Lenovo to Certify ThinkPad and ThinkStation Workstation Portfolio for Linux | Hacker News Reader

Lenovo to Certify ThinkPad and ThinkStation Workstation Portfolio for Linux

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I have a Lenovo Thinkpad Yoga that claims to be certified by both Lenovo and Canonical for Ubuntu.

Finger print sensor doesn't work, the fans are super loud all the time, audio doesn't work (requires a newer Linux kernel than the one shipped in the latest Ubuntu), EFI problems, sleep, hibernate, fast-boot, restore from hibernate problems, battery life on Linux is horrible...

So at least the certification for Ubuntu is completely worthless. Reading the first comments in the Ubuntu forums from a year ago and the evolution of the Arch Wiki for my laptop, I have a hard time believing that somebody actually tested it before releasing the laptop. At best, somebody looked at the spec sheet and said "we have supported similar hardware before, this is good to go".

1 year later, the laptop is almost in a barely usable state. Canonical broke Audio support (soundcard not detected anymore) with 19.04 and did not fixed it before 20.04, essentially telling users to wait till the next Ubuntu release due to in 6 months. The only officially supported version is a 4 year old custom 16.04 that I never got the chance of trying, but this should tell you a lot about "long term" support of Canonical and Lenovo for these machines.

The only ones that should be getting any praise are the dozens of volunteers that have been screwed by both Lenovo and Canonical into buying one of these and have made their work and support time available to others for free.

If you want to buy a Linux laptop, avoid Lenovo like the plague. They have absolutely zero quality assurance for Linux.

EDIT: link to certification: https://certification.ubuntu.com/hardware/201906-27127

what a worthless bag of bytes.

I have an older X1 yoga. I haven't tried to make the fingerprint sensor work, but the rest works quite well. Especially after I updated the firmware with fwupd.

It's not my first Thinkpad running Linux, and the prior two ran quite well.

I run Arch Linux on mine, with the latest kernel, and custom tools (think fan), and some things disabled (fast boot), and it becomes "usable".

That's ok for any Laptop that isn't advertised as "Ubuntu certified".

But I literally had to uninstall Ubuntu and install Arch to get audio and microphone back to work after the 19.04 update broke it, and some dev mentioning on the bug report that the fix wouldn't land on 20.04 which it didn't.

Imagine Microsoft or Apple telling their users that they have to live without a soundcard for 6 months during COVID-19 because "tough luck". Well that's pretty much how Canonical and Lenovo treat their customers.

"btw, I run Arch" /s

To add some more useful (anecdotal) data, I have a Thinkpad T15 with Ubuntu 20.04 and everything works smoothly (even secure boot) EXCEPT the fingerprints reader, although TBH I still haven't tried after updating to 20.04. So in my opinion Lenovo support for Ubuntu is really good.

If this were about somebody getting a 2k$ macbook whose fingerprint reader doesn't work, everyone would be outraged.

But since I paid 2k$ for a Lenovo Ubuntu laptop, I'm the one that's wrong for expecting the fingerprint reader to actually work.

You can have a more than decent Lenovo laptop for half that price (T490) and TBH fingerprint reader is a nice gimmick but it's not something I care when I choose a laptop.

That’s probably not what people want to hear but I learned over the years that it’s best to stay one LTS version behind on Ubuntu. I’m running 18.04 and won’t upgrade to 20.04 until next year because Ubuntu always has bugs 6–9 months after release.

Also, MS and Apple charge for their software. Linux OS are free. That doesn’t absolve Lenovo from selling “certified” laptops that aren’t compatible though.

I also find that sticking to older enterprise Thinkpads (X, T, W) and staying away from the toys posing as thinkpads tremendously helps avoid headaches with Linux. Shame on Lenovo for mucking the waters and using the name for enterprise and consumer machines.

And older enterprise class thinkpads are dirt cheap on top of being easily fixable and upgradable for peanuts because every IT department is on a 3 years lease cycle.

> Also, MS and Apple charge for their software. Linux OS are free.

I paid ~2k$ for a Lenovo Laptop certified for Ubuntu. I don't really see the difference between doing that and paying 2k$ for an Apple laptop that's certified for MacOS (which i've upgraded for 8 years for free), or some other laptop certified for windows.

Except for the obvious difference that the Lenovo Laptop does not work with Ubuntu as promised.

I used to be more superstitious about that, but now the most cautious I think I'd recommend being would be to wait for the first point version (e.g. 20.04.1). Ubuntu has been a lot less surprising since 14.04 or so, for me.

How do Apple charge for their software? They do sell things like Logic Pro I suppose, but not the OS itself.

Most fingerprint sensors I've run into on laptops use the Broadcom Security Processor, which Broadcom has emphatically stated they will never support Linux for. Just a straight up no on the driver front, and the thing is purposely designed to be a black box so reverse engineering is a huge effort.

For what its worth however they didn't work all that great in Windows either. The sensor was pretty picky about your thumb being absolutely dry and spotless and getting the swipe speed just right. I found it less convenient than just typing in a password. When I switched the laptops to Linux and discovered that the driver situation was hopeless I wasn't too broken up.

Did you use install first Ubuntu yourself and did you use standard images for first Ubuntu install?

I have a new X1 Carbon 7th gen, and it was definitely a lot of work to get it set up. But after tinkering and some kernel updates (Fedora >> Ubuntu for new hardware) I couldn't be happier. Incredible performance, all day battery life, etc. I have a friend who got their finger print sensor working but I never bothered to try.

I also have had great experience with fwup. I've gotten tons of bios, firmware, microcode etc updates from Lenovo and they all apply seamlessly.

I think Linux support of new hardware is always going to be shaky unless we can get vendors to care and support it themselves. Otherwise, we have to wait and let the open source devs make drivers after the hardware is released.

I have a Lenovo Yoga 720-13ikb. Firmware updates are distributed as Windows Executables only. It's the first time that I have heard of fwup. Will fwup help me to install Firmware (Bios/UEFI) Updates? It's the only reason I have not yet wiped Windows. All hardware worked except the fingerprint reader I do not care for anyway.

I do not know about your specific machine, but Lenovo is pretty good about supporting fwupd, so its worth a try. Install fwupd for your distro and run `fwupdmgr get-devices` to see what on your machine is supported. When I run that, I see System Firmware, thunderbolt controller, UEFI firmware, touchpad, etc etc listed.

You should be able to extract the BIOS update .fd file with InnoExtract [1] or InnoUnp [2], and then use the BIOS vendor's flashing tools, which are usually available for a number of other platforms, including Linux.

If this laptop has Insyde BIOS, the relevant utility is called "H2OFFT-L" (Insyde H2O Firmware Flash Tool - Linux). In the worst case, you might have to run a tool from DOS.

1. https://constexpr.org/innoextract/

2. http://innounp.sourceforge.net/

I don't have your Yoga, but fwup has worked perfectly for me. That's something Lenovo should be proud of.

I've also got the impression that even just slightly older hardware might be easier to get working than the very latest generation. This may be even more true for distros that don't ship new kernels in a rolling release style. (Fedora continuously updates to new minor/patch versions of the kernel as they're released; I'm not sure what Ubuntu does nowadays but I think they used to only patch the kernel version that was shipped at the time of the release.)

I think the idea of $random_component_vendor maintaining an up-to-date Linux driver themselves may be unrealistic, and laptop vendors probably won't be doing that for all of their components either. At least on Linux that tends to involve being a competent kernel developer, too, at least if you want to be the maintainer of the driver in kernel upstream.

If the OEMs that are interested in Linux support collaborated with distros and/or kernel/driver developers before the new hardware hits the shelves, even if they didn't plan on writing and supporting the drivers themselves, that might work. Otherwise there's always catching up to do, as you said.

