Just a heads-up for those trying it out, I've found a couple of regressions in Beta 6 that rendered my Haiku system unbootable, until I remembered about hammering the space key during the boot sequence to get to the safe mode menu. In my case, my ThinkPad X1 (Yoga 3rd Gen) used to boot despite what appeared to be kernel panics, but typing "continue" at the kernel prompt would skip past them and everything would then work fine. In Beta 6, it now hangs at boot instead with no kernel panic warning. Disabling ACPI in the safe mode options gets me past that, and there's a way to disable ACPI permanently at boot via some configuration files - though obviously that isn't desirable. It also seems there's been some work on USB Audio (yay!), but it now causes a kernel panic on boot if a Focusrite Scarlett is connected. Turning the Scarlett off avoids the kernel panic. The Scarlett has never officially worked in Haiku, but it at least never used to crash the system. In my case, I've reverted back to the USB Audio Scarlett Haiku driver that Claude Sonnet vibe coded for me, and for me that's working. (I can't contribute that code because of Haiku rules against AI code, but hopefully the humans will eventually find time to hand code it and get it working.)
Likes it
I used the next day onside service for my Lenovo X1 Yoga 3rd gen. My laptop broke, I called the next day someone came to my house and replaced the motherboard. Was super easy and convenient. I looked up my purchase, $2639 for the laptop, $311.75 for 5 years of next day onsite repair service and $169.25 for 5 years of accidental damage protection.
Recommends it
I bought recently a 3rd generation lenovo x1 carbon from ebay and I am really happy with all the mobility provided. The battery lasts for more than 6-7 hours, it weighs around 1.2kg and the keyboard is perfect. The 14 inch monitor is more than enough. I switched from a 17 inch Dell and I am not missing it at all.
I bought this for 500 euros including shipping.
Neutral
Thinkpad W541 (i7, 32gb RAM, SSD), running Fedora, often connected to an external monitor, mouse and keyboard. For travel, I use Thinkpad X1 Carbon (3rd gen), also running Fedora. Nowadays I mostly work on native Android dev, so environment is primarily just AndroidStudio, vim, terminal (Guake) and what seems like hundreds of open tabs. It used to be all Macbooks for many years though. I still have a 2012 tricked out Air and a 2013 rPro, which I need to sell off.
Recommends it
I recommend going for the thinkpad carbon x1, it's the same form factor of Mac air, looks better in my opinion and has one of the best keyboards on a laptop that size, not to mention it's developer friendly (has actual page up/down, home/end keys). I'm running Ubuntu on mine (3rd gen) without problems. The 4th gen ones can take 16gb ram as well.
Likes it
Fedora 21 through 23 has worked well so far. All of my peripherals work well on my ThinkPad X1 Carbon (3rd gen). The community is quite easy to join if you need to submit bugs or ask for help. I've had zero PulseAudio issues even with creating multiple monitoring devices, a USB DAC and a USB webcam with audio support. Which wifi cards are you using? Broadcom can be a bit of a pain, but the Intel chips are fairly easy to get working.
Recommends it
I recommend Lenovo X1 carbon 3rd gen. At 2.8 pounds, it is lighter than the Macbook Air but with a bigger 14 inch screen. I run Ubuntu on it and am pretty happy with it.
Likes it
I've been using a Thinkpad X1 Carbon (3rd gen) with ubuntu on dual boot no problem. It's pretty thin like that other brand, and has good battery life in both OS, like 6-9hrs depending on use. Visual studio and netflix? 6hrs. Coding in a text editor: 8-10.
Doesn’t like it
two weeks ago I received the new Lenovo x1 carbon 3rd gen, I expected a high end machine. But I got: low brightness screen, bad colour range + build flaws: the screen cover was not glued well. These flaws also appeared with other customers (search the forums). After three days I sent it back, and today got the new macbook 13", although I don't like the brand Apple, you can't deny its quality over all the other brands.