Ubuntu Making Progress On The Lenovo ThinkPad X13s Arm Laptop Support

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  • Mitch
    Senior Member
    • May 2017
    • 376

    #11
    This'll probably be really unpopular, but the price wouldn't seem that crazy to me if that laptop met the advertised battery performance. Notebookcheck shows that the processor doesn't come anywhere near what is advertised in any of their use-case scenarios, even playing video or web browsing. It seems to lose in power efficiency to M1 and to an equivalent device using an AMD 6000 U series processor (Link). The laptop's peak performance lags its competitors, too. I also think they need options above FHD+.

    In order to punch above other laptop prices, it just needs to win somewhere IMO, but it's very respectable, and maybe it'll improve with driver and software updates. The successor to its 8cx Gen3 is rumored to be 8P+4E which is a huge improvement over existing 4P+4E, and maybe architectural improvements will get it over those humps.

    I personally wish we had more major competitors in the ARM space than Qualcomm and Apple.
    Last edited by Mitch; 17 February 2023, 03:52 PM.

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    • coder
      Senior Member
      • Nov 2014
      • 8964

      #12
      Originally posted by Brook-trout View Post
      13" laptops are fine for young children and little people.
      I disagree. If you prioritize portability and mostly use the machine with an external monitor and keyboard, then 13" is fine. I previously had a 15.4", but found it too big and heavy to lug around. So, my next laptop was 13.3" and much more "portable".

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      • coder
        Senior Member
        • Nov 2014
        • 8964

        #13
        Originally posted by BroMomentoNumero2 View Post
        Why is anyone impressed by the price? Decent thinkpads have been always priced like that. You're basically paying the Thinkpad tax, but also paying the MIL spec/durability part.
        You're confusing different classes of Thinkpads. Not your fault, since Lenovo seems much more liberal with the branding than IBM was, but the "thin & light" type of Thinkpads are a different class of machine than the bigger workhorse line.

        I have a Lenovo "Thinkpad 13" that looks a lot like this machine. I think the list price for the model I had was somewhere in the $700 - $800 range. It's a 2016 model year Skylake i3-6100U including 4 GB of RAM and a 256 GB SATA M.2 drive, with a 1080p display. First thing I did was add a second 4 GB DIMM to increase it to 8 GB. I assume it also had a Windows Home license, which I never used.

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        • kpedersen
          Senior Member
          • Jul 2012
          • 2720

          #14
          I imagine in ~3 years there will be an influx of these things second hand on the market because Windows never supports ARM for long and the niche nature of it means that your typical business user will be unable to maintain it themselves.

          So my main question is how locked down is it? Does it have an open UEFI or is it a locked down piece of shi^W landfill that needs jailbreaking nonsense?

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          • coder
            Senior Member
            • Nov 2014
            • 8964

            #15
            Originally posted by Mitch View Post
            This'll probably be really unpopular, but the price wouldn't seem that crazy to me if that laptop met the advertised battery performance.
            It doesn't seem crazy to me, if you have a specific need for an ARM laptop that runs a mainstream distro (i.e. not ChromeOS). It just strikes me as too much for someone who needs a generic Linux laptop, given its specs. Even if you're content to run ChromeOS, I think it's faster than any other ARM-based Chromebooks on the market.

            Originally posted by Mitch View Post
            I personally wish we had more major competitors in the ARM space than Qualcomm and Apple.
            We need MediaTek in this space. Microsoft had an exclusive partnership with Qualcomm, but I think it's now lapsed. In that case, the market should be getting ripe for another player.

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            • stormcrow
              Senior Member
              • Jul 2017
              • 1521

              #16
              Originally posted by BroMomentoNumero2 View Post

              Why is anyone impressed by the price? Decent thinkpads have been always priced like that. You're basically paying the Thinkpad tax, but also paying the MIL spec/durability part.

              DELL's Latitude line has roughly the same pricing with equally crap specs.

              ​​​​
              Because it's not a decent Thinkpad. Not even for a modern crappy Lenovo made Thinkpad. It's a ARM Thinkpad with a barely adequate ARM CPU and a currently unsupported (in Linux) GPU. This laptop isn't even great with full Windows hardware support.