For years now, I've also had nothing that didn't work on my now fairly old X240. Everything's pretty dandy. At some point the clickpad didn't work after resuming from suspend, though, and that was a major issue that really shouldn't happen on a laptop series that's supposed to have great Linux support.

Other than that (and the fingerprint reader initially not working even though it was supposed to be supported, but that wasn't a big deal), there's really been nothing that didn't work.

> I think the idea of $random_component_vendor maintaining an up-to-date Linux driver themselves may be unrealistic

I agree. I wonder what the Windows model is, and is there a way to emulate that in Linux?

The windows model is that you get a binary-only driver that works with the current (certified for that component, etc) version of windows. You maybe get one or two updates over the next half a year. Then nothing.

If there is a bug, exploit, whatever, good luck. If there is a newer version of the component with a minor difference (e.g. different range of serial numbers, different device id, etc) usually the newer driver won't work, so no bugfixes for you. However, you can keep on upgrading your windows version, at least within the same Service Pack and major version, sometimes longer, because the age-old driver will continue to work.

The way to emulate it would be "have a binary compatibility layer for kernel modules". However, this gets you old, broken, weird and incompatible drivers that just happen to run with the new version if you are lucky. Also, because every vendor will reinvent the wheel while doing the minimum amount possible, drivers will be less capable, come with weird special tools, crapware and a generally bad compatibility to devices from other vendors.

Believe me, the grass isn't greener on the other side, just different.

Maybe the X1 Carbon 7th gen has a bit better support than the Yoga I have, but that gives me hopes that everything will work one day (although some user below has your exact same Laptop and they complain below that Audio does not work for them, which is the same problem I used to have with Ubuntu, so maybe this is a Debian/Ubuntu issue that others distros do not have).

FWIW, I've also used fwup and it has worked perfectly, so that's something that Lenovo did get right.

> I think Linux support of new hardware is always going to be shaky unless we can get vendors to care and support it themselves.

This is what I actually expect from a Ubuntu-certified laptop. That the manufacturer makes sure that the Laptop actually works with Ubuntu.

That's the same bar I have for Apple and windows laptops.

Otherwise they should just call them "Linux tinkerer friendly" or similar.

The sound card just needs the up to date SOF driver. It works out of the box on Fedora 32.

Fedora 32 was released in April 21 2020. This laptop was released in october 2019.

Waiting 7 months to be able to use sound was not an option for me. I needed to use the microphone and headphones for work.

Luckily I managed to get Arch set up, which came with a recent enough kernel and SOF driver. As of June 2020, Ubuntu still does not.

Interesting. Fingerprint sensor works perfectly on my T450s + Ubuntu 20.04.

Things tend to work better with slightly older hardware. The compatibility issues have already surfaced and there's been time to fix them.

There's been plenty of time to get things working since the T450s was released.

In the certification it states testing was done on kernel version 5.0.0-1015-oem-osp1.

Are you using that kernel version? If not, use Ukuu or some other method and install it

To be fair, if hardware really only worked with a specific version of the Linux kernel, that wouldn't exactly scream quality either. You'd be stuck without being able to update for security or for any new hardware support.

As a troubleshooting step, trying with the specific kernel version that was used for the certification might of course work.

I agree, I moreso meant if they are on kernel 4.x or possibly an earlier version of 5.x then that could be why it's not working well

They actually managed to upstream support on kernel 5.1, but break it on kernel 5.2, and IIRC only kernel >5.5 has the fix, which ubuntu still doesn't have support for.

I expect Canonical or Lenovo or both to test all release candidates of all kernel versions after release and make sure that the hardware actually works, and if it doesn't, prevent the release of a broken Linux kernel version.

That would be the minimum level of QA acceptable for a "certified" laptop.

It seems super weird that "certification" means "works to our spec with $distros at the time of release" instead of "we have an arrangement with $company that will ensure that $distro will always be fully supported."

It usually means they hacked in some hardware support for that one particular kernel but didn't upstream it. This is how hardware companies seem to prefer to operate. Release a product (including the drivers) and then forget about it. Maintenance is a drag and getting patches accepted upstream is too much work, plus they might come back to you and ask you to fix stuff in your code later, which isn't in the budget.

Windows bends over backwards to try to support old code. If you have something with Vista drivers there's a decent chance you can get it working in Windows 10, unless they were 32 bit only drivers. Even if you supply the source code (gasp shock! Unheard of!) you still end up chasing Kernel ABI changes from time to time.

For an example, I have an old Canon LiDE 35 scanner that I use from time to time. On Linux it just works as part of the huge SANE bundle. On Windows all I have are ancient 32 bit drivers that don't work on Windows 10, but if you download the Windows 7 x64 drivers for the LiDE 60 and hack some strings you can get it to work. A complete reversal in the amount of technical wizardry necessary to get it working over the course of about 10 years.

>>If you want to buy a Linux laptop, avoid Lenovo like the plague. They have absolutely zero quality assurance for Linux.

Isn't this a bit too harsh on them? We've had good experiences on T and L series.

I am using L470 with fedora 27 for the last 2 years and I have not had any issues so far. I have gone till 78 days without a shutdown. It's been more stable than windows on suspend to ram cycles.

I did have issues with fonts out of the box but fixing was easy. One of the advantages of using Linux is it forces you to fix the broken parts and personally it has been a very rewarding experience.

I've had mixed experiences in this regard.

Thinkpads from the T and X series (don't know about Yoga, P or L) are really great, usually work out of the box and if there is broken hardware you are visited tomorrow by a nice guy from IBM (yes, really!) who fixes things without complaining about the weird OS you are running (of course you should be able to test that the new component works somehow).

Non-Thinkpad laptops from Lenovo are worse at running with Linux and the hardware support seems to be far worse, send it in, wait a few weeks, no solution.

Note that other vendors are very similar: there is a big difference between the "for professional business use" and "for home use" lines, in prices as well as support for software and support if broken.

You have a pay a premium for that next-day, on-site warranty. But it's worth it.

> by a nice guy from IBM (yes, really!)

Why IBM? IBM sold Lenovo to China years ago, does IBM still handle support for Lenovo in your country?

Here in Germany, they seem to. Don't know if this has changed recently, but for the last personal visit 2 years ago, it was an IBM guy.

Cool to know!

No, it's not too harsh.

I have a T440s, bought with the wrong (rtl8192ee) wifi chipset, and their support has been practically nonexistent.

If you're a big company, you can test the hardware before letting all your employees adopt it (and I know that my colleagues are quite happy with their X1 Carbon), but if you're a consumer and you find out that the hardware doesn't have (good/reliable) Linux drivers, you need to be prepared to return it... or to find a replacement FRU yourself (good luck with that!)

The biggest take away is make sure your hardware supports the software you want before you make expensive purchases.

Is that information that Lenovo publishes? In the following page it shows some model numbers. Is there a guaranteed 1:1 mapping from model number to chipset?

https://support.lenovo.com/us/en/solutions/pd100264

Based on this thread you don't want to trust what Lenovo or Canonical say. You need to find first-hand reports about particular models.

Sorry I just saw this. ThinkWiki may be a friend if you're looking for thinkpad specific documntation

I think they’re one of the manufacturers that has a whitelist of wireless cards as well. So sometime you can’t even replace it with something that works.

I've had mostly good experience with P5x laptops. I haven't gotten the fingerprint reader to work, and have had some minor issues with multiple monitors with the proprietary nvidia drivers. But other than that they've worked pretty well.

Perhaps the Yoga isn't as popular as other Lenovo models for running Linux. Still, the situation you describe sounds bad.

I bought a Linux laptop from System76 almost to years ago, and it have been a painless experience. They even manage CUDA updates fairly much hassle free. Anyway, I was tired of 25 years of futzing around with configuring Linux, so I decided on an easier path.

