I switched to a ThinkPad and I love it - tiotrom.com/2025/08/i-switched…

My Dell laptop broke and I was forced to quickly buy another laptop. I chose a very cheap ThinkPad and I love it!

Thanks to everyone on Mastodon, Twitter/X and YouTube for your suggestions on older hardware to run #Linux. I picked three #ThinkPad laptops to test how old you could go and have a decent experience. With Windows 10 support coming to an end, now is a great time to share alternatives for hardware that has more to give.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bz5YmfjlHwg

A thing that only nerds do: opening a brand new notebook before first boot.

Participated in the Undefined hacker's festival and have a speech about my modded #Thinkpad X220.

Looks like I'm not only like to write enormously big blogposts. But also I'm able to make an enormously big presentations — my limit was 30 minutes and (looks like) my presentation was made for 1.5 hours, so @nikhotmsk stopped my endless speech

It was a lot of fun. First, I fixed the lamp, when came to the place. Then, I perform the presentation in the #Emacs through the VGA cable. Looks like it was unshielded, so a lot of cool video-noise from a DJ's devices were visible on the projector's screen during the presentation.

At least, I spoke something about WiFi drivers in #FreeBSD and about #Xserver before my time was out

Also, I met one of the fedifriends IRL. Sadly, I forgot to ask about his username, so if you are reading this — please mention me in the replies

My laptop broke...cannot charge anymore and I cannot fix it.

Long story short I spent so many hours trying to fix it, and I decided it is cheaper and better to buy a used and cheap Thinkpad...

I have made a Gofundme in case anyone can help out gofund.me/b8bc330a

I have to run a lot of projects and this laptop is really important for me. Without it I am fucked.

Planned Obsolescence, this is what is happening with so many products. Not meant to last or be repaired...really awful....

But I have no choice need to urgently get another laptop...

I was recently reminded why I love my #ThinkPad

The day before a trip I was able to fix a hardware issue myself using just:

A phillips-head screwdriver
The Lenovo PC Diagnostics app
An iFixit guide
30 minutes

I had been seeing some screen flickering over the last few weeks but dismissed it as random glitches. And of course, the evening before a trip, while checking the battery charge;

BLEEP BAAP BOOP

A loud, ominous series of beeps announced, that we wouldn't make it to the boot screen.

"Great fucking timing", I thought, as I started searching for the meaning of the beeps. I soon learned of the Lenovo PC Diagnostics app's existence, which quickly identified the cause of the unpleasant fanfare: "Computer display error. Reconnect the display cable [...]"

20 minutes, 1 iFixIt guide and a few screw turns later I had successfully dis- and reconnected the display cable and the computer booted normally. Amazing!

Thank you, #Lenovo & @iFixit

Giving OpenBSD and Xfce another go on the laptop, but I think I'll go back to OpenSUSE until FreeBSD 15 is released 4Q25. Too many paper cuts for now...

hw-probe for the ThinkPad X1 Carbon 5th:

https://bsd-hardware.info/?probe=b1a9d7d307

I got a Thinkpad x270 at a great price a few months ago, and the Arch Linux & i3wm combo makes it work great.

Their reputation for working well with GNU/Linux systems is well deserved.

If you are looking for alternatives for your computer equipment, the second-hand market offers this and other classic models at a very good price in almost every corner of the globe. And when the second wave of equipment arrives thanks to Windows 11, this is going to be amazing.

Moin! Hier gibt’s doch Leute, die sich auskennen. Ich habe drei verschiedene #Linux - Versionen ausprobiert, aber immer das gleiche Problem.

Wenn die Tastatur anfängt, Groß- und Kleinbuchstaben (scheinbar) völlig wahllos durcheinanderzubringen,
und wenn die Maus anfängt, für jeden Pieps und Pups ein neues Fenster zu öffnen:

Habe ich dann versehentlich irgendeinen Unfug mit der Fn-Taste angestellt, oder hat mir der Gebrauchtwarenhändler ein defektes #ThinkPad angedreht?

I've got a ThinkPad X1 Carbon 5th, currently running OpenSUSE Tumbleweed. I want to try *BSD on this laptop.

Network controller is reported as "Intel Corporation Wireless 8265 / 8275 (rev 88)" under Linux.

FreeBSD installs OK, but wireless speed is not impressive, and my USB-C dock doesn't seem to be recognized.

I can live with using a wifi-dongle when out and about, but missing dock connectivity is not something I look forward to. I don't care about the built-in camera.

Is there anything else I should worry about? Sound, Bluetooth, sleep mode, battery life?

Happy Friday, just over here celebrating the #ThinkPad ThinkLight on an X300.
https://youtube.com/shorts/2CMrJxfPByc

"If you bought a ThinkPad between 1995 and 2017, it was probably designed under the oversight of David W. Hill, who served as lead designer under both IBM and Lenovo for those 22 years. We caught up with Hill, who today runs his own firm, ThinkNext Design, to talk about the history of ThinkPad, what drove him to make key design decisions, and the products he wanted to come out with but just couldn't."

https://www.theregister.com/2025/08/02/thinkpad_david_hill_interview/