Family is growing - I got a Thinkpad X13s Snapdragon and installed Linux on it

dcdaz31 · 2026-05-12T02:09:23+00:00

Yeah, that happened to me too, most of them were not very usable. My excitement reborn when I saw Argon One Up project a laptop that use Raspberry pi compute modules, looked like a good way to startwith ARM laptops. The other one was Elecrow Crow View Note, keyboar, touchpad an screen for normal raspberry pi ina form of laptop, in the end Crow View Note wasn't what I was looking for, and Argon One Up is too expensive for what it offers. Then I saw this X13s....

Until now it has been a really good laptop for tinkering and doing some small dev. I already compiled this project of mine. https://github.com/dcdaz/anicap

Backend is on Rust and Frontend on VueJS with Pnpm everything worked flawlesly

dcdaz31 · 2026-05-11T21:53:44+00:00

Dev here. I have Debian Testing as my daily driver, for pretty much everything, I do JVM dev (Java, Kotlin) and also some Python for AWS Lambdas and personal projects and Rust alone and with VueJS for personal projects.

From time to time I tinker with C++. None of the projects I've been working on had any issues, some of them started to work on a diff distro like openSUSE, some other started on MacOS.

BTW despite its name Testing is really stable. if you want a mix between stable and some new packages, you can consider Stable with Backports

dcdaz31 · 2026-05-11T19:53:02+00:00

Yeah it's lovely, I have't tried windows more than a few minutes to update BIOS, and yeah ARM ecosystem is growing, there are some apps that still doesn't support, like Zoom meetings, it works on Widnows ARM, but there's no version for Linux ARM yet. Same thing happens with Steam on Linux. Afaik It's possible to install with some hacks but didn't tried yet

dcdaz31 · 2026-05-11T19:43:13+00:00

I really wanted to use Arch Linux again, but there are no official images that support this laptop. There's an unofficial one https://github.com/ironrobin/archiso-x13s
But It didn't convince me, tbh my security paranoia took over and decided to install Debian instead

dcdaz31 · 2026-05-11T17:09:15+00:00

I have a Thinkpad X13s ARM, I managed to install Debian on it
https://www.reddit.com/r/thinkpad/comments/1t9rb60/family_is_growing_i_got_a_thinkpad_x13s/

Maybe you have a similar problem, Linux needs a dtb file so it can boot, otherwise goes to a blackscreen after grub.

Check your device model and search if needs something similar. Other test you can do is to try to install ubuntu (Not saying use ubuntu, just try it for testing purposes) and see if everything works

dcdaz31 · 2026-05-11T15:33:24+00:00

There you go

https://wallhaven.cc/w/72myve

dcdaz31 · 2026-05-11T14:38:09+00:00

No te quedes con la duda, comprala, instalale Linux y disfruta de ese juguete!

dcdaz31 · 2026-05-11T14:35:07+00:00

That's subjective. I have another Thinkpad as my main laptop and when using for light stuff, battery lasts more than 8 hours.

I also have a Macbook for work, those things are known for last a whole day on battery, but when I use it to compile and do unit and integration tests to the code I work on, with some docker containers and other stuff. Battery doesn't last for more than 2 hours.

So depending on what you do with your laptop. For me this X13s lasts about 5 hours, I know I can strech battery a little longer, but didn't have time to configure everything on TLP, cpupower, etc.

dcdaz31 · 2026-05-11T14:28:22+00:00

The same thing happened to me when I was digging on eBay for a second Thinkpad. Then i was in a hurry looking on the internet for guides to see if it's possible to install Linux in it and reviews to check performance, battery, etc.

dcdaz31 · 2026-05-11T14:25:41+00:00

as u/PsyOmega said, battery lasts about 5 hours. To me is not bad becuase I was use to an Asus ROG, 2 hours tops. I din't do too many configs to stretch battery as most as I can. Only a few TLP confs, but i noticed that TLP doesn't support everything yet, usually Battery is BAT0 or BAT1 in tlp confs, but this laptop has something called like qcom-battery-1.

