Which notebooks are recommendable when coming from Apple Silicon-MacBooks in terms of runtime and efficiency, preferrably for Fedora or Manjaro with KDE Plasma? For now, I am looking towards Lenovo T14(s) or X1 Carbon - mixed use scenario including simple media (photos, cutting 1080p-videos, media management, Office & mail) stuff? Still love the “Lenovo”-brand and its keyboard and look 'n feel so this vendor would be my favourite.
Can anyone of you here recommend Snapdragon-devices yet which would be the best comparison as it’s also architecture based on ARM? Both Fedora and Manjaro have ARM-builds so I hope that the Snapdragon-devices could get along with my desires here…
Thanks for any input!
The Linux support of Snapdragon SOCs for desktops and laptops is unfortunately severely lacking. Qualcomm pledged to provide upstream divers, but then the Windows drivers turned out to be a mess and the Linux version had to wait. It is nowhere near production ready. Most of the hardware enablement work is currently as far as I can tell being done by German OEM Tuxedo Computers because they are working on a Snapdragon powered laptop that ships with Linux. But even their work was impacted by Qualcomm stalling (the linked blog article lists Christmas 2024 as their target release date and that didn’t happen).
That’s my impression as well - the hardware is there but due to different reasons, there won’t be an experience like Apple had with the Silicon-SoCs paired with their own OS. That much potential unused ATM, sadly.
I’m assuming you’re familiar with Asahi Linux?
It’s still very much a work in progress.
https://asahilinux.org/docs/platform/feature-support/overview/
At the moment I’m bridging the gap by using homebrew, UTM, ssh into local hardware and shortly remote desktop on EC2.
It’s far from ideal, but that’s where I found myself after my x86 iMac died last year, so I feel your pain.
Asahi looks quite great but is limited up to the M2, hence still lacking Thunderbolt and Touch ID-support. This would be the best way and I like the idea behind the project. Needs some time though.
I would suggest holding off on buying an ARM laptop specifically for Linux at the moment (maybe not too long from now though). Although there is an increasing amount of support, it’s still not fully there, and there is most likely going to be quirks here or there that can throw some issues you would rather not deal with on a daily driver machine (e.g. having to extract firmware from the Windows partition in order to get some features working for the Snapdragon devices). Probably your best combination of power efficiency and performance on x86 at the moment will be something like the Ryzen AI 300 series CPUs. If you like ThinkPads, I would suggest the Ryzen version of the T14s Gen 6, which is essentially the same as the ARM version bar the CPU. I’ve been using a P14s (very similar to T14s just with some tweaks as it’s marketed for mobile workstation users) Gen 5 and even with the lower capacity 39.3Wh battery (compared to the 57Wh battery you can get on a Gen 6) I’ve easily been able to get 6 or 8 hours in the balanced power profile with ~70% brightness on Fedora, so probably the T14s Gen 6 can do 10 or 12 hours on a charge.
you already stated both options, there is no option #3. snapdragon support isn’t there yet, you’ll have to make do with Intel and AMD options; for the stated use cases, even 5-year old models will serve you plenty. ideapads, thinkbooks, whatevers are consumer-class models and shouldn’t be gotten used (not even new, in my opinion) as they have nothing in common with T-series thinkpads.
if you’d like to hang on to your hardware for longer, go with the T14 (no S-suffix) as those things are easily expandable, serviceable and cross-generation compatible (same docks etc.).
X1 Carbon is awesome specs and has that lightweight portability element.
Even their new Ideapads with the AMD APU’s (8845HS) are awesome and great value.
any Thinkpad is fine. My E14 Gen2 is very good with Ubuntu
Currently aiming at a second-gen T14s to partly do the switch - there are many technical differences but it could be a good start waiting for Snapdragon to be fully embraced by the main distros.
I’m following the progress of nixos on snapdragon, but its still a bit early for me. Audio kind of working but might damage your speakers, webcam not working, crashing on 64G version but not 32G, etc. Also some funny business about needing windows for firmware or something. These issues are getting resolved but aren’t completely solid yet IMO.
Don’t know where things stand on the more mainstream distros but I’m guessing its probably similar.
Both the T14s and X1 Carbon would be good options. I also have an x390 which I quite like.
No connection to my initial question here - don’t care of preinstalled systems anyway as they’re wiped anyway after purchase. 😉
Sorry, I didn’t think this would need further elaboration as to why it is relevant to your initial question.
Which (Lenovo) notebooks to buy
Why would anyone trust this company to provide them with hardware that they will use for sensitive tasks that handle personal data?
Just because you are reinstalling the OS does not mean that you can implicitly trust the hardware. There are many forms that a manufacturer backdoor can take, and WPBT has shown that Windows is not clean after a reinstall. Similarly, Linux is vulnerable to binary injection by the UEFI firmware.
You don’t have to agree with my opinion, and I wouldn’t shame you for buying a Lenovo device, but you cannot dispute the relevance of my comment. I put it there for the benefit of people who don’t know about Lenovo’s prior scandals and who, like me, would take that as a signal to reject their products.
Got it and understand your thoughts, but putting Lenovo aside, is there any other recommendable vendor? Of course there can be any backdoor everywhere and yes, TPM is one factor that can be compromised these days, but which company to trust then? I know that there was some stuff on preinstalled devices from China (various smaller, cheaper vendors) even two or three years ago (compromised Windows, told to be an “accident”, but considering this, you cannot trust any vendor at all. Apart from that, Lenovo is just an example because I like the look and the haptics of the devices since the stuff was still label with “IBM” some decades ago. Thanks for your thoughts anyway!
