The hardware
I've been using a Thinkpad T480 since new in June 2018. Spec’d well for a laptop at that time: Intel Core I7-8650U , Nvidia GeForce MX150, 32GB DDR4 RAM, 512GB NVMe (plus a tiny 128GB NVMe fitting in the unused WWAN slot).
Despite supposed horror stories of the I7-8650U getting hotter than the sun due to poor thermals (and because of which I under-clocked the processor slightly) the box has been in daily use for nearly 8 years without missing a beat or overheating, usually hooked up to a semi-decent BenQ 27” monitor, a HHKB keyboard and a CST (now X-Keys) trackball.
But the laptop is, alas, showing its age…
I’ve always used Arch Linux on the T480 (and I’ve been using Arch since about 2010) with the DWM window manager keeping the housekeeping lightweight. I setup Bumblebee and Optimus so programs like Darktable can use the Nvidia card to its full (and increasingly limited) extent without the entire distro needing it, thus keeping the power consumption down and preserving the batteries.
Nvidia has recently dropped support for Pascal and lower GPUs with the 590 release with the resulting minor inconvenience that the T480 now needs to use the 580xxx drivers from Arch’s AUR repos and to use DKMS with the kernel. And that’s apart from the total inconvenience of using/battling Nvidia on Linux anyway.
And now Darktable staggers a bit with this setup (litotes if you will, English understatement at its finest...). If I want to use the “diffuse & sharpen” module I can expect several hours wait before the initial exports are processed. The CPU spikes, as does memory (24GB+) and presumably the GPU is quietly melting somewhere in the background. I thought at first it was throttling the CPU but the rest of the laptop runs OK during the rendering. Unexpectedly, secondary and subsequent edits of the same photos with this module activated are processed relatively quickly, even normally. However, the entropy has been a gradual process and since it has had only a relatively small impact on my usual black & white analog film workflow I have been ignoring it, or at least gritting my teeth. Until now. Software is expecting more processing power, particularly from the GPU.
March 2026 is definitely not a good time for replacing hardware. I should have done it last year. The market is now completely fucked because of the hardware demand for AI datacentres. Prices are spiralling and parts are in short supply or unavailable. So what to do? Unless the AI bubble bursts as predicted (à la dotcom debacle), and soon, prices will continue to rise and components will continue to be unavailable to consumers. Even if the AI bubble bursts today it wont help me now.
So I ordered a desktop box now because prices seem to be going up weekly, and a replacement is becoming more urgent. In several weeks and months the prices will have risen again, who knows how high? Hopefully I won’t be purchasing another for a few years since I spec’d it to last a while. A Ryzen 9 processor, Radeon 9070 GPU, 64GB DDR5 memory (with space for another 64GB) and 2 x 1TB M.2 PCIe 5.0 NVMe, all housed in a gorgeous Fractal North XL Momentum case with a lot of cooling. A polar opposite to the Thinkpad (see what I did there). No thermal problems in this box. No need for mass storage either since all of that is network attached (fingers crossed for my NAS’s hard-drives’ longevity). So I went for the red team. AMD not Nvidia or Intel. The CPU and GPU will be well within capacity for what I do with it.
Oh, and the LEDs are pretty too, they shine through the case.
Initially I had thought of getting another laptop and I looked at a Thinkpad P16 Gen 3 with a similar(ish) spec but the price was ridiculously high and I have no real need for a mobile workstation, however desirable. The T480 will continue to be adequate for mobile use.
The Operating System(s)
Full disclosure - I’ve been a Linux user since 1997 and I usually only use Windows when I’m forced to. The last Windows versions I was actually enthusiastic about working with were Wndows NT, Windows 2k Pro and reluctantly Windows 7. With the last few versions I feel like I’m cattle being milked for my data, especially Windows 10 and 11, not to mention the haphazard development and shoddy update cycle . The versions I enjoyed were the product. Now we are. So I am predisposed to pick holes in Windows.
Two NVMe drives, so two operating systems? Right? The plan was to install Windows 11 Pro and Linux respectively on the two drives. TLDR - Naaah, didn’t happen.
