OpenBSD on the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Nano

https://jcs.org/2021/01/27/x1nano

by harporoeder • 5 years ago

249 164 5 years ago

Jkvngt6• 5 years ago

OpenBSD just gets better every day. Kudos to the developers, it’s nice to have an alternative to Linux which works so well on the desktop.

maxerickson4• 5 years ago

Today I learned that Lenovo touchpads have a mechanical click mechanism. After ~2 years.

Jkvngt6• 5 years ago

Who would really notice when the TrackPoint is so much better?

maxerickson4• 5 years ago

I mostly use a bluetooth mouse. I don't think I'm bothered by the pause when it wakes up from sleeping, and other than that it works great, no dropouts or whatever.

If I'm not using the mouse I double tap for click+hold.

denimnerd42• 5 years ago

I love the trackpoint but it's an RSI creating machine in my experience.

adultSwim4• 5 years ago

I strongly support a fixed touchpad. Tap to click is so much better than constant "thunking"

maxerickson4• 5 years ago

The one on my X1 G6 is pretty stiff, that's why I never noticed it. I only ever tap for click and double tap for click+hold.

kiwijamo• 5 years ago

Interesting, it was the first thing I checked. Loved that feature on the MacBooks so was very happy my X1 Carbon 5th Gen had it.

gcblkjaidfj3• 5 years ago

Suspend / resume No The firmware does not support ACPI S3 suspend.

Lol at the state of hardware.

cwlb• 5 years ago

for real! some later versions of the X1C have had S3 patched in but when the X1C6 was first released this was a surprise to me. Apparently Windows is moving towards S1-only and that gets reflected in firmwares originally designed for windows computers.

For the uninitiated, without S3 closing the laptop lid will either continue to drain battery pretty damned quickly (S1) OR cause the OS to take much longer to resume completely from disk (S4 aka hibernate). As SSDs get bigger/faster/cheaper in comparison to RAM, S4 will start to seem more equivalent, but to make this sensible on an ultrabook you might want to opt for that 1+TB NVME so you can hibernate on lid-shut without eating a significant fraction of your disk on swap.

p_l• 5 years ago

The requirement for certification with S1 aka Modern Standby btw requires that proper S1 implementation draws same or less power than S3, iirc.

But that requires pretty heavy power saving code

maxerickson4• 5 years ago

16 GB of RAM seems fine even on a 256 GB disk.

(It's plenty at that point, but hardly seems to be the yes/no on the whole deal)

greggyb• 5 years ago

Note for this laptop, specifically, it maxes out at 16GB RAM, and it's soldered, so that is a hard cap. That'd take a 256GB SSD down to 240GB after swap. I don't think it's a big concern for this machine, though certainly could be for some mobile workstation with much more RAM.

neurobashing2• 5 years ago

kidding aside, I'm opinionated: if it doesn't suspend/resume, it's not a laptop.

mjg59• 5 years ago

It suspends/resumes just fine as long as your OS supports it. The issue is that you need much better runtime power management since it's now up to the OS to put parts in a low power state rather than relying on the firmware to do it.

gcblkjaidfj3• 5 years ago

There's the opposite. If it doesn't disable suspend, it is not a work computer.

my work macbook will close all the network connections/compile/rendering when i close the lid to walk from meeting to meeting (or used to. seems like the universe closed this bug as 'WONT FIX')

I have no decent UX to disable that when i need my network connections/compile time/render time/etc... It's either sleep enabled and i can't risk touching the lid, or complicated arcane steps to break sleep and allow me to carry it.

19962• 5 years ago

No, it's a software problem.

First, try disabling TPM (because of a TXT attack from S3), cf https://forums.freebsd.org/threads/acpi-entering-s3-cant-wak... and https://www.darkreading.com/vulnerabilities---threats/new-at...

If S3 is not supported, it is usually due to laziness, to prevent an ACPI GPE storm and causing wakeups in S0ix. People who glue together BIOS code and ACPI tables are not the best and the brightest: instead of using a context dependent EC mask, they simply disable the GPE altogether.

You can add that back with a DSDT patch: all you need is a vector for PRW (power resource wake), making sure the GPE for EC wake interrupt is not masked.

gattr• 5 years ago

It's the same for the recent Dell laptops, unfortunately [1].

