My new Lenovo X1 Carbon Gen 12 arrived today. I plan to use this computer as my personal workstation for the coming years. I’ve been watching the evolution of the X1 Carbon series for a while; I was convinced that this is the right model for me. I don’t need extreme performance and I appreciate its small size and light structure.

The new X1 replaces a Lenovo X230 which I used for twelve years. The hardware is still in a good shape and the battery lasts for a few hours. But it’s just too slow even for browsing the Internet.

I run NixOS on every computer I own and the new X1 is no exception. In a few minutes I could replicate my current configuration on the new laptop. On the X1 I decided to use ZFS, a file system I like to learn more about. Also, the disk partitioning scheme is now defined declaratively using disko.

When I first booted NixOS 24.05 with its default 6.6 LTS kernel, the HDMI port and the sound didn’t work. I tried a few more recent kernel versions and I found that since version 6.8.12 everything works. Currently my system runs 6.10.2.

Acknowledgement

Thanks Kornél for helping me with the Lenovo hardware specifications, disko and ZFS.