Moving House: Part 1

I have used ThinkPads since getting my second laptop to run Linux on in about 2015. The first laptop was a Fujitsu, (one of the first models to come with an AMD64 processor rather than the 32-bit x86, which by then were showing their age) - which I loved, but which came to a premature end when I poured coffee on it. (By contrast, I once poured beer on a ThinkPad, and it survived.) There followed a long hiatus when I didn't have a laptop at all, although at one point I did acquire an MSI netbook running SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop out of the box. Before and after that first Fujitsu laptop, I had been running Linux since about 1997 on a variety of desktops, and I'm also that rare Linux user who happens to love both Macs and MacOS (or however they're capitalising it this week), even though I wish they weren't so proprietary (and in some, though not all, cases, expensive). 

Nevertheless, I recognise that, like the scores of high-end workstation and home computer manufacturers in the eighties, and minicomputer and mainframe manufacturers before them, it's the proprietary nature of Apple devices which allows them to stand out of the crowd, especially on the software side - and without Apple, we might still all be using devices that look like this, or this. We're lucky that Apple survived, and as much as us old-school Linux types might hate to admit it, we have Microsoft to thank for that (in part). 

ThinkPads' legendary reliability, toughness, and suitability for Linux is what drew me to them, and I have since owned five ThinkPads - all second-hand barring the first, a low range E-Series E550, which ThinkPad connoisseurs will recognise as having a 15-inch screen, as signified by the second 5 in the model number. The remainder have all been second-hand, older top-of-the-range-when-new T-series ThinkPads with 14-inch screens, which as a short, and disabled, person is more practical for me because they are easier to carry. (And as I'm accident prone, they're also good because they're pretty tough, as evidenced by the beer incident above.)

They're not indestructible, however. A few days ago, I managed to drop my ThinkPad T540s, resulting in the new (replacement) battery not registering at all, and the old one registering, but apparently not charging. The laptop and batteries are currently in Laptop Hospital (aka my brother-in-law's house, as he's much more capable with his hands than I am) waiting to be fixed. I still had my old T440p, which if I'm honest I should have sold a year ago, but going back to that machine, with its relatively poor screen, and its spinning rust instead of an SSD, sent me on the look out for a new(-to me) laptop. (Please don't spam me by telling me how easy it is to replace this or that on a laptop by opening it up - it may very well be the easiest thing in the world to you, but though I'm happily typing this, it's almost certainly easier for you, if you've done it successfully once, than it ever will be for me, and I'd rather get someone else to do it - and pay them, if necessary - than risk breaking something by trying to do it myself.)

Incidentally, I've never been one of those people wedded to ThinkPads of yesteryear - I had one once, with a 4:3 screen and full-travel keyboard, but after a while they simply become impractical, as software inevitably gets more resource hungry. Firefox these days can take up 50MB - about 2 1/2 times the size of *the entire hard drive* my parents bought me to go with my first Amiga - and memory and processor requirements don't by any means fail to keep up, either.

I was aware of, and had always been impressed by, Dell hardware in the past* and was pleased by their commitment to Linux (even if it's not always easy to hunt down their Linux offerings, and buying a Linux laptop new from them isn't simply a case of picking a random model and specifying Linux instead of Windows), although in this case, as I was buying second-hand from eBay I wouldn't be rewarding Dell directly for their Linux chops. *Like most, if not all, manufacturers, including Apple, they have made some turkeys, though in Apple's case, since they don't go for the low end of the market, the turkeys tend to be unintentional rather than an artefact of using low-end components.) And frankly, I wanted to broaden my horizons and see what life was like outside of built-like-a-brick-outhouse-for-Linux-compatibility-land. So, I set about scouring eBay for deals. 

I ended up plumping for this beauty (generic picture available here if that listing ever disappears), which suited my needs (more geared to masses of high-speed storage, in case I ever want to dual boot Linux and Linux or, perhaps, even Windows, than to blazing fast speeds for running games, compiling programs, or encoding video), and on which, despite what the photos in the eBay listing might have you believe, the cosmetic damage ends up being hardly noticeable, unless you're the kind of person who stares at laptop corners (is anyone?). I've also purchased a case, similar to the one I have for my MacBook Air, in case ultrabook-meets-accident-prone-baby-elephant-in-toyshop again.

So, having won said laptop in auction (I don't use eBay much, but when I do, I seem to be surprisingly good at outbidding people manually at the last minute; either that, or people just aren't that interested in what  I'm buying), I settled down to wait for the item to come to me, by Thursday this week (tomorrow, at the time of writing). Fantastic - the seller posted it late on Sunday night - or at least, that's when eBay told me he'd posted it - and it arrived at my chosen pick-up point way ahead of schedule, Tuesday (yesterday at time of writing). Fortunately, I had a day off, so I set off to pick it up, brought it home, and set to work wiping that Windows crap off and installing Linux: Twenty-four years in as a Linux users, and I'm still a chronic distro-hopper, so I might change my mind next week, but this week my distro of choice is the always excellent - and thanks to the new Yaru theme, these days none-too-shabby, Ubuntu MATE.