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25940172

lifeisstillgood• 5 years ago

Waaaaay back when, I had a plan to turn my months long tweaking FreeBSD (6?) on my laptop into becoming a reseller of laptops with BSD pre-installed (this was back when Dell did not ship anything with linux on, and laptops still had some kind of margin).

Like most of my ideas it withered on the vine of bills and rent but every time I look at an Apple Mac there is still a twinge that says "Lenovo makes 100,000 laptops with exactly same components for huge corporate A and B, so there is room to tack on 1,000 more to keep the hardware base stable and release a run of perfectly stable machines, that just work.

Or ... frankly my dell refurbished laptop runs three flavours of linux quite fine thank you. maybe I just cannot go back to BSD ... which is a shame.

blhack2• 5 years ago

OpenBSD is just so good. There's no BS. Everything just either works, or it isn't supported.

dbtc• 5 years ago

I see some similarity, in terms of ruthlessly good design, to the Jobsian Apple era

thomashabets2• 5 years ago

Well, I wouldn't go that far. Last time I tried OpenBSD I ran into several bugs.

One reproducible freeze, one sloppy coding (ksh), and some leftover cruft in the kernel.

Previous times I've used OpenBSD I've encountered bugs in what feels like any place I've looked. MPLS, time parsing in libc, …

But it's definitely more "if it exists, it works" than the Lennartware that's been taking over Linux for the last several years.

Some thoughts from 2019: https://blog.habets.se/2019/10/OpenBSD-in-2019.html

LeoPanthera3• 5 years ago

I know that OpenBSD is "opinionated" but I can't really accept that their opinion on bluetooth is "we don't support bluetooth", which otherwise seems essential, at least to me, for any mobile device.

bluedays• 5 years ago

It seems like it does though?

https://man.openbsd.org/OpenBSD-5.5/bluetooth.4

I'm not sure why the article says it doesn't support bluetooth.

yjftsjthsd-h• 5 years ago

Notice that that's for OpenBSD 5.5; it was removed.

spijdar3• 5 years ago

That's the man page for OpenBSD 5.5.

Bump 5.5 up to any higher number and you'll get "not found". Bluetooth was removed around ~2014 in OpenBSD.

dddddaviddddd• 5 years ago

OpenBSD 5.5 was released in May 2014. The Bluetooth stack was removed later that year: http://undeadly.org/cgi?action=article&sid=20140729070721

liveranga• 5 years ago

It's not really philosophical, they just weren't happy with the Bluetooth stack they had (originally from netbsd I think) and no-one has written a new one yet.

https://github.com/openbsd/src/commit/b8042ed98e3e7a691133b4...

LeoPanthera3• 5 years ago

It was removed in 2014! At this point, "not yet" surely must mean "we don't want it".

haecceity• 5 years ago

What's wrong with bluetoothd?

ThinkBeat4• 5 years ago

I think it is better to leave it out until there is a solid implementation of it.

Saves everyone a lot of frustration.

abrowne• 5 years ago

At least to you maybe, but I only use Bluetooth on my laptop for playing music to a speaker, which could I could replace with a long cable if I really wanted to (or some other kind of network player). On my phone, I first intentionally enabled bluetooth recently for my state's Covid tracing app.

jancsika• 5 years ago

I think their opinion is rather liberal-- simply, "Don't attempt to maintain dumpster fires, and be open source."

It's an important commentary on bluetooth that it cannot be included in such a system. In that sense OpenBSD is a valuable filter, even if that makes it impractical to run on a laptop for your use case.

mixmastamyk2• 5 years ago

Really? I've never used bluetooth, one of the first things I turn off in any device I come across. I do use wifi daily however.

noisy_boy• 5 years ago

With wireless headphones / earbuds becoming quite common, bluetooth for a laptop is less "optional" than it used to be.

colechristensen• 5 years ago

If the opinion is “don’t support wildly insecure things” I’m happy that somebody out there has that opinion. OpenBSD, its quality/security opinions, and the consequences aren’t for everyone, but they certainly don’t have to be.

And it’s a laptop, lots of people almost never use bluetooth on a laptop. You might, I do sometimes, but it’s hardly essential.

