"Why are the Ideapads terrible?"

They're consumer models, and the ones most likely to be affected by Lenovo's malware shenanigans. Most "PC" OEMs tend to build their business lines better than their consumer lines, and Lenovo's no exception. The Thinkpad line also has a reputation of being friendlier to non-Windows operating systems in general (they're the most-recommended for OpenBSD, for example), while the Ideapad line very much does not.

"Why get a Developer Edition?"

Because they're designed with Linux compatibility in mind, from what I understand.

The IdeaPads I had were not of low quality. They are plastic through and through, but high quality plastic. They feel reasonably solid and a reasonably priced.

Obviously they are not carved from a solid block of magnesium alloy, like ThinkPads used to be.

They do feel solid. But the innards are not as good (e.g.: poor Broadcom Wi-Fi cards, bad power management).

And the ThinkPad units didn't have Superfish or the Win10-only-SSD BIOS lock.

My wife has one, and the trackpads on them are terrible compared to a MBP. I don't know how they compare to other laptops in the current Lenovo line.

The thinkpads have a long, long history of working well with linux and bsd, too long for it to be a coincidence. The ideapads... don't.

"Developer Edition" is Dell's corporatespeak for "we made sure this works with linux".

With IdeaPads it's just totally model dependent. Some models work great with Linux, some don't work at all.

I really wish I could find anything at all that works well with linux, has at least 4G RAM (better 8 or 16), doesn't have a heavy screen , and is no wider than 28cm. Buying laptops has become really, really difficult. </digression>

28 cm width essentially excludes the 11.6" to 13.x" category, which are typically at least ~29 cm wide.

So you're probably looking at a 10.6" netbook.

Well, I'd probably take an 8G 29cm thing over 4G 28cm, but that doesn't seem to matter much, since I can't find any of either. The small ones all seem to either be tablets with a lightweight attachable keyboard (ie. prone to tip backwards) or they have a locked BIOS and can only run chromeos.

Because Ideapads are developed by Chinese teams, with much lower target price points, and are under the management who thought Superfish was a good idea. Thinkpads don't have these problems.

I think the main difference with the developer edition is that it comes with an Intel wireless card. Also maybe some different BIOS settings. And obviously Ubuntu preinstalled.

> Why are the Ideapads terrible?

I was speaking from past experience and my frustration at the poor build quality, poor management, and all the creepy stuff Lenovo has done to laptops in the Ideapad line (Superfish, Win10-only SSD (which they recently backed down from) etc.)

Beyond me, others would tell you that IdeaPad is Lenovo's consumer laptop line, and as such it sees less quality put into it.

> Why get a Developer Edition?

Because those units are built for Linux compatibility, while non–Developer Edition units are hit-and-miss.

not terrible, just thinkpads are built for professionals and can generally take more punishment before they break. I'd assume they also use better compoenents.

iirc the developer edition uses some components from other manufacturers than the standard edition. This is because of driver issues on linux.