[selfup]

I use Windows/Linux/macOS.

From a performance to value perspective you cannot beat Linux. Docker/Microk8s the overhead is so low. Dev speed is leagues ahead the unfortunate circumstance of having to run Docker/Minikube in a VM on Windows and macOS. Also filesystem IO is unreal compared to Windows at least.

Getting a refurb Thinkpad on ebay and having better compute hardware than a mac pro for half the price is also a nice cherry on top so to speak. That and the insane sales Lenovo has all the time for brand new machines is kind of hard to beat as well.

Next up is Windows from a hardware perspective. Same refurb thinkpad can dual boot without issue.

Then lastly macOS. I have had a mac since 2011. I am having a hard time with the direction Apple is going with their laptops.

I have all 3 and they all have their merits, but I find myself using Windows/Linux at home exclusively and macOS at work and I don't mind the context switch.

To each their own!

With the uncertain future of mac with their potential switch to ARM and not shipping python and ruby by default, I see some drawbacks to the dev ecosystem. I know brew will package a ruby version to handle this but I do worry about the ARM switch.

Linux used to be quite difficult, but I stuck with Ubuntu and the UX/UI has improved so much :)

[lostgame]

> Then lastly macOS. I have had a mac since 2011. I am having a hard time with the direction Apple is going with their laptops.

This, a thousand times this. I had a discussion earlier this week with the owner of a Mac repair shop of 15+ years here in Toronto, who lamented the release of any Mac portable since 2015 - saying 'thank God for the 2012-2015 units, or I would be out of business.'

I told him I'd been buying Macs for 15 years, and during especially times like buying my first iBook at age 15, I absolutely relied on, and still rely on, purchasing a laptop with the intent to upgrade the RAM and the HDD/SSD in the future.

With the laptops continually increasing in price, justified by tacking on useless features nobody wants, and then preventing upgrades, the laptops are out of reach for me to justify as an intermediate iOS developer. The 2017 models locked to 16GB are already virtually obsolete to a serious developer or film editor.

I will not, would not, on principle, buy a computer whose hard drive is soldered to the Logic Board, if only for the sake of retaining the hard drive itself aside from the laptop.

There is no possible, potential benefit a soldered hard drive, or soldered RAM, gives me, and the detriments far, far outweigh any benefits.

Previously, if the hard drive or RAM got corrupted or damaged, I could replace those parts the same day. What now?

Truly - and I mean truly, butterfly keyboard and lack of ports aside, even internally, Apple has finally gone from questionably being form of over function, to its focus on form over function being a literal insult to its long term dedicated users, and simply not responding to criticisms.

So the media laughs at the Touch Bar, fans and critics deride it, and Apple's response - to cancel the non-touch bar version of the 13" MacBook Pro.

[b3b0p]

You mention the RAM and hard drive, but it irks me more my keyboard is not replaceable. It's the most used moving component of the entire unit. It's exposed and susceptible to damage the easiest. I've hated every MacBook Pro since the release of the unibody. My favorite was the PowerBook 12 and 17.

I've had a MacBook/PowerBook Pro (and Thinkpad) since Titanium and the First MacBook Pro and if it wasn't for the fact of macOS and the convenience of being in the Apple ecosystem with their iPhone, TV, HomePod(s), Watch, Music, and iCloud I would be back on Linux (I actually came from FreeBSD on my Thinkpad). I'm currently using a 2017 and 2018 MacBook Pro. The 2017 would be great except the keyboard (and of course the soldered RAM/HDD) is absolutely trash. The 2018 is much better, but nothing like a Thinkpad. I also miss the Trackpoint, but the Apple Trackpad is good.

I miss my Thinkpad (+ BSD) bad, but being an iOS / web developer and entrenched in the Apple ecosystem (which I honestly like the convenience) I feel stuck and hard to even get a secondary machine. I even leave a fully maxed out P53 and P1 (I can't decide which one I want) in my Lenovo cart ready to buy at a given moment.

[acollins1331]

What's so good about the apple ecosystem everyone hounds about? I don't see why you'd want to lock yourself into paying 5x more for every tech product you'd ever want. All of that stuff has an Android equivalent and Bluetooth now. It's not 2011.

[b3b0p]

You get more than just the eco system which is must just part of the experience. The hardware is that much better. It boils down to you get what you pay for. I value the convenience of what I need or want just working as well as the quality of the devices, especially compared to the alternatives. It's also not 5x as much, but I'm thinking you were exaggerating.