LeoPanthera3• 5 years ago

I think the claim that bluetooth is "wildly insecure" needs justification.

adultSwim4• 5 years ago

This is why Qubes doesn't support Bluetooth. It breaks the virtualization security boundaries.

Jkvngt6• 5 years ago

Bluetooth has unfixable security risks baked into the protocol, it's ideal for OpenBSD to ignore it.

mikem170• 5 years ago

I bought a little hardware bluetooth usb transceiver [0], I plug it in when I want the default sound to come out my usb speakers, it sticks out about a centimeter.

I'm happy to make this trade-off, given how consistent and reliable OpenBSD is. Not a deal breaker for me.

[0] https://amzn.com/B00ZYYPFHU

asveikau2• 5 years ago

I have an x1 6th gen running freebsd. I am a little disappointed with how it's been falling apart. SSD failed early last year. Lost contact with a usb c port a few months after that. LCD has a vertical gray line. Some paint started chipping off around the trackpad.

I will probably replace it with another X1 because I am a masochist. But I do wish it were a bit more sturdy. Other than that, I like the size and hardware support.

pulse7• 5 years ago

All this is very unlikely for a ThinkPad which can be bought with a 5 year warranty and is military-grade tested. Before buying one I have spoken with a licensed service partner in Frankfurt, Germany and he told me, they rarely get any ThinkPads to repair but they constantly get other Lenovo brands to repair. And this is Frankfurt, where you will see only ThinkPads as business laptops in banks...

asveikau2• 5 years ago

I googled some of these issues as I faced them and I often found others hitting the same.

It seems like the particular model of SSD I got had a lot of issues for many users. The USB C port coming loose is also something I found other people facing.

Maybe X1 Carbon is more shoddy or fragile than other lines.

ngngngng• 5 years ago

The display on my 6th gen has developed flickering issues after only a year and half of light usage. I think the quality on these has gone down a lot recently.

Jkvngt6• 5 years ago

I bought a T25 specifically for the keyboard, the rubberized coating is already wearing off on the palm rest, the screen has this whitish spot that’s brighter than any other part of the screen now, and I found out the stupid thing is held together by clips. I feel like a complete moron.

GekkePrutser2• 5 years ago

That really long bendy heatpipe looks so weird. Not clean.. Irksome :P. Might consider this machine anyway though.

webmobdev8• 5 years ago

Another laptop with soldered RAM = built-in planned obsolescence.

More consumers need to be made aware of this and everyone should boycott such products. Especially for the price they are paying ($1000+ for this model). If we just give in without protesting about it we are just giving up our rights to repair our devices.

0x7373682• 5 years ago

Shame that you're getting downvoted on HN for such views - most consumers don't care about devices designed to be long-lasting and if the technical population doesn't too then it's totally a lost cause.

I've recently purchased a used T530, which was the last model to feature a removable battery, removable CPU, unsoldered RAM, etc etc(for the pedants - yes, later models still had some of these features, but none of them had all of them). It's a fantastic machine that runs everyday tasks without a hitch and with having the option to easily repair it I hope it will last at least another 10 years. The only disadvantage I have compared to the newer T490 model that I use is that it's about 1kg heavier.

I think it's reasonable that some consumers would prefer a lighter and thinner machine, even if that includes sacrificing modularity/repairibility, but I doubt those make up the majority and most are just apathetic and willing to go the way of disposable consumerism that corporations are pushing to drive profits further.

spijdar3• 5 years ago

I think you and GP are conflating "repairability" with "upgradability".

The only two components in a laptop that are essentially guaranteed to fail in a short-ish timeframe are flash storage and the batteries. As long as these two are replaceable, I think a device is reasonably "repairable".

While there's a definite chance of the CPU and memory etc. failing, I think for most people the trade-off in size and weight to accommodate sockets aren't worth it from a repairability perspective.

That's where I draw my line, anyway. Flash storage and batteries are essentially guaranteed to fail in 5-10 years of use, and absolutely need to be replaceable. As long as the build quality is decent, the rest can be integrated.

tomjen32• 5 years ago

Please, all laptops have a limit on how much RAM you can put into them, even if they physically can handle more. My old thinkpad maxes out at 8gb, even though I could change the stick to a 16 or 32gb.