Generally, certification is useless except for "compliance" and "get support for something".

If you are running a supported combination of hardware and software, the hardware vendor can't officially close your case just because "you are running unsupported software and we are sure your OpenBSD damaged your mouse" or similar BS. However, as long as there is a hardware problem you are able to clearly identify, support is usually not a problem even with non-certified software with most (but not all) vendors. Problems that might be either hardware or software are always a problem, because you are almost always dealing with 2 vendors blaming each other. The certification leads to a slightly lower overhead for convincing the support to take the case and a slightly higher number of solved cases. But nothing dramatic. And also take care that the supported software is usually a specially adapted version of something, e.g. the exact installation of Windows your laptop came with. If you reinstall your companies default Windows image you are out of luck. If you upgrade to another service pack or major version, you are out of luck.

Also "certfied" is necessary for stuff like "our processes for adding numbers are certified ISO12345 and demand supported hard- and software". There is no real benefit besides complying with some obscure checklist some useless PHB came up with. But in some industries, you cannot do business without that, no matter how pointless, expensive, unsafe, insecure or counterproductive it might be.

In sum "certified" means "the bureaucracy won't be able to complain", not "it works".

I've only used Apple laptops for the past 15 years. So when I buy a Laptop for OS Z, I actually expect Z to work.

Maybe its my fault for having unreasonable expectations. No idea what the story is on Windows.

Even with macs running OSX there were OS and driver problems with overheating, downclocking, batteries, keyboard missing keypresses, keyboard going missing on reboot, touchbar disfunction and problems with the touchpad like broken palm rejection. And thats just stuff from a few weeks of reading HN comments...

And ive got three thinkpads that all run arch and dont have any of the issues you have mentioned.

My macs have far more problems.

Dont even get me started on my windows machines.

I’m curious which one you have as I’ve been a happy yoga user for many years(2 different models) and never has any issue with quality or Linux support.

I am a long time Linux user so that may be the difference. The fact that you prefer Ubuntu is probably a bit telling about you experience and skill level with Linux on the desktop.

I can't help but wonder if this means they will add "linux support" to their install.

People may have forgotten on the windows side they added software to the bios that would install itself even on a clean windows install

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenovo#Lenovo_Service_Engine

hmm, "Customer Feedback Program" or "Lenovo Accelerator" look similar.

For new hardware Ubuntu isn't exactly the distribution I would recommend. You may have a better chance trying a distro like Fedora or Arch. Speaking from my personal experience I have a X1 Yoga 1st gen and installed then updated Fedora from 29 to 31 it's a pretty much hassle-free process (apart from the fingerprint, which never worked in the first place and I don't use it anyway), I postpone the update from 31 to 32 mainly because I have some serious work ongoing, but I'm sure it will be smooth. You already shared you thought about "certifications", but I think the fact that Lenovo is starting Fedora Laptops[0] is telling in this regard.

0: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonevangelho/2020/05/08/lenov...

This is my experience. I don't get the fascination with Ubuntu. Whenever I hear about something that doesn't work it's always Ubuntu. That could be confirmation bias though. From my perspective it's old & busted vs Fedora's hot & sexy, using more up to date software revs everywhere you look. It's low maintenance (unlike Manjaro/Arch) yet still fresh. You have a choice of desktops, or no desktop at all. There is Fedora Server available. Everything feels more modern and advanced. There is clearly a huge amount of work put into producing Fedora yet it has less users. I don't get the Ubuntu craze. Is it just peer pressure? Am I antisocial if I prefer Fedora to Ubuntu? What am I missing here?

I never got it either, outside of possibly just the momentum of having a relatively easy to install Linux distribution early on.

Rather than Fedora, though, I opted to run Debian sid. I get all the up to date fresh-from-the-oven software packages I care about, can pilfer from external Ubuntu apt repos if I need to, without having to clear out any of the garish brown and sponsored Ubuntu junk, and it's fairly easy to install and maintain. Despite being the permanently unstable branch, it's never really meaningfully broken on me.

In my domain (bioinformatics), if it's self managed, Ubuntu is the standard. I would attribute much of the popularity to the Biolinux project, which built upon Ubuntu LTS and bundled in many popular bioinformatics packages which are a pain to setup and configure on your own. Besides these, many popular packages provide deb bundles, which makes it easy for a PhD student to manage on their own.

> There is clearly a huge amount of work put into producing Fedora yet it has less users.

You're saying that like no work is being put into new Ubuntu's releases. Or its developers don't contribute to GNOME, for instance.

I tried Fedora Core several years ago. Got some broken package resolutions the very same day.

Reinstalled to Ubuntu, it had been more stable (probably simply thanks to 'apt', but still), and I didn't bother with Fedora since. Also, I'm not relishing having to learn rpm/yum/whatisname, with its new arguments, its different set of capabilities, and different names for packages I'm already familiar with.

Speaking of "modern and advanced", though, does it also support the NVIDIA driver's new "offload" PRIME mode? The one where you don't need to reboot or even relogin to use the discrete card.

I work with a guy who has been sysadmin for 20± years (and he is good) he says something like this (I am paraphrasing):

It is a problem if Hipster-Developers work on bleeding edge Linux, because their software will run on their system but nearly nowhere else (including their own system a year later). If you wanna develope do it on a debian or buntu - if it works there, others won't have a problem

Not sure with I totally agree with him, but we had multiple problems which seemed to proof his point.

Docker containers

Hmm, given the popularity of Ubuntu, isn't also possible there are more bug reports just because more people use it? I installed 20.04 onto a new Asus laptop a couple of months ago, everything worked out of the box.

> If you want to buy a Linux laptop, avoid Lenovo like the plague. They have absolutely zero quality assurance for Linux.

I had the exact opposite experience. Perhaps it's a Unbuntu thing, hard to know, I use Fedora, or perhaps it's the Yoga...

In 2004 I got a T42, installed Fedora on it, it just worked.

In 2013 I got a T440p, installed Fedora, just worked. That Laptop is still in use, btw.

This year I got a X1 Extreme Gen2 (stupid name), installed the Fedora KDE spin, just works.

Sleep, etc, works, battery is life is really, the graphics card (internal and dedicated with the Nvidia drivers) work, etc, etc. So I am truly surprised by your experience.

I did a lot of research before, and these are the best Linux laptops that I could find (besides the "open" laptops like System76, etc).

The again, I am an engineer, so perhaps what I do in terms of setup comes easy to me without me noticing the complexity.

"X1 Extreme Gen2 (...) just works"

Literally? I can't even beat the installer because of the GPU. (Vanilla Fedora)

Huh?

I really did not do anything special (after it was installed I installed the NVidia drivers from RPMFusion, but that was after the base install was done).

Perhaps you need to enable hybrid graphics in the BIOS.

I've tried both with and without :/ Oh, well.

I'm with you. I have a 2017 X1 Carbon, and I've had zero issues with Ubuntu. The only thing I had to do was update a few config settings to properly sleep, and I run kde desktop so I don't have to fiddle with scaling on laptop monitor vs. my external displays. It's been an excellent laptop.

Does your microphone work? I generally love Thinkpads and have continued to buy them but even running Ubuntu 20.04 I still cannot use my fingerprint reader or microphone on my X1 Yoga and the pen doesn’t show up in Wacom settings at all so I can’t customize the buttons.

Yep. Microphone works (in the T42, T440p, and X1E gen2).

I never tried the fingerprint reader, so I do not know whether that works or not.

I had some issues with Ubuntu too. Fedora 32 -- zero issues.