[lostgame]

> My favorite was the PowerBook 12 and 17.

Golden, golden days. Every other film editor and director I've ever met, I've had a talk about how blessed the 17" G4 was (at the time).

[m463]

The keyboard keys fit the shape of your fingers.

[b3b0p]

You could also walk into the Apple store. Go to the back corner. Pick up a box with a new battery in it for $119 (iirc). Buy it and walk out with a new battery. All in a single day. You could also order them online.

Mind-blowing.

[spronkey]

And replace them yourself without catching on fire, or whatever "safety" issue they keep blabbering on about...

Ho-lee sheee-yt

[spronkey]

The screen bezel was symmetrical enough to keep my OCD in check.

[dariosalvi78]

I have had 3 MacBookPro in the last 4 years. Had to, because of some development for iOS I had to at my job.

Never had a Mac before, everybody was saying they were fantastic. You'll see, coming from Windows, what a difference, they would say.

The first had some serious hardware failure which made it reset at random times. With time the resets became more frequent until it became impossible to use it. I gave it back to IT with the order to destroy it.

The second had the infamous keyboard. God knows how much I hated it. Random keys wouldn't work, but most commonly the ones you need more, like shift. Thanks Apple. Went to IT and told them to throw it in the bin.

This last one I got has the horrid touch-bar which starts the bloody Siri 3 to 5 times a day because my finger randomly flies by the up-right corner of the laptop (typically when I am looking for the backspace). I hate it. The network sometimes goes away, for unknown reasons, until I reset the network card. Recently, the screen sometimes shows some worrisome fast-disappearing black areas.

You'll see, they would say. Very reliable, they would say.

[koffiezet]

I've had a few Macs - and my 2013 MacBook Air is still going very strong, but my 1yo MacBook Pro's keyboard has been replaced already, which is a serious issue, to the point where I doubt my next laptop will be a Mac again for that alone.

Other than that though, I think you might just have been unlucky. In professional env, I've seen bad units with pretty much every brand out-there. It shouldn't happen, but it does. In my experience, Apple will replace these without much fuzz, but their service, certainly towards businesses, is a far cry from that of for example Dell.

The Touch Bar complaint is just you not investing enough time with the system to get to know it. You can disable siri, and completely customise the touch bar.

[JMTQp8lwXL]

Have you tried customizing your touchbar to address at least that annoyance? Obviously things like butterfly keys you can't do much about, but you can do something about the touchbar.

[lostgame]

I am so sad this has been your experience. From my first iBook G3 in 2004 to my last 2012 13" I have only ever had the most positive experience with the combination of hardware and software.

Oh, how the mighty have fallen.

[squiggleblaz]

My wife has my old 2012 MacBook Retina for some hobby iOS development. Apparently all her friends are envious because it's the last Mac that doesn't suck. I don't know if it's true or not - but I replaced that one with a Dell because, as I always do when I buy a new machine, I consider my needs, the cost, and the benefits of the hardware, and for the first time in a decade Apple didn't come up on top. So maybe I agree with them too.

[pms]

I switched from Linux to Mac about six years ago, because I believed it's better. Now I think that it wasn't worth it and I'm not even talking about money. It's overhyped. From the start, I was annoyed by various things (some things worked just better on my old Ubuntu), but recently I'm becoming fed up with it, mostly because of carbon, finder, lacking bash utils, touch bar, and crashes. I'll be switching back to Linux+Windows.

[lostgame]

> carbon

What? I haven't dealt with Carbon API's in forever. Care to add more detail?

[pms]

I meant that Mojave does not support Nvidia drivers [1]. Sorry, I've confused Carbon with Metal, the 3d graphics API.

[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/marcochiappetta/2018/12/11/appl...

[WWLink]

There were also a ton of people asking for a lower end Mac Pro. So what does Apple do? Make the highest of highest end computers ever! $6000!

It's like their product management is run by sadistic assholes.

[chipotle_coyote]

I know of a ton of people asking for a MacBook Pro with a keyboard that doesn't suck, but I genuinely haven't heard many people asking for a "lower end Mac Pro." The trashcan Mac Pro, love it or hate it, clearly positioned the line as the intended spiritual successor to old SGI workstations -- the ones that started around $10K in 1999 money -- and the new Mac Pro is doubling down on that.

