IMO in a raid config, used drives are fine, especially if you have backups.

I bought a few before the prices were crazy and they havnt been on for a while but never had issues with them. Funny enough, I had more issues with the used motherboard than I did with those drives lol.

Preaching to the choir man. I ditched Windows and am better for it. No excuse for microslop to be this bad.

I think a lot of the issues people experience on windows can be mitigated by disabling certain things or as you said “neutering” it. Back when I used windows 10 as my main OS, I did a lot of modification to make it better and it was alright, but windows 11 has also experienced a lot more bugs and criticism just being generally worse. Worse resource management, less user freedom, more tracking, more ai, newer CPU requirements, and that’s all just off the top of my head.

Hell even if you want some kind of cable service, IP TV exists.

IMO no real reason to use android TV or a smart TV right now.

Me personally, I just use a Linux distro (ive used Ubuntu and popos, both have been fine) and use whatever flavor of streaming service I can access. Sometimes you’re hit with lower resolution but I’d rather that than get spied on and be fed ads by my hardware.

Ive also gone back to physical media and use a DVD player. I’m just buying series I like one by one.

This video used a combination of physical media and streaming services. They relied on waydroid and with some workarounds, it worked well for them:

https://youtu.be/nROKp0BpFek?is=GFhDrr82dCCFGcVT

As someone who is trying mint with Cinnamon, agreed. KDE just feels and looks better IMO.

Seems like a nuanced and balanced take. AI can help or hurt, makes sense to me that they dont really endorse or prohibit it right now.

Funny, I just posted about buying a t480. I wont lie and say its the latest and greatest, but its a good machine. My main reason was the Linux support, but as others mentioned, Linux runs on just about anything.

I think it would depend on the kind of software you’re developing. If you’re doing web development, I’d say you’re good, game Dev, maybe not. There are also different models with diffrent specs. Some come with 8 gigs or sometimes more, some have a TN panel or an IPS, i7 vs i5 so just be on the lookout for what specs you want/need.

I made sure to get the IPS model so no TN for me. And yea so far, seems to work well.

I’m not a fan of immutable distros tbh. I know they are the most “ease of use” you can get but at the same time, if I really want to change something, I can.

And IMO, I like Ubuntu. Wide compatibility and is stable. Thats what I like. I could take or leave Canonical though.

Nah I’m just dumb lol. Idk why my brain didn’t clock that. Thank you for explaining

This one does. I think certain IPS models got the feature. Tbh, not really much of a touchscreen guy for laptops but I wont say no

Great minds think alike haha. Good for you brother. Hope it works well for you.

Ah OK that makes more sense.

I followed this guide, worked right out of the box:

https://github.com/SeniorMatt/How-to-enable-fingerprint-in-Linux-Mint-for-T480

Oof will keep an eye on that. Thanks for the tip!

Yea i wanted to give it a shot since ive been thinking of switching to mint on my desktop. Right now I run kubuntu on my main machine and for the past few years its been great, and the only thing thats really kept me has been KDE plasma. I may just bite the bullet and install plasma in mint cause so far, I’m still not a fan of cinnamon.

What do you mean by partial battery charging? I noticed the battery readout isnt exactly accurate so far but I’m not sure if that’s what you mean.

Its 8th gen. Intel Core i5-8350U.

I am home, brother. :)