This is not a revision of the new ThinkPad P53 with Fedora technology to be released earlier this month. It’s more about being pampered by the material. This is to give some other possibility to a Linux distribution. It’s a sophisticated admission that maybe, just maybe, we shouldn’t exclude corporate giants like Lenovo in our search for the best Linux laptop. This melodramatic advent comes down to an ambitious statement: the ThinkPad P53 powered fedora is amazing.
To see where I come from, you need a brief history. Apart from a quick glance at the ThinkPad X1 Extreme, this is the first time I’ve used or even touched a ThinkPad in 15 years. In addition, this is the moment I introduced Fedora (I last signed up before the release of Fedora 29).
PURA FEDORA
I definitely have another Fedora impression now! It’s so eye-catching and I love the natural GNOME experience. This is partly due to the progress of the GNOME team with Mutter and overall functionality and responsiveness.
Fedora feels right at home on the ThinkPad P53, in much the same way as Pop! _OS sits in a Lemur Pro or Oryx Pro.
(That said, I miss the automatic mosaic of Pop 20.04 windows and the built-in force control options).
CI-DESSUS: Watch the video that accompanies this article!
In addition, I start liking the DNF package manager and I prefer it to APT. This is possibly a little slower, but delta (incremental) packet updates are excellent. Plus, it’s also more readable, more. Man-made ArrayArray. And I love how it automatically prepares to install an application or command that you entered through the command line (you haven’t installed it yet).
It’s a great touch that saves you time.
Mark Pearson of Lenovo (who I interviewed about the company’s Linux initiative) wrote this P53 user consultant and it’s very useful!
I may not be communicating about Fedora, but I’m grateful to have given you some other chance to be my daily driver, because I think it can be!
BEASTLY GLASSES
Anyway, I feel a little pride in taking it out of my bag and energizing it. However, if you post it in public, you’ll need to have a cleaning cloth handy. It’s a serious magnet for fingerprints.
Okay, let’s move on to the right thing, starting with the hardware specifications of my verification unit.
I appreciate the location of the force input, Ethernet port, and USB-C ports that are compatible with the display. They are in the back of the plane instead; out of my sight and out of my way.
Built like a tank
I love watching the generation go by and I love ultrabooks like the System76 Lemur Pro, which are soft as a pen. Despite this, let’s mark August 2020 as the month I started to appreciate, or even prefer, laptops designed to deal with abuse.
The keyboard of the ThinkPad P53 is so strong that I am convinced that I can beat it for years (I literally hit it in the video above). And the hinges that connect the base to the screen seem to last much longer than the fragile hinges that I’m so used to in this age of thin, light and disposable.
The entire base of the P53 is built like a tank and the weight is better than reflecting that. Lenovo marketing presentations emphasize that you can use this in space, in the Arctic, or in a sandstorm. Although I can’t check those conditions, I wasn’t afraid to take it to the beach for a photo shoot or a recording query on YouTube because it doesn’t seem fragile.
I don’t want to walk on eggs. And that’s a big challenge for me.
Life unplugged
With a 90Wh battery, the lock tests will take a little time. I don’t have much to say yet on this front, but I can tell you that thanks to the 230W monster sector adapter, it recharges at 50% in 35 minutes fast.
Apart from a small flexible screen, it’s a surprising and bright enough screen [500 nits on my model] to see, obviously, in full sun, what my fifth generation Oryx Pro can’t do.
Look, if you’ve been following my Linux trail for a while, you know I love this Oryx Pro and I love System76. But this P53 cleans the floor with my current controller.
Here’s a quick look at some of Blender’s results. I recognize that this is a fair fight; it is only intended to illustrate once back how much this new ThinkPad is messing up.
Soon I’ll have full 3-way benchmarks from this ThinkPad P53 to the new 8-core Oryx Pro to the Tuxedo Book XA15 that has an AMD Ryzen 3950X with 16 monstrous desktop cores.
Anyway, it’s not just the functionality that spoils me.
Fingerprints (stained sensors)
Now you may wonder “what’s the problem?” Can’t I just buy a ThinkPad and install Linux on it myself? Yes, I’m sure you can. But the importance for Lenovo of putting its abundant weight and resources into this Linux drive cannot be underestimated.
The company works hard to treat Linux as a first-class citizen in its hardware. This comes to propose a “Lenovo Vantage” like software package for your Linux systems. It can also be run with computers like Synaptics on Linux local fingerprint sensor drivers.
Drivers that will go upstream and gain advantages from more hardware, more Linux distributions; Linux Ecosystem.
So the fingerprint sensor of this ThinkPad P53. ArrayArray had no idea what I was missing and I can’t live without it. In Fedora 32, everything from recording my fingerprints to connecting and checking the terminal internally worked smoothly.
GPU COMPUTER ALL DAY, PLAY ALL NIGHT
Clearly you don’t buy a ThinkPad with an internal Nvidia Quadro 4000 basically for gaming, but when you’ve finished your homework and are able to play, be pleased to know that the P53 can offer you the most productive of them. here’s a look at the quality and cadences of which it’s capable of. Dirt Rally 2.0 runs on ULTRA at 1080p and ejects over a hundred FPS on average, and a minimum frame rate of over 60 FPS!
Once again, this device pampers me. My Oryx Pro and its RTX 2070 can’t take credit for this kind of gaming performance, and in fact I was surprised to see 33% higher frequency symbols with the Quadro 4000. It’s wonderful to know that it can work as a perfectly capable gaming computer after you’ve finished your professional workloads.
And don’t worry, I’ll test more than just the game in the coming weeks, adding device learning, virtualization, and workloads for this device elegance.
Package
It’s a bit tested by time, but more than that, it’s exciting to turn it on and use it. We are all squatting on the starting line, eagerly awaiting the Lenovo workstation marathon with RHEL, Fedora and Ubuntu.
Based on my first impressions, this big jump out of the block.
The launch of the ThinkPads trio with Fedora technology is scheduled for August 31, 2020. The full diversity of Lenovo workstations with RHEL and Ubuntu will remain in a while thereafter.
I’ve covered the PC and GAMING generation industry for over a decade and am proud to be one of the 30 most sensible podcasters in the world. In addition to covering the exciting
I’ve covered the PC and GAMING generation industry for over a decade and am proud to be one of the 30 most sensitive podcasters in the world. In addition to covering the exciting global world of linux’s most responsive desktop and open source software, you can pay attention to my “Linux for All” screen on your favorite podcast player.