Lenovo ThinkPad X13s: The stealth Arm-powered laptop

https://www.theregister.com/2023/03/21/lenovo_thinkpad_x13s_the_stealth/

by lproven • 3 years ago

47 28 3 years ago

theregister.com

bradwood• 3 years ago

Asahi on this? Anyone?

goosedragons• 3 years ago

Asahi is specifically for Apple hardware. There has been work getting it to run Linux though:

https://www.phoronix.com/news/Ubuntu-ThinkPad-X13s-Progress

key_stroker• 3 years ago

Armbian?

lproven10• 3 years ago

Not yet, sadly.

There are Debian and Ubuntu builds for it. Both have major gotchas. I am working on it.

OpenBSD supports it, with the usual caveats of OpenBSD, e.g. no Bluetooth whatsoever.

kylehotchkiss• 3 years ago

It sounds like Microsoft almost has a chance to compete against the new Airs… and ruins it with poor OS. Is the professional edition of Windows this bad?

Once more developers target ARM, this is a nice piece of hardware to compete with the new Air which will push apple even harder to build great laptops. I’m exclusively a Mac user but welcome competition in the space again.

and paying for an office subscription? Why not just use edge on this to use 360 or Google apps online instead?

csdvrx2• 3 years ago

Is the professional edition of Windows this bad?

Windows is great! It's only with arch+hyprland I've found something that could widthstand the competition on the linux desktop

new Air which will push apple even harder to build great laptops.

Wake me up when they offer OLED + Touchscreen + ECC

darthrupert• 3 years ago

It's only with arch+hyprland

Oh wow, that is pretty.

https://hyprland.org

lproven10• 3 years ago

[Review author here]

Is the professional edition of Windows this bad?

This is the professional edition of Windows.

wtallis2• 3 years ago

We feel that the machine also needs at least one USB-A, a fold-down Ethernet socket, and a mini DisplayPort or micro-HDMI socket.

I agree that a USB-A port would be nice. Ethernet, maybe, but it's a stretch to ask for that in a thin fanless form factor. But asking for mini Display port or micro HDMI is insane. If you're going to need a dongle to connect to your monitor anyways, then using Type-C for the display output makes way more sense. DisplayPort alt mode is way more common and useful than the miniature versions of dedicated DP or HDMI ports.

temp2022account• 3 years ago

Ethernet, maybe, but it's a stretch

Same delta as the engineers who insist smartcard on laptops is optional; yes it _is_, but only for a subset of cheaper customers.

wtallis2• 3 years ago

No matter how far up the price range you go, smart card slots in a laptop remains a very niche feature. Especially since many smart card capabilities are easily handled by USB dongles like Yubikeys.

lproven10• 3 years ago

I really don't think so, no.

The X13s is only a bit slimmer than my cheap-ass work Dell, and it has one.

My £35 Raspberry Pi 4 (I got in early, OK) has not one but two mini-HDMI ports. So does my 2nd hand RP 400. It's why I own a mini-HDMI to HDFMI adaptor.

This stuff is not hard, it's not expensive, and it's not difficult. It's standard in cheap laptops.

If you only have 2 USB ports at all, using one for power and one for screen means that's it. You're out. No wired keyboard or mouse or network for you.

You can't pass a screen or charging through a generic USB 2 hub, the sort of thing most of us have lying around immediately to hand.

4 USB-C ports, and I might say OK to this: one for power, one for screen, one for network, and one with a hub with the legacy kit plugged in.

If it had plenty of ports, then OK, but it doesn't, it has two, and you can't use them both for non-USB type jobs like power or display and still use anything else.

mdaniel4• 3 years ago

13.3" WUXGA (1920 x 1200) IPS, anti-glare, 300 nits, 100% sRGB

uh-huh, I knew there was a reason I had previously dismissed this, although I will give them a high five for 32GB of LPDDR4 even if it is soldered onto the MB

lproven10• 3 years ago

The line you quote lists no less than 7 attributes of the screen: size, type, resolution, technology, finish, brightness, colour gamut.

Which is the one you call "the reason"?

mdaniel4• 3 years ago

13" is for sure getting off on the wrong foot, but 1920x1200 is for "surfing the web" or other non-serious work, to say nothing of: really?! the manufacturer couldn't even find those extra 80 lines to even make it Full HD? get outta here with that crap

I guess put another way: who do they think the target audience is for a laptop with 32GB but with a stupid resolution like 1920x1200?

jacooper• 3 years ago

Expected them to at least mention running Linux on it

lproven10• 3 years ago

I wrote the review. I did not mention that for two main reasons:

1. No mainstream current Linux distro runs on the machine yet.

2. The original plan was to review it as a Linux machine, but as someone who rarely uses Windows any more, I found the experience of running Windows on Arm to be interesting enough that there was enough to write a fairly long article on the experience of using it as a Windows machine for a Linux user.

So, the plan is that there will be a future article on what it's like to run FOSS OSes on this machine.

Incidentally, it runs WSL very well, and I have Arm Ubuntu under WSL on the machine. It's fine and very usable, and makes the problem of accidentally running x86 binaries on Windows simply go away.

However, saying that, quite a few normal Linux tools are not available in Arm versions. For instance, almost any proprietary Linux app won't have Arm versions available.

snvzz• 3 years ago

No point adopting this, when we know (RISC-V org CTO talks in December's summit) that Microsoft is working on Windows RISC-V support.

I see no future for ARM powered laptops. They'll disappear before they reach any significant adoption.

lockhouse• 3 years ago

Maybe for Windows and Linux.

Apple’s bet it’s future on ARM.

hdjrjrjdjdhrh• 3 years ago

has it? Apple has used many different architectures over the lifetime of the company. in the last 20 years it has transitioned from powepc to x86 to ARM.... I do think it could change again if neccessary....

Edit:spelling and logical consistency

lproven10• 3 years ago

This thing is a fast little computer. No it's not Apple M1 quick but it's only about 20% slower and you can't run Windows natively on an M1. (And it has a nicer pair of pointing devices than any Apple laptop.)

RISC-V is dog slow. The absolutely top-end RISC-V kit is slower than a Raspberry Pi 3 was a decade ago, and the Pi3 was £25 and it had 4 cores, and it can run about 6-7 OSes natively. Not Linux distros, different OSes: Linux, all the BSDs, Plan 9, Inferno, RISC OS.

If you were to buy one of these things -- and I wrote the review and I am not recommending it, not at this price -- you would probably wear it out and resell it off and buy the next gen device, and wear that one out in turn -- before any RISC-V laptop with this kind of performance comes on the market at any price.

Don't kid yourself.

Lenovo ThinkPad X13s: The stealth Arm-powered laptop

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