"Lower end Mac Pro" sounds an awful lot like the "xMac," a Mac that would be more like an iMac but a box that takes cards, which is something that some folks have wanted for literally two decades at this point. It's clearly not what Apple wants to bring to market. The low-end headless desktop Mac is the Mac mini -- and I suspect it would be a great machine for a lot of developers. That doesn't mean it's what you want, and I'm not saying you're wrong to want something else! I am saying, though, that "Apple won't make my dream Mac" isn't a sign of sadism.

[spronkey]

Such a ridiculous stance for Apple. I am 100% convinced that the xMac would double their desktop computer market share.

[lostgame]

I agree. Their decisions seem almost intentionally against what their vocal user base is asking for.

From removing the non-touch bar MacBook Pro model, to the ghastly price of the new Mac Pro, to their refusal to create an upgraded iPhone SE-sized model - Apple has started to shove things down the user base's throat now more than ever.

Apple has always been guilty of this to some extent, but for me, it's offerings worked with me, my workflow, and their direction grew with me - I embraced the move to Intel, because, as a developer, being able to dual-boot, and eventually even virtualize the dual-boot with parallels, was excellent for me. (Waiting for Office 2008 and the Universal Adobe CS3 package, however...)

The point is - Apple has always at least provided options in the past that were, well, options. At this point, there is no option in Apple's lineup I would keep for free - I'd simply rather sell a new MBP and create a hackintoshed Lenovo ThinkPad in a heartbeat than actually use any of their offerings on the daily, which I can say from experience, as I happen to have to use both on the daily.

[spronkey]

Completely agree. I've been saying this since 2012 when the Retina machines came out, and skeptical since 2009 when they moved to non-user-replaceable batteries in the MacBook Pros.

I don't think I've actually ever had a non-Apple main notebook, and that goes back to the 1990s!

That said, I only tolerate the 2013-2015 rMBPs, use one for my main personal and work laptops, but the soldered RAM pisses me off (a lot, because my personal machine only has 8GB and my god is it hard to find a 16GB model for a reasonable price in the used market), and the proprietary storage irks me. Thankfully 10.13 supports NVMe with an adaptor, which to me basically confirms that there was zero reason for Apple to use the proprietary stupid thing in the first place.

As for any machine they've built after 2016, well, I don't want them. I don't want a butterfly keyboard with no travel that breaks with a skin flake. I don't want screens that stop working because they use a flex cable connector that's too short. I don't want a touchbar if it means no function row. I don't want to give up MagSafe. I don't want to give up my SD card slot. I don't want to give up USB Type A. I don't want a massive trackpad, and I don't want the fscking T2 chip.

In fact, the only things on the >2016 machines I do want are the faster CPUs and GPUs, the better quality displays, and Touch ID!

... As for Lenovo though, they're slowly into Apple 2.0. Have you seen the T/X x90 and X1 series? Soldered RAM. At least they still make the X1 Extreme and P series.

[ericd]

It’s easy to dismiss since it was obsolete for so long, but the new Mac Mini is actually a pretty capable machine - 6 reasonably fast cores, 32 gigs of ram, fast storage, and 10 GbE onboard. I’ve been extremely happy with it.

[dagw]

And if you need it you can add an external GPU for an extra graphics boost.

[linhares]

But nothing from nvidia, correct?

[dagw]

Currently no, or at least not if you want to run the latest version of MacOS.

[zumu]

> I know brew will package a ruby version to handle this...

Not to mention brew is vastly inferior to most Linux package managers (apt, yum, pacman, etc.)

[elcritch]

Until you need/want some project that's relatively new and you pine for the days of brew. Technically inferior Perhaps but often much more up to date. :/

[panpanna]

Linux distribution often have a parallel system for bleeding edge software.

On Ubuntu, it's snap.

[Shorel]

I think the way to go is adding PPAs.

But yes, I agree we have great ways to have the latest and greatest.

[marcus_holmes]

not only on Ubuntu. I installed it on my PureOS machine. Works like a charm.

[techntoke]

Not a problem with Arch packages and the AUR.

[thom]

I heard great things about AUR when moving to Arch but honestly I've been unimpressed. A lot of stuff is already exists in official repos for other distributions, and I don't actually care about bleeding edge versions, just ease of install. And most of the time in my experience, AUR packages aren't very recent, or aren't configured how I'd like.

That said, you can just customise the PKGBUILD yourself, and even then it's no real stress to build from source yourself. Even if you then stabbed yourself in the eye with a pencil, it'd still be a better system than on MacOS or on Windows.

[away_throw]

The problem I find with Arch Linux, and this really only has started happening recently, is that for some reason Arch loves to break stuff. My most unstable distribution had to do with Arch. I find that distros like Void and Alpine Linux offer more robust rolling release systems.

