Review of Lenovo T480s

[MurphCID]

Some may ask what is the end point for this laptop: My answer there is none. I plan on playing with distros till I have explored enough to satisfy my need to explore. Then I might try FreeBSD. Right now I am awaiting Mageia 9 with a newer kernel which seems to be the issue for some of these distros. Mageia "feels" like good old Mandrake Linux. I will never install Mint 20/21 on this laptop since I have several others running this distro. I discovered that batteries from Lenovo are available on Amazon, and they can be installed by Best Buy Geek Squad if necessary. I will most likely get a new battery just in case.

Home so I will write more on this laptop:

MX Linux XFCE AHS: This version works very well, 5.16 kernel, and based on Debian, which means it is solid. Has a Conky pre-configured and pre-installed. I rather like the one that is there, but would like to change the colors a bit. Synaptic package manager is present, along with Flatpak support. Their store/app center is bare bones, but works well. Also they have a direct link to Google Chrome, which is very nice for those of us who use that browser. I could see long term use with this distro as a possibility.

MX Linux KDE: 5.10 kernel, and it kept losing the wifi connection upon reboot forcing me to put in the wifi password and re-log in each time I restarted the laptop. Pretty, but the XFCE version worked better with the 5.16 kernel. KDE is certainly pretty though. There is something to be said about QT vice GTK.

POP!_OS 22.04 GNOME (gag): solid, stable, works fast and well. It takes the best part of Ubuntu, and then removes the cruft, and adds value. It is however, a GNOME focused distro despite you being able to add other DEs on it. The ram usage is higher than on other DEs by about 500 mb, which is not really an issue since I have 24gb of RAM on this laptop. Kernel is 5.18 and works amazingly well. There are some choices made here that just are not my cup of tea, but over all I can see where this would be the preferred distro over plain Ubuntu. You cannot change colors, you are stuck with blue. Granted it is a soothing blue, but what if I want red or purple? There is no easy way to change icon colors. The POP!_OS control center is pretty extensive, you just are stuck with the Gnome/POP colors.

LMDE 5: Perfect. Works great, Cinnamon is the way to go. No wifi issues, which is so odd since Mageia 8 has the same 5.10 kernel, and it has wifi issues. Could be a firmware issue as well.

Mageia 8: Look and feel is good on KDE Plasma, lots of software choices, Fedora type installer which is a bit more confusing than the Mint installer on either 20 or LMDE 5. Users are added, and you have to go in and manually add them to the wheel group. It is more Linux-server like in some ways. But it also feels like the good old Mandrake Linux DNA is still there. It is a capable distro and you can also add Cinnamon I just discovered. Perhaps this is the "fedora like" distro to try? DNF and URPMI for adding updates. I can tell that it is certainly a Red Hat/Fedora base.

Fedora 36 KDE: Some issues with installation (installer is confusing), Update manager did not want to work right, and WIFI issue, in that it kept losing the wifi connection with each reboot like the MX KDE installation. I did not use the Fedora 36 GNOME since I generally dislike Gnome. If I am going to use a Fedora based distro it will most likely be Mageia.

Up on deck: FreeBSD (at some point), Manjaro, Endeavor OS, and possibly, maybe Debian-testing. I have no desire to install Arch or Slackware since I neither need nor want the frustration of having to basically build from scratch, and never know if dependency hell is waiting on me around the corner. Been there, Done That, and have no desire to ever fight that battle again.

As a laptop the T480s is light, has a great keyboard, fast NVME drive, good amount of RAM, solid feel, and collects fingerprints, lots of fingerprints. Keys on the keyboard get the "Lenovo shine" due to collection of finger oil. I have to use cleaner pretty often to clean up this issue. Screen is decent, but not in the same class as either the HP Dev One, or the Lemur Pro. The keyboard is second only to the HP Dev One after quite a bit of use. Depending on the distro, wifi is either really great, or iffy. I think that the kernel with proper drivers for the wifi card is something you have to pay a great deal of attention to with this laptop. All the Mint and POP distros work perfectly, as does the AHS version of MX Linux.

Someone said on the forum, why test distros, looking for the "perfect one", I already have a perfect distro for me, and that is Mint (regular and LMDE), but the search for knowledge and stretching the limits must be acknowledged. I want to see what is beyond that other hill once I get to the top of the one in front of me. As a "beater" laptop, the T480s is perfect for climbing those hills. I will not as a practical course install my email on it since I am only going to be using it as a testing device.