I first installed Windows 11 Pro. It is an utter shitshow and a battle to get installed. Hoops have to be jumped through just to get a local login. They really really really want you to use a Microsoft account. Then tedious page after page asking me if I want to personalise various different-but-the-same telemetry options that I always say NO to. There should be a large “FUCK OFF I DON’T WANT THIS ” button with them all rolled in together. And you know it is pointless because the fuckers are stealing your data anyway.
I installed Windows primarily because I wanted a baseline to see if the computer was working. From the assemblers POV it is usually easier to explain an issue to them in terms of Windows errors and successfully getting an RMA if there is a problem. The reaction to Linux is “sort it out yourself then, we don’t use it” which is fair enough. Usually I can. This is one of the things that bothers me most about Windows. It is opaque and it is not easy to find a fix when it goes wrong (thousands of conflicting answers online going back years). I find Linux config files easier to understand and maintain (and find the solutions online).
Anyway, the OS installed OK(ish). It found all the hardware and their correct drivers so that was a plus. Then came Windows update. Jokes. Two updates failed to install (one an an important looking cumulative security update, something I’m not comfortable leaving not updated). Retry the update? A BSOD (only now it is black) shut down the computer like a lightning strike. Rinse and repeat a few times. Web searches reveal multitudes of people with apparently the same problem. It is a common problem. I followed all the recommended procedures with (like all the others) no luck. Incredibly they all circle (and keep circling like water down a drain) back to reinstalling Windows. Has nothing changed in the last 25 years? It was the mantra back with Windows 95 et al. The reluctant update was from October 2025, only (heavy sarcasm) six months has passed, surely long enough for a fix to have been found. But no. Here we are, after 20 odd years, being given the same old advice - reinstall. Unless of course I missed an obvious solution in the overwhelming number of suggestions - easily done.
So I dumped it. I hated every millisecond I was using Windows. No control. Anger at the barrage of patronising bullshit messages trying to reassure me that all is OK and I can sit back and relax while they get on the the difficult stuff (I paraphrase but that seems to be the gist of it) and the feeling that the whole install is as flimsy as a house of cards once I have sat back. But when it does go wrong the information flow suddenly ceases. Error messages like “Something went wrong”. Well duh! I can see that. What went wrong and how do I fix it ? Nothing except a number and some terse instructions if I’m quick enough to catch it (I know there are logs...). And a probable reinstall. Life is too short. Windows is just sleazy.
Which segues nicely on to Linux.
Since I was in a hurry I installed Arch Linux from the Archinstall script on the Archiso. This the first time I’ve used the script rather than doing the full manual install for which I have a Gist or two to remind me of the procedure because I forget (I install it every few years, the last time being about 5 years ago on an old Thinkpad X230. Never needed to reinstall on any box).
It was a pleasant surprise, although it was an incredibly straightforward install. The nice thing about installing an OS to a desktop box is there is none of the bollocks with laptops: F-key assignments, lids opening and closing, sleep and hibernation, discrete GPUs etc etc. It took about 20 minutes from booting the USB ISO to booting XFCE4 (chosen for convenience and familiarity) on the desktop. An incredibly refreshing change from the tedium of the Windows 11 install. Archinstall is a simple TUI with options to pick that make a script. The script then runs the install hands-off. Bliss!
There were no surprises with Arch picking the CPU and GPU. The AMD firmware and microcode were found. Post install it was simply a matter of installing the ROCm stack from the repositories. Absolutely painless. Darktable picked up the GPU immediately through ROCm’s OpenCL. Easier than Nvidia.
Playing around with some photos it now takes seconds to do what previously took hours on the T480. So I’m a happy bunny.
I will keep XFCE4 and Xfwm for the moment. The stacking window manager is surprisingly unfamiliar after years of using DWM and my muscle memory for my keybinds needs some amnesia. I’ve remapped a whole lot of the keys to do what I’m used to so I’ll see how it goes. I’m running the WM on Xorg rather than Wayland so it will be easy to switch.
Nearly two weeks in and Arch has been rock solid. All glitches have been mine, not the OS or the box behaving badly. I’m very happy with the setup.