[bscphil]

What in particular has broken for you? I've had the same Arch install for almost 6 years now, with no breakage at all. (Other than once or twice when I decided to reconfigure something and screwed it up. Always recoverable though, without a reinstall.)

[techntoke]

I personally find that Alpine offers the least robust, because it doesn't even have a package mirror, so once a package gets updated (especially in Edge), then you can no longer download the old package, unless you build and sign it yourself. Arch has been incredibly stable for me, even more so than Ubuntu or Debian.

[Rotareti]

> The problem I find with Arch Linux, and this really only has started happening recently, is that for some reason Arch loves to break stuff.

Then I must be lucky. I've been using arch on my dev machine without notable breakages for about 2 years.

[elcritch]

I've considered switching to arch because of that.

[krilly]

Manjaro has access to the AUR as well, and it's as polished as any distro I've used. For me it's the clear winner for developers and hobbyists

[Chickenosaurus]

I completely agree. Having used Manjaro (xfce and i3 variants) as main OS for half a year, it has been a good experience.

To be fair, I can't compare with other distros as this was the first time I used Linux as main OS.

[shrikant]

I always assumed this is because Linux package managers such as apt and yum are first-class citizens on the platform, while Homebrew is a bit of a de-facto solution on macOS.

This still holds, right?

[jessedhillon]

No, macports is non-native as well and is an excellent, stable alternative, although Homebrew has slightly better coverage. Homebrew's main issue is that it was written from scratch, ignoring lessons from 30+ years of package management experience, and there's no obvious benefit that doing so has brought. Compared to macports, which is based on freebsd ports, Homebrew is brittle and normal operations frequently result in an inconsistent state.

In my experience, unless your needs are extremely basic, sooner or later you'll run into an issue where the solution is basically to commit nuclear warfare on your filesystem and start over again. Also, expect to rely on random blog posts and stack overflow as the de facto user's guide (which maybe is just the state of the world for everything now.)

[your-nanny]

I've honestly never found a good reason to use brew instead of macports, aside from an annoying hipsterism. Welcome to try to convince me otherwise.

[brigandish]

Macports is good, I'm also a fan of pkgsrc[0].

As to Homebrew, I don't understand why it complains if I use sudo to do an install but then also complains if I'm not running as an admin account! If there's a reason for this splitting of hairs, I don't know what it is.

[0] https://pkgsrc.joyent.com/

[techntoke]

Could also have a lot to do with Ruby. Chocolatey is way worse though (Windows).

[PhilippGille]

Try Scoop on Windows instead of Chocolatey.

[ericd]

shrug use Mac for the generally superior UI, interface hardware, and app ecosystem, ssh into a Linux VM/server/workstation for the generally superior development experience. Best of both worlds.

[m463]

Would be nice if Apple stepped up in respect to tools...

[GordonS]

I also use Windows, Linux and MacOS, but mostly Windows.

The "Moby" VM on Windows is a bit annoying - it takes 30s or so to start the Docker engine, bind mounts/volumes are a bit pernickety, and resource use is obviously higher than without a VM. Having said that, once it's started everything works pretty well, with containers starting almost instantaneously.

I believe there are some IO perf issues if you're using WSL (I don't use it much, preferring git bash for most things).

Both of these issues should be fixed when WSL2 finally arrives. But unless you're on an Insider's build, I believe that's going to be 2020 (someone please correct me if that's wrong).

[loudmax]

Alongside pouring resources into the Windows Subsystem for Linux, it would be nice if MS would put some resources into a Linux Subsystem for Windows. That is, do for WINE what they've done for Cygwin.

[pjmlp]

They have hardly done anything for cygwin.

Windows NT had Windows Services for UNIX, replaced by Subsystem for UNIX-based Applications on Windows 2003 until Windows 8, eventually replaced by Windows Subsystem for Linux, given that now Linux API compatibility has became more relevant than straight POSIX code compatibility.

[iamwpj]

I agree. I would argue that bring powershell to Linux is a good step in this direction, but it's missing some key components (Active directory...) still.

[juststeve]

Don't worry about Active Directory, just sign up to Azure.

[mwfunk]

Totally tangential, but who could have predicted, 20 years ago, that in 2019, more than zero people would be talking about having to use Macs at work, then going home to their comfy PC. How the turns table. I increasingly don't have strong opinions either way (pros and cons to everything, etc.), it's just such an unexpected timeline we've ended up in.