For those who follow and enjoyed this, thank you, for those who think I am wasting electrons, and don't care, well, thanks for reading it anyway.

[MurphCID]

Mageia 8 was re-installed, and it is not for newbies, it does require some Linux knowledge since they do not have everything ready to go like Mint. You have to manually add a user and then add them to the wheel group. Also you have to enable certain things. But the deal breaker this time was the inability to install the latest Libre Office from their repositories, it showed, but could not be installed. You have to stay on 7.0 rather than the current. Also flatpak support was not enabled as in Mint. I am sure I could find it and install it but too much of a hassle right now. Initially it did not find the wifi card, but after I downloaded some updates via ethernet it found the wifi card. This could be an issue if you do not have ethernet. I gave it a longer trial this time, and found more issues than last time. I really wanted to love this distro, but alas, it was not to be.

So to get the system up and running, I re-installed LMDE 5 on it, and things are working great, no issues, not glitches, no requirement to configure anything to make things work right. As with all Mint installations, I installed it, and had it completely configured within 30 minutes. And that includes installing themes and getting that set up. Software was a breeze with flatpaks of Libreoffice and Thunderbird quickly installed.

So I will play around with this for a while, and then probably try Manjaro or Endeavor OS in the next couple of weeks.

Again, thanks for reading this long diatribe.

[MurphCID]

Mint 21 is working great on the T480s. Installed with no issues, had it up and totally configured, files installed, and ready to rock and roll in less than 45 minutes (it took longer since I feel bad).

[Lady Fitzgerald]

Mint 21 is working great on the T480s. Installed with no issues, had it up and totally configured, files installed, and ready to rock and roll in less than 45 minutes (it took longer since I feel bad).

I'm jealous. I have my Mint 19.3 so loaded with programs and so heavily modified, it would take at least a week for me to get 21 installed and tweaked, even with the notes I took while modifying.

[MurphCID]

Mint 21 is working great on the T480s. Installed with no issues, had it up and totally configured, files installed, and ready to rock and roll in less than 45 minutes (it took longer since I feel bad).

I'm jealous. I have my Mint 19.3 so loaded with programs and so heavily modified, it would take at least a week for me to get 21 installed and tweaked, even with the notes I took while modifying.

I don't have near the work into mine as you do in yours, mine are for the most part pretty basic installations. The only PITA is getting email back up and running. But other than that since I don't do too terribly much, it is not bad.

[antikythera]

The only PITA is getting email back up and running.

Do you use Thunderbird? if so, it's easy. take a copy of .thunderbird and .cache/thunderbird from your /home beforehand. Put those back after the clean install before running Thunderbird and hey presto, no config to do.

[Lady Fitzgerald]

The only PITA is getting email back up and running.

Do you use Thunderbird? if so, it's easy. take a copy of .thunderbird and .cache/thunderbird from your /home beforehand. Put those back after the clean install before running Thunderbird and hey presto, no config to do.

You can use Aptik for a lot of that (it doesn't work with every program).

[MurphCID]

The only PITA is getting email back up and running.

Do you use Thunderbird? if so, it's easy. take a copy of .thunderbird and .cache/thunderbird from your /home beforehand. Put those back after the clean install before running Thunderbird and hey presto, no config to do.

Brilliant! Thanks. Same to you Lady F!

[MurphCID]

Also I love the new Bluetooth app. When I turn it off, it stays off! Even after a reboot. This is very nice.

[MurphCID]

Ok, update for Mint 21, really stable and solid. Next distro will be Mageia 9 as soon as it releases. Then I might go for some flavor of Arch, or maybe not. Mint 21 is really working well on this device. Battery is 79% capacity, so I will order a new one and get Best Buy Geek Squad to install it. Once that is done, it should be just like a new machine. It is my OCD in regards to the battery, I want a new one just so that I can be the one to run it down.

[MurphCID]

I just downloaded Manjaro 21.3.6 KDE and Cinnamon. I will try it when I get a chance. The Spouse Unit has me busy today, very busy. I plus with the A/C out in the house, it is just too darn hot to even think. I am not sure which one (KDE or Cinnamon) I will install first. Mint 21 is super stable, and functional on this system. So far it is the best distro I have put on this laptop.

UPDATE:
Manjaro 21.3 Cinnamon is being installed, and I will take this out on a road trip with me today. So I shall see how things go. Apparently Manjaro Cinnamon is 5.2 but has an update to 5.4 available. I will install that. It looks nice, and we shall see how it goes. Kernel is 5.15 which has been great on my other laptops.