I don't want to repair my device. I don't want to upgrade my RAM, I want websites, OS and apps not to bloat. There is no reason that Facebook and Twitter don't load instantly and are extremely snappy other than that they can.

If you want upgradeable machines, buy a desktop. You gave up most of the upgradeabliity when you brought a laptop.

Stratoscope4• 5 years ago

My old thinkpad maxes out at 8gb, even though I could change the stick to a 16 or 32gb.

I don't know what model of ThinkPad you have, but on most of them for at least the last 10 years, if the RAM is the right type it will work.

ThinkPads traditionally have had PSREF and datasheets that specify the max RAM based on the modules available when they were released. But generally they will also work with larger memory modules of the same type. They just don't list them because they weren't available for testing at the time.

Which ThinkPad model do you have? Perhaps it is one that I or someone else may be familiar with.

somezero2• 5 years ago

Previously, it used to be the case that if you don’t want to repair your device or upgrade your RAM you wouldn’t have used Thinkpads, as a MacBook is better at showing you websites. Now, unfortunately, not so much.

3np4• 5 years ago

Lenovo's development really is sad - each generation has become less serviceable and maintainable, and increasingly static/locked in.

Even if you follow along models with a similar physical footprint as each series has incrementally shrunk over generations (say, compare the 2020 T14 to the t440s).

I've had enough Thinkpads that I lost counter over the years but my next laptop will be of another brand.

Hopefully I won't need a new one until one of the more open alternatives come with a decent 13-14.5" model with 2k display.

hr2016• 5 years ago

Interesting, which brand would that be? My old Thinkpad is due for replacement soon.

Al-Khwarizmi3• 5 years ago

I agree with you, but I'm locked into ThinkPads due to the trackpoint.

To me, using a trackpad or having to carry a mouse around when trackpoints exist would be a massive downgrade in comfort and usability, comparable to e.g. not having a battery.

Thus, as trackpoint uptake from other brands is almost nonexistent, I'll swallow whatever crappy decision Lenovo comes up with in new laptops. They would have to do something exaggeratedly egregious (no battery? no USB ports? That kind of thing) for me to even consider the competition.

It's sad, but as bad as it is that Lenovo makes these changes, to me it's even worse that other brands don't even bother to offer a TrackPoint in at least some of their lineup, considering that it takes negligible space and the inconvenience for people who don't use it is near zero.

TonyTrapp• 5 years ago

I'd say they are actually meandering. For example, the T460s is straight-forward to open, while the T450s had many painful plastic clips to undo. But yes, all in all the trend is pointing downwards.

tutfbhuf• 5 years ago

I think lenovo could easily solve this by selling products like the Nano AND selling modern much thicker, heavier fully repairable devices like the T430/T530. Let the customer decide what they prefer.

mtzet• 5 years ago

It's a trade-off. SMD-soldering takes up way less space, which is important in an ultra-portable. Even if it was upgradeable, it's not clear to me that the CPU/motherboard even supports more than 16GB per memory slot. Adding an additional memory slot would greatly expand the physical requirements.

Even in my many years of having desktop PC's, I think I've only once upgraded RAM separately and never upgraded the CPU without replacing the motherboard.

If you're talking repairability, than I just haven't had to replace my RAM sticks due to wear.

martiuk• 5 years ago

Do we need to develop a new format and connector for RAM? Where we can get it as low to the motherboard and the sticks of RAM as thin and small as possible?

NullPrefix3• 5 years ago

it's not clear to me that the CPU/motherboard even supports more than 16GB per memory slot

These new products are crap, to be honest.

Sandy Bridge era ThinkPads accepted 16GB. How long ago was that? Is it 10 years already? Granted, it was total, not per slot. Wasn't officially supported, but it worked. Tried personally, memtest passed, all good. IIRC W520 even took 32GB(4x8GB). Ten years of progress and ... still no progress. Who even buys this crap?

If you're talking repairability, than I just haven't had to replace my RAM sticks due to wear.

