Mon 14 July 2025

About two and a half months ago, I bought a Wacom digitizer to do doodles with, but I found the process of sketching with a standalone digitizer a bit dissatisfying after using an iPad in years past. To be clear, the fact that the screen and digitizer are separate devices isn't as big a deal as you might think, as the digitizer is very precise and pleasant to use. There was, however one intuitive action that completely broke the illusion of drawing, and that is rotation. When drawing certain angles, you will usually want to rotate your drawing surface a little bit (like by 25° or whatever) to make drawing straight lines at varying angles more comfortable. This is completely undoable on a separate digitizer device, because there's no real way to hold your laptop at an angle while holding the digitizer at the same angle. It's a little difficult to explain, but if you've ever used a digitizer tablet, it makes intuitive sense, and it's kind of a pain. It wouldn't be so bad with a standalone screen like a tablet, as that can lay flat on your desk at any angle you like, but with a laptop or desktop, the rotation is a non-starter, and having the screen be parallel to your desk surface while trying to hold the digitizer at an angle is extremely clumsy and non-intuitive for drawing, at least in my very limited experience.

Hi, my name is ADHD. I'm not satisfied if my explanations for the most banal subjects imaginable are any less than a kilobyte. 🙄

Mooooooooving right along...

I wanted a real tablet to draw with. I had a linux tablet that a fedifriend gifted me, but it didn't seem to be supported by UBPorts any longer, sadly, so I couldn't get system updates. It's still quite useful for other things, but I didn't think I could make a drawing tablet out of it. I also have a cheapo Kindle Fire tablet I got on sale from woot, but that thing is... cursed. Don't ever buy an amazon tablet. They're just terrible. Very slow SoCs and a horribly locked-down OS. They can't even manage to do blue-light filtering decently, but then again, this isn't a review of that device.

There's also my aformentioned iPad, but it's quite long in the tooth, and I don't even know where my 30-pin iPod-style charging cable is. ;)

So, I found a good deal on a Thinkpad Yoga model (about 150 USD) on "fleabay," and jumped on it.

After debating which Linux distro to choose, I went with Kubuntu because I wanted to test it out to see if I could recommend it for new users. Kubuntu is... ok. I did a doas apt purge snap, because I'm just not a big fan of it, and installed a few things via flathub. Other than not wanting to see the fingerprint sensor when logging in (although I was able to train the fingerprint model once I had done a doas apt install fprintd libpam-fprintd)* and occasionally forgetting about the touchscreen (requiring a reboot), kubuntu is fine. KDE Plasma itself is, of course, really great, and handles both touchscreen and pen input very nicely.

*nevermind, I was able to get the fingerprint reader working just now. It just needed a doas pam-auth-update to be run and select to enable fingerprint authentication. That was easy!

I intend to write about my experience with digital doodling tomorrow, but overall, this is a very nice and thin, if somewhat compromised device.

Obligatory fastfetch:

rld@prometheus:~$ fastfetch
           `.:/ossyyyysso/:.                rld@prometheus
        .:oyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyo:`            --------------
      -oyyyyyyyodMMyyyyyyyysyyyyo-          OS: Kubuntu x86_64
    -syyyyyyyyyydMMyoyyyydmMMyyyyys-        Host: 20NQS18E00 (ThinkPad X390 Yoga)
   oyyysdMysyyyydMMMMMMMMMMMMMyyyyyyyo      Kernel: Linux 6.14.0-23-generic
 `oyyyydMMMMysyysoooooodMMMMyyyyyyyyyo`     Uptime: 7 days, 5 mins
 oyyyyyydMMMMyyyyyyyyyyyysdMMysssssyyyo     Packages: 2478 (dpkg), 31 (flatpak)
-yyyyyyyydMysyyyyyyyyyyyyyysdMMMMMysyyy-    Shell: bash 5.2.37
oyyyysoodMyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyydMMMMysyyyo    Display (LGD05EA): 1920x1080 @ 60 Hz (as 1749x983) in 13" [Built-in]
yyysdMMMMMyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyysosyyyyyyyy    DE: KDE Plasma 6.3.4
yyysdMMMMMyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy    WM: KWin (Wayland)
oyyyyysosdyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyydMMMMysyyyo    WM Theme: Breeze
-yyyyyyyydMysyyyyyyyyyyyyyysdMMMMMysyyy-    Theme: Breeze (Classic) [Qt], Breeze [GTK2/3]
 oyyyyyydMMMysyyyyyyyyyyysdMMyoyyyoyyyo     Icons: breeze [Qt], breeze [GTK2/3/4]
 `oyyyydMMMysyyyoooooodMMMMyoyyyyyyyyo      Font: Noto Sans (10pt) [Qt], Noto Sans (10pt) [GTK2/3/4]
   oyyysyyoyyyysdMMMMMMMMMMMyyyyyyyyo       Cursor: breeze (24px)
    -syyyyyyyyydMMMysyyydMMMysyyyys-        Terminal: konsole 24.12.3
      -oyyyyyyydMMyyyyyyysosyyyyo-          Terminal Font: JetBrainsMono Nerd Font Mono (12pt)
        ./oyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyo/.            CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-8365U (4) @ 4.10 GHz
           `.:/oosyyyysso/:.`               GPU: Intel UHD Graphics 620 @ 1.10 GHz [Integrated]
                                            Memory: 2.33 GiB / 7.42 GiB (31%)
                                            Swap: 451.49 MiB / 10.00 GiB (4%)
                                            Disk (/): 93.34 GiB / 229.43 GiB (41%) - ext4
                                            Local IP (wlp0s20f3): 192.168.1.122/24
                                            Battery (5B10W13927): 69% [Discharging]
                                            Locale: en_US.UTF-8