Updated, and so far stable. But boot takes longer than in Mint, and shutdown about the same. System completely updated, so we shall see. Cinnamon is 5.4 at this time. It keeps offering the 5.19 kernel, but I will hold off on that one for a while.

[MurphCID]

Manjaro Cinnamon looks really good on this laptop now that it has been updated to the latest and greatest. The biggest issue is command line syntax. In Mint (or any normal distro), I type Sudo apt install xxxxx and it works. In Fedora or Mageia I type sudo dnf install xxxx and it works. In Manjaro I have to type something like sudo OhGreatMaster of Arch star wars unobtainium Pacman -Syu XAY!$(* the 9th power! and just maybe it will work presuming I did not miss a command to the Arch gods. Command syntax is just wierd. I took that laptop yesterday on the trip to Corpus Christi for a family event, but never got an opportunity to fire it up, and by the time we got back last night it was too late, and I was tired.

So today while I wait on the A/C repair people will be the time of testing on the T480s.

UPDATE: Battery life shows 95% and 7 hours left with Power management and TLP running. That is pretty decent over all.

Found a glitch, it would not accept my password to uninstall/install software. I had to reboot to re-set this issue. Manjaro has bleeding edge packages, and such, which are nice, as long as they work. It had an older version of Libreoffice which I removed and installed the latest and greatest. Also Chrome instead of Vivaldi.

Updates are pretty fast, and I have enabled the AUR for packages. I do not see flatpak support on this edition of Manjaro compared to the last one. Battery and power seems to be pretty well controlled on this version of Manjaro. So the issue will be long term since last time after about six weeks lots of glitches and issues started arising.

[MurphCID]

A couple of glitches, so I said to heck with it and went back to Mint 21. It just works.

Update: Its funny, no matter what I install, Mint just seems to work properly, and well with any laptop i own. Right now on the T480s, it just runs superbly, with no issues. Battery life is good, if not exceptional, compared to the Lemur Pro, but also there are none of the little annoyances of the larger Darter Pro. I cannot deny, I love Mint Linux.

[antikythera]

In Manjaro I have to type something like sudo OhGreatMaster of Arch star wars unobtainium Pacman -Syu XAY!$(* the 9th power! and just maybe it will work presuming I did not miss a command to the Arch gods. Command syntax is just wierd. I took that laptop yesterday on the trip to Corpus Christi for a family event, but never got an opportunity to fire it up, and by the time we got back last night it was too late, and I was tired.

invaluable resource, covers all distribution package manager commands - https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Pacman/Rosetta

pacman is confusing when you first start using it, no denying that. All the command switches are too similar

[MurphCID]

In Manjaro I have to type something like sudo OhGreatMaster of Arch star wars unobtainium Pacman -Syu XAY!$(* the 9th power! and just maybe it will work presuming I did not miss a command to the Arch gods. Command syntax is just wierd. I took that laptop yesterday on the trip to Corpus Christi for a family event, but never got an opportunity to fire it up, and by the time we got back last night it was too late, and I was tired.

invaluable resource, covers all distribution package manager commands - https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Pacman/Rosetta

pacman is confusing when you first start using it, no denying that. All the command switches are too similar

Thanks! They are indeed too similar.

I might has stayed with Manjaro if there had not been the little issues. Issues I might add that are NOT present on Linux Mint. I am still going to use this laptop to test other distros, I am just tired right now due to home issues and contractors not showing up to complete the repair jobs. At least the A/C is now working fine. Since the contractor did not show, my schedule for this day has been "f'ed" up. So I will attempt to break something on the T480s today. Maybe I will attempt something dumb (well dumb for my linux level) like trying Slackware again. Or maybe BSD. Who knows.

Since the contractor is not here, I decided to try Mageia 8 again with updates, and now the T480 will not boot! Nothing. A bunch of gibberish on the screen, and so I tried a re-installation, and nothing. Same gibberish telling me it is Intel boot agent looking for a MAC address. But the F12 boot screen for boot device showed two entries for ubuntu which were not there before. I am not sure how to clear those out. I am not sure if there is something that was added that I an unaware of in the system. The only things I did differently was plug in the ethernet cable instead of Wifi, and allow it to do updates. It could not even find GRUB, which was so bizarre. I have no idea why it was looking for a MAC address, since it was an installation on the system.

[MurphCID]

Mint 21 went back and there were no issues. Odd.

Fark it, I will stick with Mint for a while. I am tired, and not in the mood to experiment.

[shedyed]

Just curious...did you leave the Win10 in there?