At some point, and I forget why, I had to use Windows Explorer, bringing me into contact for the first time in a long time with what I shall only describe - given that I'm trying to keep this blog family-friendly - as *that blessed ribbon*. It reminded me instantly of why I dislike Windows not only because its manufacturer still has 80%-90% of the desktop market - depending on where you live and who you ask - but also because it's such a counter-intuitive pain to use at times. Linux has its fair share of that - hello, GNOME - but although some consider it a weakness, the fact that Linux lacks a standard, you-will-use-this-or-else desktop saves us the pain of all having to use something we don't like, unless - heaven forbid - all the desktop environments suddenly decide to go down the same path on something. 

Windows 11 doesn't look like it's going to be different from previous versions in that regard, and almost certainly not better, though perhaps we should be thankful that, unless you're currently running hardware that doesn't meet its ridiculous system requirements, Windows 11 doesn't actually look *worse*. 

Star Trek fans will be familiar with the phenomenon of the first six films - with Shatner, et al. -, which more or less consistently followed a pattern of "even-numbered film good [e.g. Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan], odd-numbered film bad [case in point, the started-well-but-ended-very-badly Star Trek V: The Final Frontier], though personally I've always had a soft spot for III. Though I don't like Windows and avoid it as much as I can (not all the time by any means, given job commitments), I've always considered it to have settled into that kind of cadence since at least Windows 95 - 95 good, 98 - the version that was so frustrating it drove me to Linux - bad; 98SE good; Millennium Edition bad, and so on. Like the Star  Trek films after 6, the versions of Windows before 95 (bad; bad; bad; good) break the pattern.

Speaking of Bad: somewhat unconventionally, let's get that out of the way first, so that we can quickly move on to the Good, and then the point of this (already rather rambly) post - the Ugly.

The Bad

1. Battery life. Now, bear in mind this is a 6-year-old laptop at this point, so this does not necessarily reflect the battery life you would get if you went out (or online) and bought a Dell XPS new today - or at least, I hope not. With moderate usage (typing this blog, browsing the web for links and with an email reader, a couple of terminal windows, a file manager, and a browser with 14 tabs open), I'd say you get 2 1/2 hours tops, so eventually, I will probably replace this battery - another job for the long-suffering brother-in-law, since it's internal).

2. The damage to the corners - but again, that's minimal and doesn't affect functionality.

3. I had considered dual-booting with Windows, in case I ever need it, though I rarely do, since I don't use my personal laptops for work, and the laptops I buy don't tend to be (or need to be) gaming powerhouses, but I found that gparted could not resize the Windows partition, since it was encrypted. In retrospect, I perhaps could have found a tool that would have done it, but I just wanted Linux on the thing, don't really have a use for Windows, and so I just zorched it and installed Ubuntu MATE on it. So far, so good. 

The Good

1. Oh man, that SCREEN! Whatever else they may be beloved for, ThinkPads are not known for the quality of their screens. Arguably they don't need to be - they started out as notebooks for businesspeople, still filling that niche today, and so they don't need to appeal to people who want to game or watch 4K video on a screen on their lap. I have had ThinkPads with ok (at the time, I thought, good) screens, and some with downright awful screens - the T440p that's now sitting beside me is just on the right side of not being "downright awful"; I've found I've always had to tweak font settings in Linux in the past - going from the normal 96 dpi on ThinkPads to something like 144 - to get something usable. That's something I've always blamed on Linux, and it's true not only that perhaps Windows is better at displaying fonts on a given screen, but also that Fedora's font handling (ironically, until Fedora 34 which is currently out) has historically been among the worst I've seen on Linux, but load up this 4K baby and *no font adjustment needed*. It really is bright and beautiful.

A brief note [o.k., it turned out to be not that brief--Ed.] here on keyboards: the other thing people love about ThinkPads - especially ThinkPads before about 2013: model numbers with 3 as the second digit -  are the keyboards. I've been spoilt by ThinkPad and Mac keyboards - we'll politely ignore the reportedly terrible butterfly keyboards, since although I used one once I've never actually owned one - and although I wouldn't say the Dell is as good as a ThinkPad, it's perfectly usable. For context, on my first proper day in my current job, I immediately swapped out the keyboard provided with my PC, which I have not inaccurately described as "possibly the worst keyboard I have used since the ZX Spectrum, and maybe not that good" - for another. Nothing fancy, mind, but definitely better.

Unlike Mac keyboards - and this WILL annoy you, if you're both British and use both Macs and PCs - also, they use what is now considered the standard layout - less of a problem where the Command and Option keys are concerned, and more a function of the fact that on British Mac keyboards, the " and @ symbols are reversed, and are placed where they would be on American keyboards. To add insult to injury, not only did even Commodore manage to get this right, but I'm pretty sure I've also seen Apple II keyboards with " and @ in the right places for Britain. Come on, Apple! 

So, in summary - great screen, nice keyboard, poor battery life (which we can forgive given the age of the device), no ability to resize the Windows partition (which we will put down to Redmond/Windows being awkward, as usual, and not count against the Dell specifically). 

Pause for breath - I'll see you in Part 2.