7d ago

Which (Lenovo) notebooks to buy when coming from Apple Silicon?

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!

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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).
- Um. No on Tuxedo.
  The work Tuxedo is doing is on drivers for their own hardware. It has nothing to do with core Snapdragon SoC support and will do little to help other vendors. The delay has more to do with their internal priorities than anything else.
  Core X Elite support has been coming into the kernel since 6.8. Support for your hardware depends on the availability of a device tree. Probably the easiest road right now is Ubuntu:
  https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/ubuntu-24-10-concept-snapdragon-x-elite/48800
  The best supported hardware seems to be the Thinkpad T14s at this point. I am not sure where things are with Ubuntu 25.04. I would expect an update from Ubuntu soon.
  Here is a more detailed account of support on a Yoga Slim and a screenshot of Chimera Linux running on HP OmniBook. So, Ubuntu is not the only option but it is likely the smoothest sailing.
  https://www.wezm.net/v2/posts/2024/linux-on-yoga-7x-snapdragon/
  It is early days for X Elite on Linux for sure. The same can be said for Apple Silicon of course.
  [edit: it seems that Ubuntu 25.04 works out-of-the-box on X Elite: https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/ubuntu-desktop-on-arm64-history-benefits-and-what-s-next/57775
  Get it here: https://cdimage.ubuntu.com/daily-live/current/ ]
  
  I stand corrected
- 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 also making the slow transition from Apple to Linux, and I (relatively) recently bought a Framework 13. I went with kind of a minimum-specs loadout, figuring I didn't really know what I was getting into and I could upgrade it later (the primary selling point of Framework). I've been satisfied with running Fedora/Gnome on it for several months. I get the impression that the distro is more important than the hardware in terms of having a comfortable MacOS-to-Linux experience. But because Framework explicitly supports Fedora, I felt like it was a smaller step away from the walled garden, "it just works" experience of being a Mac user team just going straight to a distro and manufacturer that was likely to require a lot more manual setup and knowledge.
- I think for OP it would be better off with a Framework laptop. It makes more sense in the long run.
  Linux on ARM is great for SBC servers but not so good on the graphics stack. As @Vittelius@feddit.org pointed out Snapdragon SOCs are still lackluster. I'm sure Framework will have ARM in their lineup in the future (there's already a RISC-V mainboard) while support for these CPUs keep improving.
  On the other hand, i recently bought a 6 years old lenovo, installed Fedora KDE and it all just works, more importantly for me power management is no longer an issue. It will never be on the level of the newest Apple silicon though.
- That could be an option - thanks for sharing your thoughts. I am currently with an M4 MacBook Air and am preparing for a possible switch sometimes in the future. Have been using an old HP EliteBook G4 as second device so I know the look and feel, but something in the Lenovo-style paired with something ARM-based would be perfect. Fedora works fine out of the box so the system itself wouldn't be the problem - rather the technical base underneath.
  
  Sure thing! I won't pretend to be knowledgeable about the differences in hardware between like a Lenovo and a Framework. I actually intended to buy a Lenovo but I was shopping for a made-for-Linux laptop when Lenovo happened not to be selling them (they had been before and I guess they are again now). The appeal of the Framework was entirely the upgradability

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.

Framework

X1 Carbon is awesome specs and has that lightweight portability element.

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.).

Both the T14s and X1 Carbon would be good options. I also have an x390 which I quite like.

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.

To just directly answer your question, it seems the T14s is the best supported.
Ubuntu supports it in Ubuntu 25.04 but it does not look like there is support in Fedora yet.
You will probably have to install KDE yourself but it should work fine: https://linuxconfig.org/kde-desktop-installation-on-ubuntu-24-04
- Just needing some spare time to test this - T14(s) is in the focus here. Thanks for the info! 😀

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.

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.
- They are specifically interested in the ARM laptops for battery life.

Even their new Ideapads with the AMD APU's (8845HS) are awesome and great value.

If you have access to China only laptops market, the Lenovo ThinkBook 14/16 + Intel Core Ultra 7 255H are very capable all-in-one laptops that you can run an eGPU via TGX(Oculink) in a CPU that is tuned with 70w that you can't get with the Thinkpads, maximum is 55w.

Have a p14s (older gen) and it runs very well on linux. Im running fedora which lenovo sells prepackaged so you get firmware updates and bios updates through rpm. I would say any linux Thinkpad would be a solid choice. I would just suggest getting one without soldered ram so you can upgrade or repair. Also check the panel brightness too because my display is shit.

Are you planning to run Linux on it? Dont get a snapdragon then. Its not ready yet and youll have a ton of issues.
- Yes, preferably. Ubuntu seems to support ARM in the latest edition quite well but comparing the issues Windows has with all those non Intel-/AMD-based devices, there seems to be a long road to travel yet.
  
  If your looking to use linux and have good battery life tho its not like thats hard to do. Especially with your use case. My laptop (latitude 7400) has a loud fan and runs hot on windows and undervolting is bios locked so on windows the battery life would suck and it would be loud and hot. But on linux i customize the tlp settings and turn the clock speeds down, make sure battery mode is on even when plugged in, and i get great battery life, and the fan never even turns on. Just pulled up powertop and it says with the web browser im typing this in and running a local music player im pulling 5W from the battery, at 81% right now, and have 10 hours until empty at current usage. And this thing only cost like 250$ cuz i got it used.

you can just install Linux on your "Apple Silicon-MacBook"
- Unfortunately that it is not that easy - the Intel-ones up to 2018 were no problem and Asahi supports up to M2 with some limitations: https://asahilinux.org/fedora/#device-support

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenovo#Superfish
- 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.

Just buy a laptop, stop trying to complicate the process. The great thing about linux is that it runs fine on almost anything.
- Nope. I wish it was really that simple. Check this page for compatibility https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Laptop/Lenovo
  Also check https://linux-hardware.org/?view=computers&type=notebook&vendor=Lenovo
- Unless it's a Dell. If you buy one, better research its Linux compatibility beforehand, or you'll face issues like non-working webcams, fingerprint readers, weird unexplainable crashes and wonky bluetooth behavior.
  
  "non-working webcams" sounds like a plus IMO but I get your point.
  P.S theres a reason I used "almost"
- Usually this would be the case but when you got used to runtime and performance, going to standard Intel-books is quite a step backwards. I love the effiency of ARM-based hardware, the runtime and (compared to the Air) the fanless design and was already aiming at a used T14s with 11th gen i5 - okay for the start, but in terms of specs there are quite huge differences. That's what makes it getting complicated 😀 !
- "fine" if you don't need sleep states or wifi/bt
  
  I never had either issue using Bazzite. Theres a distro for almost everything find the one that works for you.

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