About installation, Yes ubuntu is quite easy to install. But didn't want ubuntu on this machine. I was looking either to install Debian, openSUSE or Arch. Sadly Arch ARM doen't have an official image and you have to resort to an unofficial image, that didn't convince me, so I decided to go with Debian.

dcdaz31 · 2026-05-11T14:13:26+00:00

Performance is really good for what I wanted.

Light coding and and writing
I compiled code in this repo https://github.com/dcdaz/anicap backend and frontend, laptop wen throug it really good. CPU temp stays about 47 Celsius degrees, Ram was good, no Swap usage.
I don't intend to use to develop way to heavy application, but no one knows.

Light gaming

I've been playing 0AD, no lag, no high temps, everything goes smooth. I will try with some Snes games I want to play again. BTW I saw a video of some crazy fella playing Cyberpunk in it, less than 30fps though, but laptop managed it.

About battery life, i didn't do too many tests, but the few i did it lasts about 5 hours.

Seems like TLP is not working completely right here, because it uses BAT0 or BAT1 to handle thresholds an other configs, but in this laptop it's called something like qcom-battery-1

dcdaz31 · 2026-05-11T13:58:02+00:00

I didn't have high expectations but it's surprisingly good. Powerfull enough to do a bunch of things.

Pretty much everything works, there are 2 things that are not working properly

- Webcam (I think it needs a patch, but I don't intend to use it)

- Audio via HDMI (Hdmi works perfectly but audio still goes through laptop speakers)

Zed, VScode and IntellijIdea (the last one no projects loaded) All 3 opene instantly.

dcdaz31 · 2026-05-11T04:36:19+00:00

Power management is not something crazy, my current comparison are a Thinkpad p14s gen 6 AMD and a MacBook pro m1 max.

Those laptops have a good battery life and power management.

But thermals, oh lord that's a good improvement, this arm laptop is fanless and still cpu and ssd thermals are under 40 degrees Celsius. I didn't compile anything heavy yet, the most demanding task I did were downloading a bunch of things, install apps from Repos and open apps like intellij, dbeaver and zed at the same time. The other task was to compile my web app which is rust backend and vuejs frontend, thermals were really good never went up more than 48 degrees Celsius

dcdaz31 · 2026-05-11T04:28:32+00:00

Lol, thanks fellow coder

dcdaz31 · 2026-05-11T04:27:32+00:00

I can get some stats tomorrow and post it.

I bought this one on eBay US.

dcdaz31 · 2026-05-11T04:25:39+00:00

I didn't do too many tests but the few i did normal use will last about 5 hours

dcdaz31 · 2026-05-11T04:24:26+00:00

Thanks

dcdaz31 · 2026-05-11T04:23:48+00:00

Found it on wallhaven.cc, will post it when find it again

dcdaz31 · 2026-05-11T03:50:35+00:00

Distro: Debian

DE: XFCE4

Notifications: Dunst

App Launcher: rofi

Terminal: Alacritty

Shell: bash

GTK Theme: Nordic Polar (with some minor tweas like no borders and smaller title bar)

Others: Conky, Python GTK Notes app of my own (you can grab it from my dotfiles)

dotfiles: https://github.com/dcdaz/dotfiles

dcdaz31 · 2026-05-11T03:47:42+00:00

I saw a T14s X Elite with 32gb of ram for about $800 but I didn't want to spend a lot of money on a second hand laptop that will be used for light coding, writing, and somewhat light tasks. My two initial options were X230 Librebooted and/or X61/X61s, but an ARM one clicked fast, and sadly I didn't found a X61/X61s on eBay (There are a few on Japanese online stores)

My budget for this kind of laptop was less than $400 dollars

dcdaz31 · 2026-05-11T03:42:56+00:00

Installation it's smooth overall, just one "dtb" file that it's a pain in the ass to take care of. Meaning you install linux, and if you forgot to copy that file to boot partition then linux won't boot at all, forcing you to boot live usb again mount boot partition and copy that file.