[nineteen999]

If it wasn't for Microsoft pumping millions into Apple around that time we very well may not be having the conversation now either.

https://appleinsider.com/articles/18/08/06/august-6-1997----...

[tracer4201]

I love MacOS. The only reason I have windows at all is for a few games. That being said, Apple has gutted the Macbook lineup.

The hardware, especially the keyboard and touchbar, are utter trash and reminiscent of the dell and HP laptops around 2008, which were the reason I dumped those brands in the first place.

All the pointless dongles were a moronic excuse to make thinner machines. They forgot about function and also failed to realize that aesthetic doesn’t matter if the keyboard is literally a dumpster fire.

I wonder sometimes if Tim Cook is becoming senile or if he just don’t care since the iPhone was printing money.

[WWLink]

I remember when it was the opposite. My PowerBook G4 from 2005 had DVI and S-Video. S-Video! Why would anyone in 2005 need an S-Video port?

[lostgame]

Projectors. Was a big deal back then.

[sz4kerto]

The Docker/IO perf story is changing with WSL2 significantly.

[selfup]

Yes indeed! And I will gladly attempt to finally dig into WSL at that point. For now I just use choco and pwsh and I find myself productive with go/node/elixir/rust without needing WSL just yet.

I mainly use Windows for games but every now and then I don't want to leave my desktop to make some changes to a repo while my character is respawning/spectating or something haha

WSL2 is going to be awesome for sure

[craz8]

I’m loving WSL2 on my Insiders build. But there are issues with local host networking and file updates to Windows apps right now that need to be worked around

But it is very fast!

The Insider build also green screens less often than the most recent general release did!

Having Github available for issues is great too, as you can see progress being made in fixing the bugs - I feel more connected then when I actually worked inside Microsoft!

[3PS]

I'm curious, are you still experiencing issues with localhost networking? I'd read that as of build 18945, those issues should mostly be fixed. [1] Or is it that you're hosting applications on Windows and trying to access them from Linux?

[1] https://devblogs.microsoft.com/commandline/whats-new-for-wsl...

[craz8]

Some people still are - mine now works. I think it depends on your Linux server binding to 127.0.0.1 or 0.0.0.0

I’m currently working on cross host code, so being forced to use the Hosts file actually helped me out!

I haven’t tried going from Linux to Windows via localhost though

I do have issues running multiple Selenium tests with a headless browser. Running 1 process works ok though

[techntoke]

5 years too late

[cpursley]

> Thinkpad

Which Thinkpad model do you recommend?

And which Linux distro do you use?

[pyrophane]

I'll go ahead and drop my preferences here as well:

The X1 Extreme is nice. It is one of relatively few PC laptops that are comparable to the 15" MBP in terms of performance (H-series processor rather than U-series) and portability. It has upgradeable RAM/SSD, so I got the base model with the upgrade CPU then purchased 32GB/1TB separately and saved something like $600-700 as a result. With slightly better cooling and a 3:2 display I think it would be nearly perfect.

Concerning distro, if you want to "just get work done" I recommend Ubuntu if like the way it looks or want to use one of the non-Gnome desktops. If you do like Gnome but but like the Ubuntu desktop, Fedora is great.

[reirob]

I have the X1 Extreme since December. Running Ubuntu 18.04. My experience with it was in short - "the worst possible ThinkPad that I had in 15 years" - and I had 8 ThinkPads.

Maybe I am unlucky. I bought it because I finally wanted a 15" screen with a centred keyboard, i.e. without the num-pad, because uncentered for touch typers is really really weird. It started that in order to get Linux running I had to switch the graphics card to discrete mode, at least this is what I found on Internet. This bricked the machine and according to the Lenovo support thread I was far from alone [0]! Luckily I had on-site 24h support, so called. They were able to come only after a week... With the wrong board... With travels in between I had in total to wait for 1 month to make the machine work.

Now it works and I am using it and trying to accept it.

- It is extremely loud! BIOS updates made it better as of lately and I got a bit more used to it.

- It gets extremely hot. So hot that actually typing on it gets uncomfortable.

- I am not able to do any meaningful work for more than 3 hours on battery. With my last X25 with 2 batteries I was able to work a whole day!

- The screen is like a mirror! I found a workaround by trying to work as much as possible with white background.

- And finally, but this is probably more the fault of Ubuntu/Gnome/nVidia - it is the laggiest experience ever! I mean, I am working most of the time in a terminal! Typing on the terminal is so laggy, that I do not even remember back to 1995 when I was starting using Linux to have such a laggy experience. Come on, this is supposed to be the most powerfull machine that I ever had?!

