Or one of the ill-advised "ThinkPad" branded "business tablets" like the ThinkPad 8 or 10. You're right that Lenovo have never shipped a workstation class ThinkPad laptop with Bay Trail, but their attempts to extend the ThinkPad brand have definitely led them to ship some Atom-based duds.

I'm going to extend OP the benefit of the doubt on the model name here and say this: it sucks that Lenovo have diluted the "ThinkPad" brand and it sucks that they didn't remove the bad models from their Linux compatiblity list.

On the flip side, I think ThinkPad workstation laptops (T-series and above) are still safe for Linux. Just avoid the convertibles and tablets as well as the budget-range Edge series, which are frankly bad computers overall.

Actually, there were also Bay Trail Pentiums and Celerons:

https://ark.intel.com/products/codename/55844/Bay-Trail

I meant the Atom architecture in general, trade names nonwithstanding. Bonnell, Saltwell, Silvermont, Airmont, Goldmont, Goldmont Plus. ThinkPads, on the other hand, in roughly the same time frame have used Merom, Penryn, Arrandale, Sandy Bridge, Ivy Bridge, Haswell, Broadwell, Skylake, Kaby Lake and Kaby Lake R CPUs.

Does that more satisfy you my hair splitting, persnickety friend?

Yes, you're right. I thought there might have been a Celeron T540, but the T series never has a Celeron processor option.

Uh, okay so it was a T540p? I don't see how this changes anything. They list the computer as Linux compatible. It was not, and they were neither interested in returning it or updating their site.

The difference between T540 vs T540p doesn't really change anything. What did matter to 'chx' is that you said it had a Bay Trail processor, and strongly implied that the problems you had with running Linux on the machine was due to your machine having this Bay Trail processor. To those who are intimately familiar with these ThinkPad's (not me) this is an egregious error.

I'd guess that if you came up with a link[1] showing that the T540p was indeed sold with a Bay Trail processor, 'chx' would apologize profusely, publicly eat his hat, and probably come over to mow your lawn. Alternatively, if for some reason you misspoke as to which processor generation it had, you might consider making the world a slightly better place by correcting your error and apologizing for the apparently trivial bit of misinformation.

[1] Like this one, but with Bay Trail than Haswell: https://www.cnet.com/products/lenovo-thinkpad-t540p-15-6-cor...

So the problem is kauffj alleging a ThinkPad T not working with Linux. Plain and simple, there is no such thing. Further, their description of said laptop has the wrong name (T540 vs T540p) and the wrong CPU very strongly indicating their laptop is not a ThinkPad T after all but something else. What else, I can't even guess.

This merited a strong reply because contrary to this allegation, the rule of thumb is to recommend a ThinkPad T or X for someone looking a Linux laptop.

You can accuse an old Porsche 911 SD of having problems with the front engine but people will be quick to point out that a) Porsche 911 only had an SC and not an SD version b) the Porsche 911 engine is in the back.