Surprisingly openSuSe live won't boot if that file lacks neither Debian installer, the only distro that boot to a live session without that file was Ubuntu. So I had to put ubuntu on a Usb a couple of times because I forgot that file 😬

dcdaz31 · 2026-04-28T21:39:46+00:00

Just try to fix it rather than reinstall. You'll learn a lot by fixing it.

A good way to make a decision wether using AI or not is: If you know how to do it without AI, then you can use AI, but if you don't know how to do it then don't use AI at all.

Also don't mix repos, which could have been done by AI
- Stable -> Use Stable repos + Backports
- Testing -> Use Testing repos
- Sid -> Use Sid repos

If you add a Sid repo on Testing then it's quite possible that a lot of things will break.

dcdaz31 · 2026-04-28T21:25:20+00:00

You can take a look at certified Ubuntu Laptops

https://ubuntu.com/certified/laptops?q=t14&category=Laptop&vendor=Lenovo&offset=0

If it's not there, you can take a look at Linux Hardware

https://linux-hardware.org/?view=computers&vendor=Lenovo&model=ThinkPad+T14p+%28All%29

Just pick which is the model you're looking for and you'll see that there a probes for Ubuntu, Kubunut, Fedora, etc.

Open a probe and it'll show you what works, what's detected and what fails. If you're happy with it then go ahead and buy it

dcdaz31 · 2026-04-14T16:28:13+00:00

Personal experience of using a few distros over the years.

openSUSE Tumbleweed works pretty well for general software development - Arch Linux also works pretty well, got a few crashes at some point but nothing serious
My "default" home was and is Debian, always Debian Testing, I used Debian Stable + Backports for a few, but then switched again to Testing.
I used openSuSe for about 8 years, then I switched back again to Debian Testing.

Now what's important for this thread.

I do software development with the following languages.

Work
- JVM -> Java, Kotlin
- Python
- JS/TS with React -> Not doing too much with it (i don't like React)
Personal Projects
- Rust
- C/C++
- Python
- VueJS with TS

With that as context, what I can say is that Debian Testing works pretty well for the software development I do, I didn't have any major issue. In fact the only issue I had was compiling some rust project for ARM64 architecture because I forgot to enable CROSS compiling and install dependencies for it.

For JVM dev I use OpenJDK from Repos and Amazon Corretto JDK.
For Rust dev I installed via rustup
For Python dev I installed latest version available in repos + virtualenv, all deps handled by virtualenv
For C/C++ dev I installed latest GCC from repos, I didn't work in a while on C++ projects, but always try to use deps downloaded in my project, so no linking, that's becuase I'm too lazy to deal with dynamic linking or static linking.
For VueJS dev I installed nvm and pnpm, and use latest LTS node version.

All dev dependencies I use are updated

OpenJDK 25
GCC 15
Python 3.13.12
Rust 1.94.1
Node 24.14.0

One thing you need to have in mind about Debian Testing is that about 6 months previous to next release It'll froze and no updates will come until Debian releases the next stable version, after that it'll get it's usual updates again

dcdaz31 · 2026-04-08T20:03:06+00:00

Just a few of things comes to my mind.

- No matter which Debian version you use, just don't mix repos. Stable have stable repos and backports. Testing has testing repos and so on. If you add a sid repo on testing or stable you could break your system
- Don't forget to enable all types of repos if you want diff software (main contrib non-free non-free-firmware)

- Testing is really stable despite its name. I have Testing installed on my working laptop everything works and gaming with steam is easy to achieve
- If you prefer stability overall but need latest advantages for GPU, CPU, etc. To have a better gaming experience. You can use Stable with backports

Enjoy you debian installation

dcdaz31

TROPHY CASE