I've had a couple of X1s and T series throughout the years, and ran Ubuntu and Arch wonderfully. Save for the fingerprint sensor (where I think the issue is not drivers but rather that fingerprints don't have enough entropy for a keyring), they actually ran way better than my current Windows X1 which BSODs every 3 days.

I think the yoga subbrand is a lower end model, so maybe they're sloppier there?

Sorry to hear you had such a bad experience... I've had great success with the T430, T480p and X1 Extreme.

I don't think an anecdotal experience with the Yoga line is compatible with the claim that "if you want to buy a Linux laptop, avoid Lenovo like the plague."

I've had great experiences with my Thinkpads (t410s and t530) running Linux. Granted, I was just running Ubuntu, but I never had an issue. I will note that I disabled the fingerprint sensor, camera, and microphone at the BIOS level so didn't have experience dealing with those drivers. I expect most others will have a fine experience with the non-touchscreen Thinkpads, and probably some of the newer models as well.

After IBM acquired Red Hat I was once asked what I am hoping to come out of this acquisition.

My answer was that for me personally the hope was to have more Linux ready machines and laptops available in the end consumer market (i.e. non server, non cloud market). Although the Thinkpads are long not anymore IBM products, somehow I was still hoping for the closer connection between hardware and OS know how in the form of the IBM-Red Hat relationship would trickle through.

Seeing Red Hat next to Ubuntu as supported Linux OS makes me think that Red Hat made actually some contributions to making this announcement possible.

It's great to see that it's not just one model but all models in all configurations will be supported. This is great news to businesses who need computers only as a gateway to cloud apps. Why would you pay windows licenses (particularly professional), if you can get a decent OS that can be managed better by IT for free? This is will weigh in particularly with cheap machines that are used by office workers in the throughout of the service economy.

Edit: maybe this will be the start of the height of the current trend to push all applications into the cloud, which is the SUN workstation 2.0 model. I wonder if the cyclical nature of this trend makes a comeback in the form of bringing cloud compute back to edge devices in 10 years. I would wonder what could drive such a comeback for the average Joe?

> Although the Thinkpads are long not anymore IBM products, somehow I was still hoping for the closer connection between hardware and OS know how in the form of the IBM-Red Hat relationship would trickle through.

Red Hat isn't missing any "know how". They, like any other developer, are missing publicly available data sheets to make everything work out of the box. There's nothing IBM can do to change that since they no longer manufacture PCs.

Just thinking about it, If IBM didnt sell the PC to Lenovo, packaging Fedora/RH with the PC would have been awesome... #justathought

I must point out that this does NOT cover ThinkPad T and X series. From the press release:

> Our entire portfolio of ThinkStation and ThinkPad P Series workstations will now be certified via both Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Ubuntu LTS – a long-term, enterprise-stability variant of the popular Ubuntu Linux distribution.

The press release also said "Lenovo is moving to certify the full workstation portfolio for top Linux distributions from Ubuntu® and Red Hat® – every model, every configuration." so I guess the question is: Are only ThinkPad P series laptops considered workstations OR is the plan to bring it to other ThinkPads as well in the long run?

Yes, the P series are considered mobile workstations[1].

T series = business X series = ultraportable

[1] https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/c/LAPTOPS#view-all

This makes sense.

The amount of fine tuning I had to do for my X1 7th generation with Ubuntu 19.10 was almost unbearable. Sound still is not working properly, the internal mic is still not working at all.

My T480s had 0 issues with Debian 10. It doesn't have a fingerprint reader which I hear is a main bug a boo with Thinkpads.

Same with my T470P, it works out the box.

The only thing I had to do was compile a module for also so I got high quality aptx Bluetooth for my wireless headphones but that’s an IP issue not something I can blame Fedora or Lenovo for.

My T470P with Fedora is as little issue as my work issued 16” MacBook Pro.

There are multiple issues with X1s on 19.10:

- Fingerprint reader - Sound - Microphone

I'll see what 20.04 can help with.

Ditto. No issues with my T480 and Fedora -- 100% out of the box. Previous thinkpads did fine with Ubuntu and Fedora as well.

Yes, but note that the P1 workstations are pretty much the same as the X1 Extreme series (but with Nvidia's Quadro "workstation" GPUs rather than Nvidia's "customer" GPUs.)

All the X1's I've seen come with Intel Integrated Graphics.

nvidia have always been a hassle to use.

It looks like the customizable variant of the P1 Gen 2 has different GPU options (including iGPU-only) based on what processor you choose, while the X1 Extreme Gen 2 has a Geforce 1650 in all configurations.

If I had known that when I was picking out an X1 for work, I would have pushed a P1 with no dedicated GPU instead.

The 14" X1 Carbon does indeed come with Intel integrated graphics, but I was specifically referring to the 15" X1 Extreme.

(Also, what pentium166 says.)

Post of linux technical lead at Lenovo for the PC team at the Debian mailing list: https://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2020/06/msg00004.htm... :

    I would really like to have this conversation with the wider community as to what Lenovo and Debian can do to work better together.

As an important example - the X1 Carbon 7 (which is a popular machine) still doesn't work well with any version of Debian (including experimental or testing) as the audio is broken. Debian users have to jump through a few hoops to get it to work. I've let the maintainer know a number of times what is involved to fix that but it's obviously not a priority (as a heads up - Debian on most Lenovo 2020 platforms is going to suck because of this too). I'm not meaning to point fingers - but just explain why it feels as if Debian and the latest hardware is an awkward fit.

When looking at Linux support I start with the Linux Vendor Firmware Service [1]. If the model I’m looking at isn’t supported then it’s off my list. You’ll notice that not all Thinkpads are supported [2].

The E, L and Yoga series are not supported but the T, P and X series are.

[1] https://fwupd.org/

[2] https://fwupd.org/lvfs/search?&value=thinkpad

Some Thinkpads that are not supported provide bootable isos that you can use to update your bios. It is my understanding that it also updates the firmware (but it doesn't explicitly say).

Here is an E model that has a bootable iso: https://pcsupport.lenovo.com/us/en/products/laptops-and-netb...

Yes, many vendors for many models do the same. Even if they don’t you could install it via Windows.

“Support” is more than just the ability to install an update. It’s to do with whether an issue affecting Linux is being addressed. In the case of the E and L series Thinkpads there are many shared components with the T series so your chances are much better.

> Even if they don’t you could install it via Windows.

Some enterprise PCs only have Windows, DOS and RHEL, SUSE options. There's no reason to use Windows when you can update BIOS and firmware via CentOS Live image with RHEL binaries.

My L560 is seemingly supported through fwup -- provided the existing firmware is not too old:

fwupdmgr commands fail with:

  Not compatible with firmware version 0.1.22, requires >= 0.1.42

And indeed history on fwupd.org goes back only to 0.1.43:

https://fwupd.org/lvfs/devices/com.lenovo.ThinkPadN1HET.firm...

Leaving a bootable ISO as apparently the only option. The snag being that the documentation refers only to Windows, and describes various Windows-UEFI interactions.

https://download.lenovo.com/pccbbs/mobiles/n1hur35w.txt

So, the $1500 question is, could there be some hidden risk of bricking the laptop, at least for Linux installations?

ThinkPads, at least the mainstream models, certainly have always worked very well with Linux thanks to the great ThinkPad community who is really passionate about this. I've picked up a cheaper Ryzen E495 in retail a couple months ago because I needed a new notebook asap, and it works flawlessly with Ubuntu 19/20. Better first-party support (like Dell has had for many years now) had been promised for quite a while, so lets see if Lenovo keeps delivering; I'm all for having options. But tbh the Dell I had was hands down a better notebook experience (incomparably better display and trackpad, subjectively better keyboard even though keyboards are considered one of the strong points of ThinkPads). To match a Dell XPS, you have to go for a really premium Carbon X1 which is quite a bit more expensive. Downside with my Dell XPS was that the battery seems to have been broken OOTB and never lived up to Dell's projections, then began to swell so had to be replaced out of warranty.

