Sorry, all of the linux stuff is just specific to my own preferences/environment - if you're more familiar with windows it would be best to just use that for testing. Presumably it will come with windows installed?

If so, put some programs on a normal usb storage device and then install/run them from there.

• For the cpu stress loading, you can use CpuStres: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/cpustres
• For temperature monitoring, you can use Open Hardware Monitor: https://openhardwaremonitor.org/
• To test the microphone/camera, I'd just use whichever app you'll normally be using them for

As for the rest:

1. When you first turn the laptop on, at the red Lenovo splash screen, press Enter repeatedly to get into the boot menu. Once there, it'll give you a list of options with associated keys to access them - go to "BIOS Setup - F10" (or something similar, not sure of the specifics on the X1C 6th gen). If it prompts you for a password to enter that, it's locked.

2. To test all the ports, plug your usb stick with the apps on it into each of the usb ports and make sure it shows up in explorer; try the same with an sd card if you have one; plug in to a wired ethernet connection and make sure you have internet access through it (disable wifi at the same time to make sure); plug headphones into the jack and make sure they work; plug into an hdmi display if you have one.

3. To check battery health, run Command Prompt with administrator privileges, then run powercfg /batteryreport to generate a battery health report

Good luck!

Personally I'd do the following:

• boot into the bios config menu to make sure it's unlocked (if it's locked and they don't have the password that'd be a dealbreaker for me)
• boot into a live linux environment from usb and test both batteries, keyboard, trackpoint/trackpad, speakers, microphone, wifi, and all external ports (T480 has 2 usb-c, 2 usb-a, ethernet, hdmi, headset, and sd - make sure batteries charge well from both usb-c ports)
• to check the storage health, install nvme-cli if not installed, run nvme smart-log /dev/nvme0 and check the "percentage_used" value: if it's near 100% it might die and need replacement soon
• to check that the vents, airflow, and cooling hardware are in good shape, install stress if not installed, run stress -c 7 to load up 7 of the 8 available cpu threads, make sure the fan spins up good and strong, and watch /sys/class/thermal/thermal_zone0/temp to make sure the cpu temperature stays under ~90-95 degrees

On my own time later, I'd run memtest86+ overnight from bootable usb to check the memory, then install tlp and run tlp recalibrate with the laptop on the charger to recalibrate the batteries

Edit: enjoy the new laptop! I hope it works great for you

Just part of our standard office package, everyone gets a laptop, dock, and external monitors for their workspace.

I can't speak for all of them, but we've had a couple hundred deployed over the last several years with very few issues. Mine's been solid as a rock.

The usb-c docks, however, are a nightmare, though I gather that's fairly universal.

I daily a T480 with Debian for work, and I'd recommend it highly. Great performance, battery, build quality, look & feel, etc. We have some 7480s deployed and while they've been solid as well, I much prefer the thinkpad. T series will have better performance and battery than X series, also, so I'd take the T480 over the X1C.

Ctrl+r was a life-changer when I first learned it.

I'd recommend a full battery calibration before running the command one more time, if you haven't already (charge the battery fully, leave it on the charger at 100% for a while, then fully discharge until it shuts itself off, leave it for a bit, then fully recharge while off). If the calibrated values line up with a full:design ratio of ~80%, especially with a 10-year-old battery with almost 700 cycles on it, my take is that's pretty great.

That said, I think the best way to get an accurate feel for the health of an old battery is to put it through one full cycle of normal use and time how long it takes to die.

Apache Guacamole might be a good option. "Clientless" (browser-based), supports various mfa, uses ssh/vnc/rdp on the backend.

However, if the data on that machine is sensitive, or if that machine has access to other sensitive things on your network, I'd suggest caution in allowing remote access from untrusted machines on the wider internet.

RIP

• Your user account on GrapheneOS is just a local user account
• GrapheneOS comes with its own camera, gallery, contacts, sms, phone, and file manager apps, a hardened fork of Chromium called Vanadium, and an app that lets you install sandboxed versions of google play services and google play store, if you so wish. Nothing else. You can install other apps using F-Droid, or by installing the google play store app.
• GrapheneOS does not have a "cloud", aside from the web services it uses to check for and pull new updates. If you want to sync files somewhere, you can install whatever you want (Nextcloud, Google Drive, etc)
• F-Droid is a fine choice, and the google play store is as well, all depending on what your priorities are for your phone. I only use F-Droid and have no non-foss apps on my phone for privacy reasons, for example.
• Running your own Nextcloud server is a great learning exercise, but it's a big commitment of time if you're not already familiar with linux administration, and if you want it to be secure and accessible remotely that's even harder. Don't let that be an impediment to getting a secure phone though - you can always keep using Google Drive for now, and then learn how to set up Nextcloud or some such as you go along.

Good luck!

powertop is a cool tool that can analyze your machine and provide a list of suggested power optimizations

Without an argument, the -j option will start jobs with no limits - depending on the project, this could be thousands or tens of thousands of processes at once. The kernel will do its best to manage this, but when your interface is competing for cpu resources with 10,000 other cpu-intensive processes, it will appear frozen.

Make's -j option specifies the number of concurrent jobs to run, and without an argument doesn't limit that number at all. Usually you pass an argument to it with the number of cpu cores you want to utilize. Going over the number of cores you have available (like it does without an argument) will be slower or even freeze your system with all the context switching it has to do.

Any proclaimed prioritization of privacy or privacy improvements in stock Android serve only to bring your data more directly under the control of Google at the expense of other entities, so that those other entities must pay Google as a middleman to your data. On stock Android, there is no privacy - Google has access to everything, always.

In my opinion, one step that could reasonably be taken to improve the situation is for Google to go fuck itself, lose every anti-trust suit brought against it, and die.

Bromite before it died, RIP :( Vanadium now with regular dns adblocking where security matters, Fennec where it doesn't.

The standard of "you will be prosecuted and punished for publicly criticizing the ruling party/leader" certainly disqualifies China from being called a democracy, regardless of how many students they massacred or why.

Wow the country that massacred a bunch of unarmed college students in Tiananmen Square for protesting for democracy has democracy?

While we may fundamentally disagree on the war and its justifications, I do appreciate your thoughtful response, and it does actually answer my question, thank you.

I guess I'm just trying to understand what I see as the cognitive dissonace of a leftist rooting for modern-day Russia's invasion of a neighbor, and this is clearly the place to ask.

The parallel to Iraq is exactly my point. I'm very anti- bombing kindergartens, and it doesn't matter who's dropping the bombs.