguing but isn’t available
How much “newer” do you mean? I don’t have experience with the latest latest ThinkPads and I know they made some significant changes after my model, but I’ve been daily driving a P53 with an OLED screen and other than the mushy chicklet keyboard (ugh) I don’t really have anything to complain about, and I’ve been beating on this thing for a few years now. I’ve been eyeing up the 2nd gen T16s and they look pretty appealing too.
I mean, the Framework looks amazing too if it pans out the way they’re planning. I really want to support it (and I might in the future) but ultimately you’re making a choice of a sure thing against being an early adopter for something that may be much better and may be worse depending on how the continued support develops.
I’d say if it’s important to you to support the principle of the framework laptop, and you understand the risks of the whole project failing, go for it. But the Thinkpads remain great machines and will continue to be my “safe” choice.
Imo they probably are due to Lenovo client support and warranty. Note this is taken from the experience of a pal of mine who actually owns a Framework laptop. His laptop has problems with the wi-fi and Framework pretty much didn’t try to help him find the cause, so just because you can repair it doesn’t mean it has better QC or support. (Also that pal of mine is a accomplished dev, so not your run of the mill normie, before someone says he doesn’t know about the hardware).
Take this with a grain of salt after all I’m just another anon, but before you buy a Framework be sure to search their official community on the main problems people face.
System76 should be a better option, they had stellar support, but no idea about it right now.
Also I love the concept behind framework I really do. I’m all for right to repair, but client support is part of it, so yeah I can’t recommend a company my pal had problems with. 🎩
I bought a W500 in 2008 and it was/is the best laptop I have ever owned. I bought a P15 Gen2 in 2022 and it’s been good. Performance and features are 10/10 but hardware support was a little wonky for Debain. No support on 10 and 11, 12 has some bugs. That’s not a fault of the ThinkPad but this is the first time in years that I have had to work so hard to get basic features going.
Also there was that time it shot sparks out of the charge port but they upgraded me from an i5 to an i7 so I’d call that neutral.
Does the W500 still alive kicking for daily driver?
With an upgrade to 8GB of ram it works pretty good. Well enough that it could run multiple virtual machines or do some light gaming (HL2/Portal/TF2).
The old thinkpads that came with those self-repair manuals maybe were. But the new ones are more or less the same as most other modern laptops. I guess they don’t have soldered SSDs, which is good, but the framework is definitely better for repairability.
No, the new thinkpads are trash. My company switched from lenovo to Dell because the thinkpads have a tendency for very weird issues and often just die out of nowhere.
same here. I work in first level support and the only laptop failures we’ve had where the laptop wasn’t destroyed by being dropped were lenovo’s. either something electric dies inside or the housing just starts to fall apart.
My T580 died out of nowhere, had the motherboard replaced by lenovo and after that, the screws started falling out the bottom. Lenovo was too cheap to even use threaded inserts, the screws go directly into plastic. And their technician overtightened them, so there are no longer any threads in the screw holes and the screws just fall out.