Can you tell me the model of the Thinkpad that you are using. I am looking to buy one.

Thinkpad E495 with Ryzen/Vega 3500. Not sure it's still available because it should've been superseeded by the newer Ryzen/Vega 4000 chipset by now? Be sure to put in a 2nd memory stick to not slow it down (see the review on notebookcheck why), and also to have at least 16GB RAM.

Edit: I picked mine because it was on stock for take-away (there isn't usually a choice of "pro" notebooks with matte screens in retail); for the same kind of money, you could get better value I think; I had hoped for a little more performance for sure (but it's still a solid workhorse)

Really happy to see that Lenovo is improving Linux support.

I picked up my first ThinkPad, an X1 Carbon with a i7-10710U and touchscreen, on sale last year and installed Manjaro Linux (with a vanilla Gnome DE). It's not a perfect hardware/software integration - the fingerprint reader doesn't work and neither does the onboard mic with the 5.4 kernel - but otherwise this is one of the best laptops I've ever used.

I don't think of it as a workstation. It's a portable premium keyboard with a decent screen attached. It's been great for light web dev and long form typing on the ~go~ couch. It barely weighs anything in my bag. Battery life on Linux is comparable to what I was getting on Windows, which is ~8 hours for light use.

Speaking of batteries, I had some issues with my battery not being recognized recently (it started by randomly reporting 0% charge before the machine started refusing to charge it altogether). The Lenovo support experience was surprisingly fast. I dropped off the machine at FedEx on a Tuesday morning and it was back in my hands by that Friday afternoon.

If you're thinking about going down the same path, my advice is that the Arch wiki is your friend.

Is Nvidia Optimus going to work or will it still require a dirty hack?

Will you have to choose between decent battery life and the ability to use an external monitor?

I bought an X1 Extreme and even with Pop!_OS it is incredibly annoying.

Dirty hack, like bumblebee? Well since driver 440.44 this kind of thing is incooperated into the nvidia driver itself. You can use it on demand. It idles at around 1w and is used for some physics and other decoding capabilities if i recall correctly. If you want to run a game or an app using nvidia you prepend it with an environment variable, otherwise intel gfx is used. It's not dirty, and works quite well imho... To make it more convenient:there are even extensions for gnome to say use nvidia with this and that app... Sure, to have the nvidia card kick in triggered by the OS somehow when really needed would be the non-plus ultra, but come on, this is science fiction :D

when was 440.44 released? i tried 1 month ago to get this running with ubuntu20 and failed hard :-(

The thing I talked about already worked perfectly fine since 19.10 and with hacks even in 18.04. 20.04 is now on 440.82.

> to have the nvidia card kick in triggered by the OS somehow when really needed would be the non-plus ultra, but come on, this is science fiction

Can't smth simple & obvious like the macbook pro GPUs work fine, eg. Intel graphics for everything when on battery, dedicated graphics for everything when the power cable is plugged in?

This covers like, everyones uses cases, right?! I mean, you almost never plug into an external monitor without having the power cable plugged in to... and who tf games on battery?

If only that were what the MBPs actually did. The real rule is, dGPU when plugged in, iGPU when on battery, _unless of course Chrome feels like forcing the GPU on for no good reason, which it will do multiple times per day_ (any app _can_ do this, but in my experience it's mostly only Chrome, and sometimes electron nonsense, that does).

Any where I can read on forcing to use the iGPU on MBPs when plugged in at compile time to be used for the runtime of an application? I figure there are some speed ups/power savings i can get when running an emulator when i'm not too concerned about fps (and way more concerned about lag between from usb input).

[edit] nvm, I can use this: https://github.com/codykrieger/gfxCardStatus

No. Different GPUs support different features (especially NVidia who still can't just use MESA like all the reasonable people) and have different hardware characteristics, so you can't just move applications back and forth on a whim.

In the X1 Extreme, the hdmi port is wired directly to the Nvidia card, so if you want to use an external monitor, you need to enable the card. This causes all manner of nightmares.

Gnome also used to forget monitor layouts and resolutions habitually, so plugging in a monitor didn't guarantee you'd get the same thing you got the last time, and when you plugged it out, your laptop screen could go funny.

I really don't have time or inclination to mess with this to make it work properly.

Actually the MBP is a poor example imho. If your dGPU dies, like it used to in the past and needed resoldering by a specialized shop or replacement of the whole logic board, you lose your external monitor capabilities. Maybe they improved that situation nowadays.

(ne plus ultra: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ne%20plus%20ultra)

I really meant non-plus-ultra which we use in germany.I thought it's universal among language families.

It's universally non plus ultra

http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/definition/american_eng...

Oh, OK, TIL. I’ve never heard that!

I would be interested to know which gnome extension in particular are you referring to :)

From 2016: https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=GNOME-Sh...

https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/2203/gnome-run-with-p...

This is good news, but Lenovo should be lauded even for their current Linux support, which already extends to a great deal of their systems, see [1].

https://support.lenovo.com/us/en/solutions/pd031426

By chance, I interacted with one of their devs through the Debian community, and came away very positively surprised. They really seem committed to this.

From a quick pass I don't see any mention about the docking stations. I would rather have them start working on the docking station capabilities. Right now my dock doesn't understand how to provide display port capabilities to linux. It is a very expensive USB-hub at this moment when I boot linux.

I had this same issue - if it's the same thing, it turned out that there are firmware issues and that the up-to-date firmware was only available for Windows (this may have changed, it was ~3-4 months ago). Lenovo's officially putting their updates on LVFS, but in practice it seems neglected. I spent a day or two stubbornly trying to extract the updates from the Windows binaries, eventually resorted to booting into Windows and updating firwmares on both laptop and dock that way. No issues since.

If it still doesn't work you can fall back on displaylink drivers in a pinch.

Updating the firmware changed nothing. On the product page I don't see linux compatibility even mentioned.

That's unfortunate. FWIW I'm using both an old-style dock (ye olde bottom connector) and the Thunderbolt 3 Dock with a T470s and a T480s with Arch and NixOS. Displayport and HDMI both working fine after first doing the latest updates using fwupd and then running additional updates for laptop/controller/dock from Windows (first step probably redundant).

If it's the Thunderbolt 3 Dock, it can be worth checking that you're using the right ports/cables (not all USB-C ports are Thunderbolt ports) and that there's sufficient power (there are different power adapter alternatives and the 135W brick that shipped with my dock wasn't enough by itself so still need a separate charging cable for the laptop).

I was currently shopping around for a new Laptop, and I really like the T series ones. Unfortunately, it seems they suffer from the throttling issue, which can be mitigated by a fix from the community [1]. I think Lenovo also released a fix for some models. All in all, it's a bit hard to know which models are impacted or not, and I don't want to end up buying one and having to resort to these kind of fixes to have it working correctly. [1]: https://github.com/erpalma/throttled

This is great news. Honestly I've never had a problem with Ubuntu on machines that are just a 1-year or older. There are so many i7 laptops in the secondary market that work perfectly.

Graphics drivers and WiFi drivers never worked without significant pampering for me in Ubuntu, and I've been using Linux for 15 years. Just last week I updated my working Nvidia drivers for my RTX 2070 card via Ubuntus GUI and lo and behold after restart the screen is just black. It's at a point where I just want it to get a working system and never update it, security and performance be damned.

I know how to fix it because this has happened with pretty much all graphic cards I've had, I'll have to go into and mess with the grub config, make it run in safe mode, restart, try another grub config, restart, find out it doesn't work, run safe mode and reinstall the old drivers, cross my finger and wonder where my Saturday went.

