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kianryan / kianryan.github.io

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Lenovo X1 Carbon and Ubuntu 13.04 #54

Open kianryan opened 1 year ago

kianryan commented 1 year ago

Written on 14/07/2013 16:36:29

URL: http://www.kianryan.co.uk/2013/07/x1-carbon-ubuntu-13-04/

kianryan commented 1 year ago

Comment written by danielheth on 04/10/2013 15:24:47

I just picked up an X1 Carbon and I am a big fan of Ubuntu. It's highly likely I'll be making the OS switch on my new laptop sometime soon. Any additional advice you've experienced since writing this article would be even more helpful.

kianryan commented 1 year ago

Comment written by Kian Ryan on 04/10/2013 16:04:41

To be honest, it's mostly behaved itself - which is good. All hardware mostly behaves itself, and I'm told it should be fine under xMir as well. Enjoy - it's an excellent piece of hardware.

kianryan commented 1 year ago

Comment written by CSRedRat on 01/01/2014 21:25:33

Nice! I'm think Lenovo X1 Carbon with Ubuntu - it's good!

kianryan commented 1 year ago

Comment written by Luke H on 20/02/2014 15:37:03

This is why Linux just will never be mainstream. You said it works flawlessly in one breath but spend the rest of the time explaining 2 hour battery life and having to diagnose battery performance with power tools?? Utterly crazy you had to visit 2-3 other sites to see how other people got around the issues. I love Ubuntu but this is just so sad.

kianryan commented 1 year ago

Comment written by Kian Ryan on 21/02/2014 10:39:07

I never said it works flawlessly, I said "almost everything works out of the box". To be fair, on installing Windows, I have about as much hassle configuring power profiles and dealing with drivers.

The amount of set-up time is about equal. The only piece of broken equipment on install was the 3G modem, and yes, that was resolved with a bit of googling and tinkering.

If I run the laptop hot on Windows, then I'll get two hours out of the battery as well. I think some of this stuff should be configured by default on Ubuntu, but clearly Canonical don't.

Linux is plenty mainstream, just not on the Desktop. And that's fine. Lots of developers who want a Unix environment opt for Mac - I used to, but for this iteration I decided to head back to PC land. I honestly prefer Ubuntu over OS X, but I spend most of my time working in terminals and text editors. I'd rather have apt to hand than homebrew for my software management.

I don't see a need for Linux to become the one true OS in all environments. It dominates the server market for the web, it turns up in a range of embedded devices, and the market share of Linux on the desktop is small, but stable with slight growth. The core of people who do use it as a desktop OS, tend to know what they're doing. And an OS that is geek-centric is fine by me.

kianryan commented 1 year ago

Comment written by Luke H on 21/02/2014 11:21:12

OK, so i really want to use ubuntu and so i'm googling around for the best non apple laptop and i'm feeling pretty good about the X1. So i search for ubuntu X1, and I find your post and get excited but as I continue to read i get more and more sad. Its just sad that I cannot simply know i can buy a top end laptop and it will just work out of the box. I am too busy in life working on things i care about than fighting my laptops power management.

I mean seriously: "The interaction between modem manager and network manager is terrible. Modem manager will throw error messages that Network Manager only reports as “connection failed”."

My retina macbook pro had not had ONE SINGLE ISSUE with a core REASON of a laptop: power and wireless connectivity.

I WANT to use ubuntu and become more involved in open source (I do open source code, just on a mac) but I just cannot when i see blog posts like this.

kianryan commented 1 year ago

Comment written by Kian Ryan on 21/02/2014 11:39:44

Well, you're talking the difference between a company that tightly controls it's hardware and software vs a huge collection of random bits of hardware and an OS that's made to fit it.

OS X is by no means perfect. I had a few issues with 3G on my Mac until I said sod it and bought a Merlin Expresscard modem (I lamented the day that Apple removed the Expresscard port). But, Apple control both sides of the equation. Linux has to content with hardware inspection to make most things work. The WIFI works perfectly fine out of the box, my issue was with getting the built in 3G to work. NetworkManager is fine, ModemManager is fine, but the interaction between the two is a little fudgy, and doesn't throw errors up the stack in a helpful way.

Same problems occur with power. Jeff Atwood writes a good post on why Windows power management sucks, and large amounts of this apply to Linux distros as well:

http://www.codinghorror.com...

TLP does a good job, and is quick to install. I can happily unplug my laptop and get 4.5 hours with no additional tinkering. It's a fire and forget solution. Anything on top of that is just gravy, and after a few months, I tend to be less religious about conserving every minute.