If anyone's curious about the hostname, I have a convention going back six and a half years to name all of my laptops after Star (Wars|Trek) ships, and my desktops/servers after Star (Wars|Trek) planets. So the X390 Yoga I named after the USS Prometheus which was sort of a "convertible" starship that broke up into three pieces, each with their own warp drive (IIRC) and weapons systems. (Or at least two out of the three pieces had their own warp drive. The top-most piece might not have.)

As far as the system specs goes, the RAM is a touch anemic, but I'm miserly enough to get a LOT of life out of 8GiB. The CPU is good enough (even in powersave mode), the screen is crisp, bright, and lovely at 13.3" and 1920x1080. The keyboard is also very enjoyable to type on, very close to my surprisingly pleasant Pinebook Pro.

The negatives are twofold: The power subsystem and the tablet mode.

Give her more power, Scotty!

This is a very thin and light laptop. It's very pleasant to carry around, and almost forgettable in a backpack. The battery life is a solid OK at around 7 hours, maybe more. It supports charging thresholds so you can extend the battery life (e.g., automatically stop charging once the battery is 80% full), and the standard USB-C charging port is great for compatibility. I actually charge it off of my Pixel phone's supplied charger, so that it charges nice and slow (and cool!)

But it's not a standout battery life champion, and it does not resume from suspend particularly quickly (clocked it just now: 5.00 seconds according to my trusty CASIO), and it loses battery somewhat quickly when in S3 suspend (and I have confirmed from the system logs that it's using proper S3 suspend).

Looking at my battery/power log, I'm losing 1% battery life about every 4-6 minutes just sitting here and typing with my CPU 97% idle and my screen brightness at 30% (it's deliciously bright). That's really quite respectable, actually, but the suspend is a little disappointing, losing between about two-thirds of one percent to one percent of battery per hour in suspend. That sounds miserly, but you're talking about depleting the entire battery in about six days. It comes out to about 20% of battery lost per day.

Again, compared to so many laptops, that's absolutely great. But for a laptop made in 2019, it's kinda Meh. If you only charge your battery to 80% (to preserve the battery life), and then stick it in your bag at night and then open it up the next afternoon and find you're down to 65% before you've done anything? That's a bit of a bummer.

So, absolutely not terrible in the power/battery department, but not fantastic, either. Oh, and upower --dump says the battery is 51.48 Wh. Just FYI.

It's got a pen. It's got a digitizer. But a Cintiq, it ain't.

The pen experience (i.e. the entire reason for buying this particular Thinkpad) is solidly okay. It works, and it works well, but it's not great. For one thing, I'm running Linux, a desktop OS with a desktop DE. Now KDE Plasma does a great job of adapting itself to a tablet or digitizer device, and it does work well, but it's just not going to be as optimized as something like an iPad, I'm sorry to say. Truly sorry to say, because I strongly dislike iPads, on many levels.

My main complaint with the pen is that it's just rather small (kind of like a Samsung S Pen, but not quite that small), and that it's battery-powered. Of course, the battery is internal, and it recharges while it's docked inside the laptop itself, but that does mean that compatibility is a bit trickier than just buying any old wacom-compatible pen. It has to be an active pen, and I don't know how compatible the third-party pens are. I'd just have to buy one and try it out, which I'm not super eager to do, as they're not particularly cheap (at least 20 USD, as I recall).

So, ironically, the number one feature I bought the device for I haven't even used in a couple weeks, preferring to just use it as a normal laptop. I don't even put it in tent mode or tablet mode 90% of the time. So the compromises that paid for the pen and yoga features were a little bit in vain.

But it's still a very nice, and very thin and light laptop, and the price was fantastic (and it's in great physical condition), so I'm not complaining!

Also, while I rarely ever put it in "tablet mode," the touchscreen does get used every now and then, because it's just there, and it's so convenient to just reach out and scroll with my thumb instead of futzing around with turning on the touchpad or using the trackpoint (I will lose lots of neckbeard points if I admit to not liking trackpoints, a.k.a. "nubs" much, but it is so).

This is my third ThinkPad so far in six and a half years of buying them on ebay (fourth if you count the ThinkCentre I bought earlier this year) and... I can quit any time!!! ;)

100 Days to Offload 2025 - Day 36

Category: Tech Tagged: 100DaysToOffload ADHD Computing FOSS (Free and Open Source Software) Humor Linux Non-religious post Productivity