ThinkPad T480 (with a 1080ti in an external GPU enclosure for gaming at home / ML)
32 GB, 10+ hour battery life, 1Tb of flash storage with OPAL transparent self-encryption, WQHD main display, two USB C ports + two regular USB ports + an ethernet jack, automatic firmware updates through the package manager, and most importantly, no driver issues with the laptop and Linux whatsoever!
I replaced my workstation and gaming computer with this setup and am finally down to one-device nirvana.
Last month I knocked a full cup of coffee on the keyboard, and was relieved to discover the keyboard is completely separate and isolate from the rest of the device and is designed to be easily user replaceable -- I was able to replace the entire keyboard ($80 on Amazon) without even opening the case! The assembly is held in place by two screws on the bottom.
My previous laptop was a 2018 MBP, which I sold after two months due to my dislike (and distrust) of the keyboard. Couldn't be happier.
You probably shouldn't use OPAL if you want device encryption.
There was an article published last year that showed that almost all OPAL drives had some security issue that let users bypass(yes I do mean bypass) the encryption. Several instances the PBKD was stored on disk, and a conditional if statement decided to use it
Just got mine on the Presidents' Day sale. Not Linux rn but as a Hackintosh it's working pretty well apart from SD card reader, not reading fan sensors in iStat Menus / HWMonitor / Mac Fan Control and slow WiFi after sleep. iMessage, FaceTime, most Synaptics gestures working fine.
- 20L5
- WQHD
- larger extended battery
- Quad-core i7-5550U
- lighted keyboard
- 16 GiB (will upgrade later to 32 or 64 if unofficially-supported)
- Swapped WiFi to DW1830 and added a third antenna
- Samsung 970 Pro 1 TB + Lenovo SSD tray (took off the retail SSD label on one side for the heat-spreader thermal adhesive)
Looking on Amazon/eBay/AliExpress for vinyl art (Banksy perhaps) to cover up the ThinkPad logo or maybe having it vinyl wrapped with the stuff used on cars (heat-shrunk).
Absolutely awful. I have to work on it, since it's part of standard hardware at Red Hat, and every time my dock stops working I immediately have to connect a mouse because the touchpad is unusable.
Compared to Mac, it doesn't support any gestures, doesn't mitigate the "oops" finger when you're moving your mouse, and altogether just doesn't feel comfortable.
I'll try to edit my comment to be more descriptive once I get home because I don't remember in what ways is Mac better since its trackpad is like second nature to me now.
About the dock not working. I'm running RHEL7.6 and the issue is fixed in kernel 4.5+, otherwise Lenovo provides damn great job with their HW.
It really has to do with that Red Hat adopted all of their HW for our development purposes.
32 GB, 10+ hour battery life, 1Tb of flash storage with OPAL transparent self-encryption, WQHD main display, two USB C ports + two regular USB ports + an ethernet jack, automatic firmware updates through the package manager, and most importantly, no driver issues with the laptop and Linux whatsoever!
I replaced my workstation and gaming computer with this setup and am finally down to one-device nirvana.
Last month I knocked a full cup of coffee on the keyboard, and was relieved to discover the keyboard is completely separate and isolate from the rest of the device and is designed to be easily user replaceable -- I was able to replace the entire keyboard ($80 on Amazon) without even opening the case! The assembly is held in place by two screws on the bottom.
My previous laptop was a 2018 MBP, which I sold after two months due to my dislike (and distrust) of the keyboard. Couldn't be happier.