Gentoo was the most reliant by a long shot (maybe for the simple reason it always asked if it should replace my config), but that is a time sink in whole other league.

Have heard good things about Fedora lately, but I dread throwing away the Debian knowledge I amassed.

I guess it’s all about choice of hardware now. If you use components designed to support Linux life will be pretty smooth. I’m sure someone will point out the nvidia has a reputation for being linux hostile which does limit your choice a bit.

Currently running Fedora on an XPS13 Dev edition laptop.

Wayland, Gnome and Firefox are working together very nicely.

Mixed HiDPI with standard seems to be solved now. I’ve seen the odd glitch where an app gets confused as you move from one screen to another but overall very good.

Trackpad latency is improving but still not quite perfect. The fact that it’s close and constantly improving though makes me very positive about using Linux in place of my MBP full time.

I actually miss the Gnome window management shortcuts when I move back to my Mac.

Has Wayland figured out how to allow users to take screenshots? I would like to switch to Linux/Wayland from my mac but I need to share screenshots with co-workers.

I've been using the Plasma Wayland session for quite some time now and screenshots have been working fine basically from the start and some time ago screensharing with pipewire got implemented. Chromium and krfb support that, so both WebRTC and VNC work as expected.

You can take screenshots under Wayland, you just can not use random X11 tool that you were used to.

All Wayland compositors come with some tool, that can take screenshots.

The real issue is the clipboard which gets cleaned after closing the Window from where you copied.

I would guess that the format negotiation for clipboard data has something to do with that. You cannot negotiate when the originating app is not there anymore.

But then, is it a real problem? I understand, that some users might be inconvenienced by that, because they got used to it in their workflow... but is it really a showstopper?

Nowadays systemd distros like Fedora and Debian are quite similar.

> Graphics drivers and WiFi drivers never worked without significant pampering

> my RTX 2070

I still do not understand, why you folks with Nvidia hardware expect it to work out of the box in Linux, when there have been two decades of experience that Nvidia doesn't care about that and won't allow anyone to do anything with that.

So no, your RTX won't work as nice OOTB as Intel and AMD GPUs do. It will continue to be the case while you continue to give them money for them ignoring you.

Unfortunately AMD doesn't really compete in the machine learning space. Hopefully one day ROCm will offer a viable alternative but until then we are pretty much captive.

If you really need nvidia so badly, put that GPU into headless machine, where you don't need any UI.

Otherwise, you will be frustrated on desktop and it still won't work out of the box.

Or just use integrated graphics for the desktop, and reserve the GPU for GPGPU work.

Yes, that would be an option too.

>put that GPU into headless machine

Possibly one of the saddest solutions ever proposed. Besides then one can’t game on it

The original argument was the need for CUDA. It works headless, no sadness about that.

What is sad, is to reward Nvidia with your money despite being full aware, that they don't want you to have a nice Linux experience as the other vendors do.

Muh games fps is just a nail in the coffin.

Nvidia do care about Linux. Almost all of their cloud/AI sales run Linux. So CUDA normally works, but the graphics drivers themselves are crap.

If I were to specify a system most likely to "just work" with Nvidia, I'd probably go for whatever version of CentOS FB, Google and Amazon use internally.

As you wrote, they might care about their cloud and AI sales, but for linux desktop and OOTB experience? If they do, they hide it very well.

With VFIO on KVM, you can. You can make your own Stadia with actual games that way with a raspi running SteamLink.

I am not sure what you are talking about.

The Nvidia drivers provided by Nvidia work great. In Blender I got full CUDA support and even RTX raytracing support (RTX 2070 Super).

And as far as I know developing with the CUDA toolkit just works fine.

> I am not sure what you are talking about.

Literally the parent post, emphasis mine:

> Graphics drivers and WiFi drivers never worked without significant pampering for me in Ubuntu, and I've been using Linux for 15 years. Just last week I updated my working Nvidia drivers for my RTX 2070 card via Ubuntus GUI and lo and behold after restart the screen is just black.

So which is it?

I was commenting on "I still do not understand, why you folks with Nvidia hardware expect it to work out of the box in Linux"

It does work out of the box for most people. Of course there are people with problems. But overall you can expect Nvidia to work out of the box. There are loads of people gaming (Steam) and CUDA programming on Linux boxes. So I don't understand why I should not expect Nvidia to work on Linux. To me it just sounds like a false statement.

Once upon a time, when I was waiting for the delivery of the just-announced AMD Vega - which took a while, due to interest miners had in AMD GPUs at the time - I had a loaner GTX1080.

I can tell you, it was not something that worked OOTB. Distributions that shipped Nouveau at least did boot into GUI, but since I have 4k display, it was extremely slow. Unusable slow. It is not due to Nouveau not trying; they couldn't ship the signed firmware files they needed for reclocking.

So after switching to lower-resolution mode, I was able to install the system. Then I could install the proprietary driver. Aside the fact that it ignores Linux APIs/doesn't play nice with Wayland (what would you say about driver for Windows, that ignores WDDM and instead ships it's own display server?), it worked quite nice... until the first kernel update. So yeah, DKMS took the care about rebuild, it just took extra time at the first boot with the new kernel, and I could only hope that the new kernel doesn't break whatever building the shim expects, leaving me with a text console and taking next hour or two for me fixing it. Or that something else breaks, like that nvidia update, that killed X server in the process, which took down the terminal with yum that was running that update, resulting in me spending about two hours fixing the resulting mess. Another downsides were that I had to install compiler tools (which I usually do not have installed, or at least not outside of containers) and telling bye-bye to Secure Boot. So yes, it works, if you tinker. Not the kind of tinkering because you are in the mood, but the kind of tinkering that you have to, because something broke again.

Contrast that with AMD or Intel cards: they work out of the box with any modern distribution. You don't have to install anything; everything needed is already part of the distro. You can also update your system without fear, that something breaks, the updates come with your system updates, modules are signed by your distro and load in Secure Boot mode. Wrt. drivers, it is a Mac-like experience, you can forget that anything called drivers exists, stuff just works. It is something I can give to my parents, leave updates enabled and still be assured, that it won't break exactly at the time I cannot visit them and fix stuff for them.

And it is something that the Linux community can't do anything about. Nvidia keeps their cards close to the chest and won't allow the community to improve the situation. There's a reason why Linus has shown Nvidia the finger.

So in the closing: unless we two have vastly different ideas about what works out of the box means, no, Nvidia doesn't work out of the box. All the people gaming and running CUDA with Nvidia have to tinker.

Pretty much

Ubuntu has been plug and play for me the last 4-5 years.

It even supports devices no longer working on Macs and windows without any user interaction.

Of course, high-end nvidia boards seem to have all kind of problem. Stay away from Nvidia if you are a Linux user.

My approach to Linux laptops:

* Buy Lenovo

* Have integrated graphics (i.e. Intel)

* Run Fedora

This combination has, for a few years now, given me excellent reliability 'out of the box'. I don't have to do anything and everything from the fingerprint scanner to the wifi Just Works. There's still a bit of a battery life penalty compared to Windows, but it's not enormous.

This has been a source of much consternation. Basically want a 15" x1 Carbon without any of the complications of the dual GPU laptops. But no one seems to make it. I guess to push margins up they force higher prices on larger laptops as they become more "niche"

I ran into the same issue when I was in the market for a laptop a year or two ago. In particular, it's difficult to find a 15" laptop with a 1920x1080 matte screen that doesn't have a dual gpu setup. I was also looking for something that wouldn't break the bank.

I ended up getting an ASUS f510ua (cheap variant with a 1TB 5200rpm hdd) and adding a 256GB m.2 ssd for my boot drive. 8GB ram and an i5 8250U. Found a deal on the laptop so the total cost ended up ~$600 USD, although I think m.2 ssds are cheaper now. I've been pretty happy with the performance; it's just enough to comfortably do Android dev (I use vim though, not Android Studio).

