I replaced Windows with Linux and everything's going great

Re:I replaced Windows with Linux and everything's going great by Rayosay on Saturday January 10, 2026 @12:11PM (#46567576)

I think that the ThinkPad X13s Gen1 might meet these requirements. It is my favorite ARM Linux laptop I've ever used. It has great support in Debian 13 (trixie), and it feels pretty smooth and fast. It doesn't have any fans, stays cool, and I regularly get a full day's worth of battery life out of it with margin to spare (10-12 hours). It's better than the newer Snapdragon X1 Elite based ThinkPads, in my opinion, even though it isn't quite as fast because it is passively cooled, is easily fast enough that I've never noticed it feeling "slow", has good driver support in mainline Linux and Mesa (which took a few years to be fully worked out, but is there now), and it's readily available for a good price (on eBay).

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Re:I replaced Windows with Linux and everything's going great by oliwarner on Saturday January 10, 2026 @01:17PM (#46568375)

Have you managed to get sleep states to work? I'd love mine but it never sleeps properly.

Ubuntu but I'd change for sleep.

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Re:I replaced Windows with Linux and everything's going great by Rayosay on Saturday January 10, 2026 @09:23PM (#46572123)

I haven't really played around with that much, sorry. I don't typically use sleep on my laptops. I prefer to either hibernate or just shutdown and start up again when I need it.

I'd guess that the X13s hardware support in Ubuntu is likely as good as Debian, and switching probably wouldn't help you much. I have noticed that newer kernel versions (notably 6.12 and later) and the latest firmware (as of sometime last year) really fixed a lot of little issues for the X13s. That probably makes a bigger difference than the distro. I'd check to see which versions you're using.

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Re:I replaced Windows with Linux and everything's going great by zekrioca on Sunday January 11, 2026 @12:02AM (#46572828)

It seems this laptop is not available any longer. Are there any ARM alternatives you are aware of?

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Re:I replaced Windows with Linux and everything's going great by Rayosay on Monday January 12, 2026 @12:30AM (#46584454)

I'm hoping that the new Snapdragon X2 Elite based laptops coming out this year will beat it. Qualcomm seems to have been trying to upstream driver support for them earlier than the X1. Then it's up to what kinds of laptops OEMs offer with them.

Personally I'd still just get a used ThinkPad X13s Gen 1 on eBay at this point if I were going to buy another one today because they're available for around $400, and I don't see anything better that's passively cooled, with great battery life, and great Linux support available at the moment. I hope there will be a better, faster alternative in the near future. I'd gladly upgrade.

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