[MurphCID]

Just curious...did you leave the Win10 in there?

Nope I went scortched earth on Windows. It is gone, gone, gone.

[MurphCID]

Got Mageia 8 re-installed after a couple of issues. I had to go into BIOS and tell it to use UEFI boot, otherwise it would not boot to install, just garbled the screen. Had to keep installing the USB drive to update software which was odd. Cinnamon is old, I mean old 4.8 in Mageia. Plasma works ok. Had some issues with sudo efibootmgr where I had multiple entries for ubuntu showing. I posted that here on how to clean that out. So we shall see how Mageia works, kernel is updated to 5.15 and seems solid. Battery life is showing ok. It is interesting to use a Fedora based distro, commands are the same in terminal, just use dnf instead of apt. I will play with this for a week and see how long I will keep it before I put Mint back on.

Went into the efibootmgr and deleted three entries. Why is it storing this stuff? Got it fixed. Still confused as to why efibootmgr is keeping these entries. I cleared out 15 entries on the old Darter Pro as well.

[MurphCID]

Well Mageia has good and bad points, with installation and configuration being the very worst parts. There are a lot of very non-intuative parts of the installation that could be tweaked. It was bad enough that I almost gave up. But since I was stuck in my office since the painter was working outside of my man cave I had nowhere to go. So here are some of my thoughts so far:

Ok, so 24 hours in, and some heavy usage on the T480s with Mageia 8, Some good, some bad, some different.

The Bad:
Installation; I had to reboot a couple of times and go into BIOS to get the 64 bit EFI version to load, otherwise it would give me a locked up screen forcing a hard power off. This is the first Linux distro I have had any issue with loading. This really pissed me off, I have never had anything like this before.

Again installlation, somewhat confusing in adding myself as the "user" and then not automatically having sudo, having to manually install myself in the wheel group. Finally figured it out, there is an advanced tab in the set up when putting in a user where you can add yourself to the wheel group.

Installation where I had ethernet plugged in, and it torched the system, after installing updates. No idea what happened, but it was annoying as all get out. Not used to this, I finally got help on the Mageia forums which allowed me to get past this.

Having to constantly re-insert the USB flash drive to install software was odd, and annoying. This is the only distro I have tried where I have had to do that. And the process to disable this is very non-intuative.

The different:
Cinnamon is OLD, 4.8 vs 5.4 on the latest release. I am sure I can fix this as time goes by.
Software is a little older, not bad, but it gives stability.
Boots a little slowly compared to other distros, but not enough to be annoying.

The Good:
Terminal commands- instead of "apt" I just use "dnf" Works great. No having to relearn command syntax like in Arch based distros where you have to sacrifice animals to the Arch gods, and chant in obscure languages to do anything.

Update via CLI, I actually prefer this to the way that Debian based distros do it. More information, and it seems more efficient. Once I was shown how to disable to irritating need to re-insert the USB drive. The .rpm/dnf terminal shows more basic information on updating, and is seems better laid out this certainly shows the roots in Red Hat/Fedora.

Software update and installation via GUI, pretty nice, pretty clean, once you get used to the way they do things which is not something a Debian/Mint user is used to in any way.

UI is clean and well laid out. Except Cinnamon is OLD, OLD, OLD!

I can feel the Mandrake roots which takes me back to 1999/2000. Having been using an rpm based distro it is pretty nice and fast.

I installed Chrome via .rpm package, and it went very nicely, installed right away.

Update to the 5.15 Kernel via CLI was painless.

Stable, very stable.

Shutdown is fast and clean, no hanging shutdown.

Connection to Wifi and ethernet is solid and clear. And it keeps the WiFi after a reboot, so no more having to log back into the network.

KDE is pretty and almost too customizable.

Once I finally managed to get the bloody thing installed, connect to the network, and update things, All in all a pretty solid distribution of Red Hat/Fedora. They update roughly close to the Fedora update schedule. You can see both its Mandrake Linux and Red Hat Server roots. I would rate it as not a beginner distro but one for a more experienced user. I am pretty pleased with the command line and command line update. I will see how Mageia 9 looks, and I might play around with that for a while. In the end I always come back to Mint Linux both for stability and ease of use, and ease of installation/configuration. I do not know how many Red Hat/Fedora based distros are out there to try, but I know there is also OpenMandriva which is another Mandrake Linux fork. But it does not appear to be updated as often as Mageia.

The Mageia forums are helpful but they keep demanding you mark topics as solved for some reason. This is the gold standard of forums IMHO.