Somewhat agree with you on this point. Safe to say that if RAM works now, it will keep working. Test it after buying and you should be good. You can't scavenge soldered RAM when the device fails though.

foldr2• 5 years ago

It's also a quality control issue. You can say goodbye to reliable suspend/resume once people start adding cheap RAM sticks to their laptops. The additional parasitic capacitance doesn't help with power consumption either.

webmobdev8• 5 years ago

It's a trade-off. SMD-soldering takes up way less space, which is important in an ultra-portable.

It does make sense for some forms, but look at all the offerings of Lenovo, especially for home users - even the bigger laptops all feature soldered RAM (or even the weirder combination of soldered RAM + 1 DIMM slot at a more expensive price!).

(Then there's the other factor - unless we force them to explore upgradability in such form factors, they will continue to avoid doing so because the current option is more profitable for them).

From a consumer point of view, soldering RAM / SSD / CPU etc. to prevent easy upgrades and make it very difficult to repair takes away control from consumers on how they want to use their device. It leaves you vulnerable to price gauging and pigeon-holes your device to specific limited use-cases only (for e.g. a new recent trend now with home users is to create a "RAM disk" for heavy torrenting, to reduce the wear and tear on the SSD or HDD - obviously with limited non-upgradeable memory that 4 or 8 GB RAM will no longer be seem sufficient and even though your machine is more than capable, your options are now limited to an expensive upgrade by changing the whole motherboard with a bigger capacity of soldered RAM or buy a newer device with more RAM, hopefully upgradeable this time). Apple is a great example of the price gauging that happens to consumers when you have to depend on them for more RAM or SSD "upgrades option" when you are buying a new system.

Most of the common disparage against my post here is that 4 / 8 GB is more than enough (yeah, just like 640k was during its time /s). Perhaps most have forgotten that one of Microsoft's business model is to sell their OS bundled with the machines (OEM license). Thus, Microsoft obviously has a selfish interest to ensure the OEM's well being (which is obviously in selling more devices for more profit). And so they help them by making their OS more and more resource intensive, thus forcing its users to consider upgrading their hardware (which with soldered parts now means buying a new device). Ofcourse, hardware has outpaced software in the last decade, and with Microsoft also considering a change in its business model (renting softwares), we haven't noticed this trend in the last decade. But that's another threat we consumers have to live with.

jpetso3• 5 years ago

To add to "it's a trade-off": LPDDR4X is not replaceable and allows only 16GB max instead of 32GB for DDR4. However, LPDDR4X also requires half the voltage (0.6V vs. 1.2V) and can offer up to 4267 MT/s of transfer speed instead of DDR4's max of 3200 MT/s.

So yeah, not being able to repair/upgrade the RAM sucks balls. But if you can live without it, soldered LPDDR4X sucks less battery power and lets especially the integrated GPU do its best work. For the kind of device they're selling, it sort of seems like the right choice.

jamiesonbecker2• 5 years ago

The firmware does not support ACPI S3 suspend.

... I am so over modern Thinkpads.

adultSwim4• 5 years ago

I wish this had an Apple-style non-moveable trackpad

jzer0cool2• 5 years ago

It's been a very long time since I owned a Thinkpad, 2001-ish. To give a time frame around this time there were companies like Circuit City was busted with the rise of Fry's Electronics. I'm unsure if Best Buy's was a thing at the time. The look of the Thinkpads are still very similar to ones today, but of course very modernized to times then.

I would very much appreciate who might be able to weigh in their experience who has used both a Thinkpad and a Macbook book as primary machines. It's been a while since I last purchased a pc-based laptop and would like to explore options again. Another I was interested in the past include Alienware.

llampx3• 5 years ago

I used a MacBook, first Air and then Pro until 2018. Then I switched to ThinkPad because I had sold my MacBook pro 2015 and needed a new laptop. And the new MacBooks were not to my taste. The Thinkpad was fantastic. T470s, took care of all my needs, lots of ports, upgradeable RAM und SSD.

Recently I upgraded to a Ryzen-based Dell but it is hot and loud. I am considering going back to MacBook depending on what they release next.

jzer0cool2• 5 years ago

Wanting to upgrade to the newer Mac M Processor. Wait. Or a pc notebook. Decisions, decisions, decisions, ...

OpenBSD on the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Nano

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