              ARM can be great processors, Apple proved it's possible, but Qualcomm has yet to match their feat. Even if they had, that GPU is going to be the Achilles heel. Also, don't believe Lenovo's battery life claims. When Apple reports on battery life, they're usually pretty close to the ballpark. With other device makers, it's just a marketing number that you may get under the most ideal circumstances, none of which exist in the real world. Cut it in half (at most) for video only play back, and half again (at most) to get work done. In fact, some reputable reviewers have specifically pointed out this device's bad battery life in Windows. The entire reason for having ARM devices is power efficiency. Even my 3 year old M1 MPB still manages at least 6 hours of battery life playing various (older) games. In contrast my old Dell G5 with a 8th Gen Intel barely manages one hour on battery with roughly the same battery age and use characteristics.

              For $1200 you can get great ARM devices, and you can get good x86 devices, just it's not this one.
              Last edited by stormcrow; 17 February 2023, 01:09 PM.

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              • coder
                Senior Member
                • Nov 2014
                • 8964

                #17
                Originally posted by stormcrow View Post
                It's a ARM Thinkpad with a barely adequate ARM CPU​
                Should be faster than any Chromebook. "barely adequate" is in the eye of the beholder. But, we can agree that it's slower than the machine's price would suggest.

                Originally posted by stormcrow View Post
                that GPU is going to be the Achilles heel.
                Okay, so it's lacking AV1 decode and you're not going to be gaming on it, but for a 1080p screen it should be otherwise decent.

                Originally posted by stormcrow View Post
                For $1200 you can get great ARM devices,
                I guess you mean Apple? I don't count them, at least until mainstream distros install and work reliably on them out-of-the-box. And GPU should be fully supported on them, if that's the standard to which you're holding Qualcomm.

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                • stormcrow
                  Senior Member
                  • Jul 2017
                  • 1521

                  #18
                  Originally posted by coder View Post
                  Should be faster than any Chromebook. "barely adequate" is in the eye of the beholder. But, we can agree that it's slower than the machine's price would suggest.


                  Okay, so it's lacking AV1 decode and you're not going to be gaming on it, but for a 1080p screen it should be otherwise decent.


                  I guess you mean Apple? I don't count them, at least until mainstream distros install and work reliably on them out-of-the-box. And GPU should be fully supported on them, if that's the standard to which you're holding Qualcomm.
                  Point 1 & 2: Barely adequate equates to me getting work done... Albeit with annoyances due to slow hardare. With laptops without a Nvidia/AMD dedicated GPU that largely means general desktop use (word processing, e'mail, video conferencing, playing video - I don't care about AV1, web browser) and casual games to pass the time. Granted. However, the competition is capable of much more, yes I'm talking about the Apple M series Apple Macs. However, the battery life - the entire point of ARM - is not better than an Intel ultrabook system. So you lose much compatibility without gaining ARM's power efficiency. Not a fair trade. Edit to add: You also lose a lot of performance because the USB subsystem apparently isn't capable of matching the throughput of either Intel/AMD or Apple USB-4/TB3 devices according to metrics, which does matter.

                  Point 3: Count them or not. Most people that aren't licensing or Windows zealots will be directly comparing Apple's current M series with any PC class ARM chips from Qualcomm or MediaTek. Asahi is making considerable progress in getting the Macs supported with Linux. Right now, they're all coming up lacking for Linux so it makes no sense to spend hundreds of dollars on a system that may eventually support Linux unless you enjoy hardware reverse engineering. Buy the Lenovo used. I'm sure at some point these things will be a steal on the used market in about a year to 18 months - if the current Linux hardware efforts pan out. Even if you ignore Linux support, Macs already come with a very good Unix system (yes it's Open Group certified, fwiw), and for a lot of non-Windows developers and enthusiasts that's "Good Enough".
                  Last edited by stormcrow; 17 February 2023, 02:11 PM.

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                  • andyprough
                    Senior Member
                    • Feb 2012
                    • 2457

                    #19
                    My goodness, $1200+ for an underpowered, year-old phone chip. I predicted this idiocy would commence once people started hyperventilating over Apple building a laptop out of an iphone.

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                    • brucethemoose
                      Senior Member
                      • Sep 2021
                      • 548

                      #20
                      Originally posted by Mitch View Post
                      The successor to its 8cx Gen3 is rumored to be 8P+4E which is a huge improvement over existing 4P+4E, and maybe architectural improvements will get it over those humps.
                      Eh, I think Qualcomm is taking the wrong approach. They should go E-core crazy and stick 32+ A510 cores (and 2-4 P cores?) on a laptop die.

                      Devs would love that kind of compilation muscle.

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