Setup

The Machines

(Old) Thinkpads are enterprise-grade, upgradable, rugged machines that come with a tiny red nub in the keyboard.

Thinkpad x270 aka Aglarond

The newest member of the family (June 2026), bought through Vinted for 80€ total! I bought it in order to have a reliable machine I could take to symposiums and conferences, without having to worry too much with dongles and all that. It just works and I’ve been daily-driving it ever since!

Modded Thinkpad T430 aka Khazad-Dûm I (RIP)

My (old, see update) daily-driver portable computer since December 2021, when I bought it from a portuguese government official for the modest price of 180€.

Since it was a government machine it came with many privileges, such as an embedded card reader and a fingerprint sensor.

Since then, I have also changed many components of it such as: the keyboard, screen, processor, ultrabay and even switched the motherboard for a Corebooted-one.

Below you can see my neofetch output:

My T430 neofetch output
My T430 neofetch output

It simply suits my needs. It drives Arch GNU/Linux perfectly, runs the Vivado suite smoothly (although a bit slowly), surfs the web and allows me to SSH and RDP into more powerful computers at INESC-ID.

Update: As of January 2026 the original Khazad-Dûm seems to have died. After months of inactivity, it failed to boot from the disk, displaying corrupted colourful blocks. After that it stopped achieving POST. I will try to find a way to fix it, but for now it is a RIP to this old, old friend.

Gone, but not forgotten
Gone, but not forgotten

Modded Thinkpad X200 aka Khazad-Dûm II

My second daily-driver computer, which has recently become my go to.

The x200 normally drives the Khazad-Dûm SSD, as I rarely need both computers at the same time. This 12-inch machine is incredibly lightweight and portable, sturdy, lets me surf the web, work on my terminal and SSH into powerful machines if needed be.

It just Just Works™!

I’ve bought an X201 MoBo to upgrade it, and soon the wifi and BIOS will be upgraded too, to increase this delightful machine’s lifespan.

Update: As of January 2026 the X200 (fka Aglarond) has been re-baptized as Khazad-Dûm, after the apparent death of its predecessor.

“Server” aka Thinkpad T410 aka Erebor

This website (and soon other self-hosted services) are running from a T410 found in a garden bench as it’s mentioned in this post. I have fixed it, cleaned it and it now drives Ubuntu.