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Comment by apetresc | Hacker News Reader

Huh? Who, Lenovo or AMD? They both have fine Linux support.

The last AMD laptop I bought froze randomly every few hours on Ubuntu, and there is no way to turn on my keyboard backlight on my Thinkpad T480 on Ubuntu. I gave up trying to fix these problems a while ago, and last time I checked nobody had found a fix for either issue for my specific laptop models. I'd be very hesitant to buy AMD or Lenovo before I had strong evidence that there are no serious issues on Linux.

Sounds like the famous AMD Ryzen soft lockup bug. Adding something like

    processor.mac_cstate=5 rcu_nocbs=0-7

to the boot options solved it for me.

See for instance this: https://community.amd.com/thread/225795

Granted I had to do a firmware update(supported through Linux), but I have Linux running on a X395 without any problems.

What about problems people mention here? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22969469

I love ThinkPad and planning to buy one soon, but reporters of problems with sound and WiFi drivers concerning.

I mean, buying a brand-new device and using Ubuntu 19.04 with the 5.0 kernel from a year ago and outdated packages is begging for trouble.

Since linux drivers live mostly in kernel space, for new devices I would imagine a lot of issues would be fixed by running the latest kernel or mainline for even newer hardware.

The newer Carbons and the X1 Extreme have had a rougher time than most Lenovo laptops. My T480 and T580 were pretty much perfect from the jump, but my X1 Extreme remains disappointing.

I installed Ubuntu 19.04 on X1 Extreme Gen 2 and didn't have any issues. Upgrades to 19.10 and 20.04 have been painless as well. Everything basically works.

I have an X1 Extreme Gen 1 and it's had power/battery issues since I got it.

Yep same on the Gen 1, it's an awful machine.

Running 20.04 on X1E G2 without issues here.

Recently bought T490 worked with Debian stable out of the box.

Providing you pick one with intel wifi you'll have no problem. As far as I can see, that's the only real disadvantage of these AMD models.

Having an AMD cpu doesn't prevent having an Intel wifi chipset. My AMD based Thinkpad T495 has an Intel wifi chipset.

I didn't know that, thanks.

I've been running Arch on X1Y2 no problem

No they don't. The newest X1 Carbon didn't have a working microphone in the Linux kernel at release. It didn't work in Ubuntu until about a year after it started shipping.

I have that X1 Carbon and you're correct, it doesn't work.

But I can't help but see that as a feature, no a bug. I can plug in my headphones with a mic when I need to, but having the hardware cover over the camera and no working microphone is nice.

"it's a feature"

AMD GPU drivers are still suspect. I LOL’d at this commit [1] before reverting it in my local branch and thinking glad I went with Intel.

[1] https://github.com/mpv-player/mpv/commit/6385a5fd1b8a67c051b...

Not all Lenovo laptop work that well ... A485 support has been shitty for a long time.

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