The aspect I had to compromise on was build quality. The body is plastic and especially the screen has little reinforcement to bending specifically. It's not completely flimsy but I don't like carrying it around open in crowded/public spaces where it's more likely I'll bump into something and I wouldn't bet on it surviving a fall unscathed (my previous laptop, a Dell XPS 14, did exactly that, from college dorm bed to uncarpeted floor). It has also grown a single dead pixel, that I don't notice in regular use.

I expected the build quality going in, and overall I'm pretty happy with the purchase. I used it for 8+ hours daily for 9 months when I was separated from my desktop.

Interesting. I was considering a more budget end laptop but was worried about the build quality.

When I try most laptops in shops they feel terrible to be honest.

My first laptop was an Asus. To be fair it was as well speced as laptops 2 years later but the screen bowed in the middle.

How's the keyboard on those Asus laptops?

Thanks Nvidia. There is little Linux can do with out sacrificing a lot (principles and technical).

It's a pita, _hopefully_ one day AMD and ROCm will be a viable alternative.

About your driver upgrade? Did you installed a driver PPA and installed some driver that was not guaranteed to work or it was a Ubuntu bug, you did your regular updates (no PPA) and it broke your system?

I also had this issues because I wanted to try newer drivers, it is expected if the new driver does not work I go in terminal and install the previous working version. I personally prefer how easy is to test different driver version in Linux while in Windows I needed to make an account to upgrade my NVIDIA drivers(maybe you can avoid creating an account I am not 100% sure but at that time I was dual booting to play some game and I did not had a weekend to spend o how to upgrade my drivers without an account ... in the end I could not solve the issue where Oblivion had a black screen and I played it with Wine in Linux)

"Gentoo was the most reliant by a long shot (maybe for the simple reason it always asked if it should replace my config), but that is a time sink in whole other league."

I think I can see Arch showing off a bit of ankle at you. Think of Arch as a bit like Gentoo without the burning lap.

I have used both Arch and Gentoo, and the only similarity between them is steep learning curve. They are based on completely different tech (pacman vs. portage, systemd vs. openrc) and philosophy, they pursue completely different goals and solve different problems (or, rather, I hesitate to give a quick answer what problem does Arch solve, unlike Gentoo that gives the ability to customize the system all the way down, for a hefty price, of course).

If I was still in college I'd be trying to trick out an Arch build and post screenshots of my hyper-cool DE. But now I'm a fatass network engineer and I don't have the desire to spend an iota of energy doing config work outside of actual paid work. Ubuntu and Fedora just work, and only require a heafty apt/yum one-liner to make everything work. Arch is awesome -- the Arch Wiki is useful even for non-Arch users -- but ain't no body got time for that.

I'm a company director (MD) and I do not spend much time fiddling with my gear. I expect it to simply work and it does. I document my builds/configurations in both my corp wiki and the Arch wiki (stuff that is generic.) On a Fri afternoon I run "yay -Syu" and reboot. I deploy Ubuntu minimal for servers. I document those as well.

My personal systems are not exciting. I login with Active Directory creds and I have an Exchange account for email. I just happen to have multiple CAD apps available and lots of other stuff out of the box. When I update my PCs/laptops the whole lot update and off I trot. I get the occasional bit of breakage but because Arch is rolling it is only a small problem at a time and not a massive total meltdown.

I'm 50 next year - I studied Civ Eng at college. I am a fat ass PHB and sysadmin all in one package. I should also point out that my company is running reasonably happily despite SARS-CoV-2, so I think me and my two partners have done a reasonable job of the PHB thing. We still have all of our 20 employees and expect to come out with a (low n) £n00,000 loss on the books due to a virus. Happily we had >£n00,000 in the bank before hand to deal with unforeseen cash flow snags because we are boring and like to sleep at night.

To summarise: Don't diss Arch (or Gentoo) as a silly ricer distro. If you approach a problem with a true engineer's attitude and an open mind then unlikely solutions can arise. Also, keep some cash under the mattress for a rainy day.

Some days ago I installed Ubuntu on a system with a RTX 2070 super. There were no problems at all with the Nvidia driver.

But it was a kind of miracle it worked out of the box. Because before that I had to manually fix the Wi-Fi driver.

Hardware changes sometimes turn into a hell on Linux (Ubuntu). But I still won't go to Windows or MacOS. I just like the freedom of Linux. And when things are working, most of the time they keep working. On an other pc I have over 6 years of Ubuntu upgrades and it is still running fine.

Fantastic news! I hope a lot of other manufacturers will follow!

If they don't sell the actual laptops with all features working on a vanilla debian install, this amounts to nothing.

Besides, most linux-related announcements by Lenovo are false. They have announced several times in the last years, with much fanfare, that they were going to sell laptops with linux pre-installed. This has not been the case.

Got a ThinkPad T450 in my cupboard running Ubuntu as a home server.

Everything works perfectly.

I'd argue that thinkpads aren't stylish, but they're bricks that work well.

L430 here. It's not pretty, but it's solid and reliable.

And Lenovo's online specs and manuals are excellent.

I, for one, find Thinkpads gorgeous.

I have a T420 as my non-work laptop. It's running Mint and has been no trouble whatsoever, including close-the-lid sleep and graphics.

Are you using the touchpad, wifi, fingerprint scanner, bluetooth, graphics in your cupboard?

Lol, you don't need to be so combative.

It used to be my daily driver laptop.

And yes.

The touchpad, wifi, bluetooth and the GPU (intel) works perfectly.

And the laptop doesn't have fingerprint sensor.

Will you still have to pay the Windows Tax on these products?

Probably. "Certified" does not mean "ships with".

Dell offers that option -- "ships with" Ubuntu -- but only for a handful of laptops.

Came here to ask the same thing.

Infuriating as hell that we are forced to pay for something that not only we don't wish to use or support, but it also inflates the Windows sales figures and percieved install base vs Linux installed base. Grr.

Super big fan.

I had Lenovo's with Linux for the past 20 years.

My 7yo T440p is still working very well and my son is using that one now.

The brand new X1E Gen2 works flawlessly on Linux.

Granted, I'm using Fedora, not Ubuntu. Fedora tends to be bleeding edge, even for the X1E Gen2 all I had to do is install Fedora from the LiveCD (I'm using the KDE spin) and it just works. (this laptop still came with Windows only, so I deleted that and install Fedora)

I find the Ubuntu hardware certification a bit dubious specifically since they list all the hardware details. See, eg. https://certification.ubuntu.com/hardware/201906-27127 (copied from another thread, as a reference)

Now, as a consumer, I don't have access to that level of details while trying to buy a laptop!

So, the certification both makes you believe your laptop will be compatible but then when it isn't they can come back and claim your specific controller or bluetooth card is not in the list.

This is, of course, the manufacturer's fault since they use the same product name for a large variety of component bags. In a way Dell XPS Linux Edition is good since it tells you upfront there's no tricks.

That being said, this news is encouraging but I want to know when can I buy laptops from this lot of certified devices?

I would love first class hardware for Linux, specifically Ubuntu. This may just be a feeling, but too often do I feel like there is additional configuration that has to occur to get Ubuntu working on a repurposed laptop. There also seems to be a trade off of battery life — the same hardware platform lasts 4-6 hours running Ubuntu and 10-12 running windows. I know I can further configure the OS to get similar performance but therein lies the desire.

I get a great consumer experience when I purchase a MacBook or (some) windows laptops and I don’t have to worry about that configuration step.

It’s about time Ubuntu and other Linux distos are able to offer that same “ready to use” experience that I’m describing.