- Using external screen is possible only when switching ot nVidia. When using Intel graphics card (to prolong battery life) you cannot switch on external screen.

- Another, but probably this is Gnome/Ubunut/nVidia annoying thing is, that as soon as I lock the screen in Gnome, the fan starts turning like hell and the temperature rises! Come on, is Gnome screensaver mining bitcoins or what? I mean, I configured it to just turn off the screen when I lock it! And instead of saving energy it is heating the planet!

By now I spend so much time trying to configure, update and whatever that I am really tired of it. I mean, I have work to do! I am trying to prepare to go to NixOS, because I heard from some people that they got it configured to be usable. Preparing for this slowly, when I can dedicate time.

It's not all bad though. There are some positive things:

- I like the physical build quality. It feels solid and sturdy.

- The screen (I have the 3840x2160 resolution) brightness, resolution and colors are really good. To watch photographs or to see movies. Unfortunately working on text is only possible with white screen. Otherwise it is like a mirror. It would even be possible to work outside, but you need to have electricity, the battery life is horrible.

- I like the keyboard. The touch depths is nice and I have the impression that it is a bit more distinctive than on the prior models that I had (X25 and T450s).

- The CPU power is more than enough for me.

[0] - https://forums.lenovo.com/t5/ThinkPad-X-Series-Laptops/Anoth...

EDIT: Typo, s/X24/X25/

[dzonga]

I use a t490, 500nit retina display with 100% ARGB. Upgradable ram, well one slot but more than enough for a JS dev. excellent keyboard. Was running Manjaro, but switched to Ubuntu Budgie. Workhorse machine for getting shit done.

[automathematics]

Props for recognizing the awesomeness that is budgie!

[xgb84j]

Not gp, but I currently use a Lenovo T 480s dual booting Windows 10 Pro and Ubuntu 18.04 LTS and it's the best development setup I have used so far. No driver or hardware problems whatsoever.

[gawin]

Second that T480s, love it. 24GB RAM, 2TB SSD. Booting OpenBSD, macOS and Linux. Scaling on WQHD display works solid. Only drawback is that the WWAN (4G) only works under Linux and the touchpad is not as good as in a MacBook Pro.

[selfup]

Yea this is a great route as well! Considered it but found a deal I couldn't pass up on a refurb x1c6 haha

[selfup]

YMMV but I use a X1 Carbon 6th Gen. 1080p/Matte screen. No dual boot so some things to tweak but not much at all tbh.

Installed erpalma/throttled from github to squeeze my CPU perf to max. Also make sure to set sleep to S3 in BIOS. Otherwise nothing else to do. Everything seems to work just fine.

The 7th Gen just came out so there might still be some issues but I would look around and see if it's good to go.

I use Ubuntu 18.04 LTS. Once 19 is done I will more than likely move on to 20.04 LTS

[sidek]

My 7th gen X1 works on Ubuntu out of the box, except for an annoying trackpad bug that can be fixed with a one-line config file change.

[selfup]

Oh good to know! Thanks for the info

[osamagirl69]

I use a 6th gen X1 Yoga at home (for its oled panel and integrated wacom tablet) and an 8th gen X1 (non-yoga) at work. (note - the generation I refer to is the processor generation, ie the 6th gen is an i7-6600u, which lenovo calls a first gen x1 yoga)

The yoga needed some tweaks to get the OLED brightness to work correctly, but other than that they basically worked out of the box under ubuntu 18.04. My only complaints are that the oled panel only came in gloss and has since been discontinued (although there are rumors that a 15" 4k oled will be available on the x1 extreme), and that the mouse click on the yoga is several orders of magnitude too loud. The trackpoint buttons are fine and the keyboard is great, but the trackpad click is loud enough to hear in the next room over.

[zcid]

I still use a T420 and T430. Both are great for development use. The screens are lacking, but when you spend most of your time in the terminal or browser, you don't really notice.

[tsomctl]

T5x0 (Avoid the T540, the touchpad buttons are supposedly shit.)

I'm running a T530. Max out the ram, get a ssd, it's great. I'm probably on my third one, I keep buying junkers for $50 from eBay for the parts. I majorly abuse it. The magnesium frame likes to crack near the heatsink, the steel frame around the screen likes to crack 1 inch above the hinges, don't spill water on the table it's sitting on.

[hsbaut76]

T480 archlinux and kde