Switched to Linux a few years ago. For some strange, almost unexplainable reason I've never felt comfortable with any of the desktop environments. None of them felt right to me. It was only when I switched to a window manager that I started to feel at home with Linux. Took about a year of experimenting before settling on DWM.
Good to know there's now a ThinkPad flavour but it's a shame about the chiclet keyboard. Seems to be a trend at Lenovo. They might look better but that doesn't mean they are any easier to type on. The keyboard on my x220 is one of the best things about the laptop. Molded keys are so much more responsive but if I remember rightly they went chiclet-style on the x230 too. If it ain't broke...
The ThinkPad chiclet keyboard is superior to the classic in almost all ways. It has an identical feel, a larger effective hit target for each key, is thinner, doesn't gather cruft under the keys, and can't have the keys accidentally popped off. Don't judge the new keyboards based on the bizarre flat keycaps that every other chiclet keyboard seems to use.
The most obvious loss in the new keyboards is the switch to a 6-row layout. And I can see why people with large laptops would complain about that. But especially on a 11-incher any extra space for a touchpad is really welcome. The x120e touchpad is already hilariously small. It'd be a complete joke if you reduced the depth by a further 1-1.5cm.
Fair play. Ought to admit I haven't used one on a ThinkPad yet. Never enjoyed typing on other manufacturers' chiclet keyboards so I am judging them on that skewed basis. It's my first ThinkPad so I'm still a bit spellbound about the sheer quality of the keyboard compared to every laptop I've used before. Shouldn't be all too surprised to learn Lenovo's are a cut above the rest and, in light of your comments, I won't be so dismissive of them when buying my next ThinkPad. Don't knock it and all that!
I have a x131e AMD model. The keyboard is awesome. Way better than any other laptop I've used. It may look similar to some of the new chiclet keyboards but it feels great. I wish my mac had this keyboard.
Another vote for Redshift. Use Flux on work PC and Redshift on laptop. The colour transition seems to be a lot more subtle with Redshift and I find it easier to adjust. On the other hand, the change feels very sudden with Flux. Often use my laptop in work, but I suppose it could well just be a difference in lighting between home and the office, as others have mentioned. Maybe my eyes deceive me.
Yet another vote for the Thinkpad X220. Made the move from a Macbook myself about six months ago. Tried out a long list of distributions and just about everything works out of the box if you're using a desktop environment like KDE. I'm now running Arch and Openbox which takes a bit of configuring but it makes for the quickest laptop I've ever owned. I won't deny OSX is a good, polished operating system but I can honestly say there's nothing I miss about it. I love the simplicity and the control Linux gives you over the system and I think Apple bury a lot of the nitty gritty but that's quite understandable really. Sure, there's been plenty of roadblocks along the way but I've enjoyed solving problems when they come up. More than anything, running Linux has provided a valuable learning experience.