P.S. That said, it is worth pointing out that executing that configuration step is highly educational and, sometimes, pretty fun.

I think what's cool is that there now at least 3 different supported ways to run Linux on laptops today:

1. Directly run your traditional Linux distro (i.e. on these Lenovos, System76 laptops, etc).

2. Run WSL using Windows on a Windows laptop.

3. Run Crostini Linux VM on a Chromebook.

In the past, the Linux laptop options were largely limited to those who wanted to install it unsupported on devices (remember the campaigns to get refunds for the default Windows installations on laptops?).

And sure, the above listed supported commercial solutions don't embody the hacker ethos of the old Linux-on-laptop communities, but they do represent the growth of Linux as a broadly usable software development environment.

My experience running Fedora Linux on a Thinkpad P1 Gen 2:

It's mostly very good!

- I'm running Fedora 32 and using Gnome. I love it. Gnome continues to improve a lot with each release, and overall the operating system feels very stable. I can't think of the last time I saw any error.

- This machine doesn't have great battery life regardless of what OS you are running, but after properly configuring the GPU, battery life on linux is on par with Windows if not a bit better. I've also undervolted the cpu, which is easy to do and provides even better batter life.

- I was able to install all the software I needed using a combination of the Fedora rpm repositories, rpmfusion, and flathub. I actually have come to prefer flatpaks over other installation methods for software like bitwarden, spotify, riot, slack, etc. I don't notice the same performance issues I have seen with snaps on Ubuntu. I install Steam from rpmfusion, and am surprised at how nice the linux gaming experience is these days.

There are a few things that are less than stellar, though.

- It takes a little work to get decent battery life because of the nvidia gpu, and the setup isn't perfect. External displays must be run of the discrete gpu, so you can't get them to work if you are just running off the integrated intel chip, which provides the best battery life. In fact, external displays don't work when using "prime offloading" either. You need to set the nvidia gpu as the primary gpu to get external displays to work. What this all adds up to is that I need to change a config value and log out/back in depending on whether I am plugged in to an external display or not. I have a script that does this so it isn't that bad.

Interestingly, with the latest kernel release the nouveau driver is working for my nvidia card and, at least according to powertop, is able to dynamically switch from power-saving to primary mode when an external display is connected. I am also hopeful nvidia will resolve this in the next release.

- Docker is still a pain to set up on 32. There's no docker-ce repo, but you can install from the Fedora 31 repos, and to get it to work some system and firewall configuration is required. This is all pretty well documented in a github issue now, but it took a lot of troubleshooting at first.

That's my experience, and it has improved a lot since the machine first came out and I was running Fedora 30. There were initially several serious firmware bugs which took a long time to get resolved, and the OS/driver support was not nearly as good as it is now. Overall, I would recommend this combo if you need a powerful machine.

>This machine doesn't have great battery life regardless of what OS you are running, but after properly configuring the GPU, battery life on linux is on par with Windows if not a bit better. I've also undervolted the cpu, which is easy to do and provides even better batter life.

You can gain a couple of minutes using a WM instead of a full fledged DE

>Docker is still a pain to set up on 32. There's no docker-ce repo, but you can install from the Fedora 31 repos, and to get it to work some system and firewall configuration is required. This is all pretty well documented in a github issue now, but it took a lot of troubleshooting at first.

My solution to this was to use podman[0] instead.

0: https://podman.io/whatis.html

I'd love to use podman but have some use cases it doesn't yet support

Apart from podman-compose, any other issue?

You can install "moby-engine" (docker-ce 19.03.8) from Fedora repos instead, I think docker doesn't care about repo for fedora as they lag few months every release.

Oh boy. I want to see fingerprint readers support. Without working fingerprint reader calling a product supported is a joke and selective support. And what about windows hello IR cameras ? Currently it's still a mess.

The annoying thing there is that even with hardware support, login managers or pam specifically still don't get the idea of "you can use either the password or the fingerprint now". You get a choice of their using empty password then the finger, or exhausting fingerprint attempts before using password. Neither is great. I'm not even sure that's possible to solve with the way pam works.

"What’s more, Lenovo will also upstream device drivers directly to the Linux kernel, to help maintain stability and compatibility throughout the life of the workstation."

Particularly liked this bit.

I have a ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen7. In general, I have never been happier with the performance and haptics of a laptop. However, I haven't managed to get the fingerprint sensor to work, which is mostly because the relevant driver hasn't been merged into fprint. I was actually suprised when I discovered fprintd doesn't work on the X1. From the reputation ThinkPads have amonst Linuxers, I was sort of naively assuming it wouldn't be an issue.

And that's why I always check the ArchWiki before buying a computer

I had a small laugh when I saw that guy in the example image doing the most minimal of work on what is otherwise quite a capable machine [1]. But still, it's cool to see Linux being taken more seriously by vendors.

[1] https://news.lenovo.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/ThinkPad-...

Running Ubuntu 16.10 it looks like (which was released almost 4 years ago).

Hah! I missed that!

Is there a good site to different list models and rate compatibility? The anecdote about fans being super loud are scary. Not just Lenovo if possible

> Now, I’m excited to share Lenovo is moving to certify the full workstation portfolio for top Linux distributions from Ubuntu® and Red Hat® – every model, every configuration.

> Our entire portfolio of ThinkStation and ThinkPad P Series workstations will now be certified via both Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Ubuntu LTS

Are they certifying all models or just ThinkStation and ThinkPad P Series?

ThinkStation and ThinkPad P Series is what Lenovo calls "workstations", so probably just those.

It's really good to see official support for Linux broadening.

Whether you love or hate Lenovo products/service etc (they are far from perfect) this decision will spur on competition and provide more choice and better support for all in the future.

What’s dual (or multiple) monitor Support like with Linux these days? Thinking of getting the dell xps developer edition because it seems to be the one that offers the best compatibility but I would personally prefer a Lenovo.

Multiple monitors are not a problem, but mixed DPI is. It supposedly works fine in wayland, but I tried and failed to switch over to wayland. In X apps always appear the wrong size on one display or the other.

Oh boy! Well I'll just stay in the expensive "Mac-land"...

This only says they'll certify ThinkPad P series, which are mobile workstations not the more comfortable laptop ranges. Reading the title you'd think it might be workstations, and all ThinkPads.

This is wonderful, and welcomed news! The more that lenovo continues their sincere support of linux - and linux distros - the more likely i will be to purchase more and more of their hardware.

now the OS's need to improve. thinkpad's have had stellar support for linux. own a t490 and have run several distros from manjaro, redhat etc now on ubuntu 20.04. the distros need to work on hdpi support, consolidate desktop environments. kde is nice for some things n gnome is too. like for me on kde, the brightness setting was wonky. gnome no support for media controls. then finally linux can takover. I don't know the story about wayland - but it seems most apps don't support it

Delighted to see Lenovo get behind Linux. I have been a fan of the Dell XPS 13 for the last few years and certainly next time we are upgrading I will have a good look at the Lenovo range.

Didn't Ubuntu/redhat certify some thinkpads in the past?

Yes a view thinkpads here and there had been somewhat verified. Through I don't remember if it was fully certified. Like I think the fingerprint reader was always excluded from certification.

Does anyone know what's up with the fingerprint readers? They always seem to need reverse engineering. And once some model is well established, they suddenly switch to a new one...

It's happened so many times it just can't be accidental. There are no secrets in the glorified grayscale scanner - why are the drivers never opensourced?

Great news! I hope more laptop models will follow.

Quick aside : I have been a buyer of their T 4xx series-- from 440 to 480. I am curious as to what will come after T495.

T14

Instead of this marketing theater, they could help to improve battery life under Linux which still sucks.

I'm very happy that now we have a choice between Ubuntu and something else.

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