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Comment by intsunny | Hacker News Reader

I've been holding off on purchasing a new Lenovo laptop. Shortly Lenovo will start shipping latops with the new generation AMD Ryzen mobile chips that have RDNA 2 GPUs. [0][1] This is a real game changer.

The amount of power and open source VULKAN friendliness is going to be incredible.

I look forward to being able to do container work, and emulate Gamecube games all on a single Linux machine.

[0] https://www.aroged.com/2022/04/16/lenovo-thinkpad-t14s-gen-3... [1] https://www.notebookcheck.net/Lenovo-ThinkPad-Z13-Exclusive-...

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I have an AMD Thinkpad (X13 AMD 2nd gen) and it's one of the most frustrating devices I've had in years. Linux support is superficially fine, but in continuous use lots of tiny, annoying incompatibilities (and sometimes pretty significant impairments) show up.

There's a set of known hardware issues (e.g. unable to resume from suspend, USB ports stop working until hardware reset is performed through the pinhole, ...) and I've been experiencing _all_ of them regularly. Never had these kinds of issues with an Intel machine (as they have much more battle-tested hardware).

I'd recommend to only buy an AMD laptop if you have a fallback and can afford to treat it more as a tinkering toy type thing. Note that some of the hardware issues also affect other OSes than Linux.

Personally I'm getting rid of this thing in favour of an Intel machine again.

Seconded. As much as I like rooting for the underdog and was really hyped by AMDs success after so many years of failure, my laptops always have been and will continue to be Intel based. I actually tried a few times, last time with second gen Ryzen, and as the parent comment says, it's always random little things that sometimes don't work.

Anecdotally, I'm running a T14 as my personal system and I've never encountered any of these issues, so I suspect some of this is model-dependent.

same. i just set up a P14s Gen 2 AMD (with 4k display, ryzen 7 pro 5850u, 48GB ram) and after swapping out the garbage wifi/bluetooth module for an Intel 210 and the NVME for a 980 Pro this machine is excellent with EndeavourOS/KDE (5.17 kernel with AMD p-state support).

the only tweaks i've had to make are

1. enabling bluetooth service to autostart (disabled by default by distro for security)

2. installing the amdgpu vaapi drivers to get hardware video decoding in MPV and tweak some Chromium flags to get hardware video decode on Youtube, etc.

the only "issue" i've run into is getting TRIM to be re-detected properly for UASP-capable USB storage devices [0], but it's so minor that no one except me will notice :). it's not a ThinkPad problem, but likely something in linux's udev.

i dont use the fingerprint sensor, TPM or secure boot, so cant say anything about those.

(supposedly switching suspend mode to linux in bios helps, too)

[0] https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/700672/udev-rules-o...

I'm touting everywhere how P14s Gen 2 AMD is the best laptop I ever had - performance, portability, silent, ports, battery, keyboard...Even compared to the MBP 14 I'm using now, I'm missing it, and Linux, while I doubt I would miss anything from MBP if I switched back, even though it's objectively great.

Unfortunately, no OLED option is a dealbraker for me.

I haven't seen even a frankenpad option to transplant an OLED on the P14s Gen 2 AMD

the 4k panel is much better than the 2k/QHD IPS one i have on my previous T480s, and that one is better than all previous ThinkPad IPS panels! the colors are much better and actually pre-calibrated. still not OLED or Mac, but for a non-touch/matte ThinkPad display, it's definitely the best i've used so far.

That's funny. I have a Thinkpad P14s for work and an HP x360 for personal use which are both running Linux with AMD. They have the best Linux support I've ever seen. The graphics drivers are especially nice, fast and bug free. I can't image ever going back to Intel.

The only thing that bothers me is that lack of S3 sleep on the HP but that was a choice by HP and can the ACPI tables can be patched in the BIOS.

Same here! With Intel-based Thinkpads, especially X1 Yoga Gen 6, frequent issues in Linux. But Yoga Slim 7 with 4800U and afterwards P14s Gen 2 with 5850U, amazing experience, and the latter is the best laptop overall I ever had (including MPB 14 that I'm using now).

You're not alone -- I recently had a heck of a time trying to get a T14s AMD 2nd gen to work well in Linux (mostly same CPU/chipset/hardware as your X13).

I never got wakeup from S3 suspend to work, it just froze; wakeup from S0ix actually worked ok for a while with a recent kernel (5.16 iirc), with a random kernel commandline addition (iommu=pt) to avoid a random 14-second pause on lid open (always exactly 14 seconds!). But wireless was still flaky on wakeup.

I played a bunch with powertop and different settings to try to get reasonable efficiency. Tried getting hardware video decode to work with YouTube/Firefox (vdpau / va-api); it sort of did, except when it crashed.

Then one day a week into the adventure, it just stopped waking up from suspend, after I-don't-know-what changed. Needed a hardware reset each time I opened the lid. I returned the laptop and bought an M1 Air instead; I love my Thinkpads and open systems but I also love good engineering.

System integration / QA / getting quality polished firmware is an underappreciated art it seems!

> The novelty (T14s) features ... USB-C 4.0 Gen 3

This one could be a better value compare to the Intel one, if it provides support for Thunderbolt 3 eGPUs.

One downside I can think of is that T14s usually only comes with soldered on RAMs, no DIMM slot, meaning it's less upgradable (say to 64G of RAM). That's why I'm waiting for a new AMD T14 which should come with a DIMM slot and hopefully USB4. And if Lenovo failed to deliver the T14 that I want, then I'll probably just get an E14/old-style XPS13. I don't really need cellular connectivity, fingerprint scanner and backlit keyboard anyway :-\

Oops: should have read the news before commenting. The new T14 AMD might not come with DIMM slot. See https://www.notebookcheck.net/Lenovo-ThinkPad-T14-G3-ThinkPa...

Don't need AMD RDNA 2 for Gamecube. I'm able to play Gamecube on Dolphin just fine on my Thinkpad T430 with Intel Integrated Graphics.

Framerates are very playable, but fall short of perfect. No up-scaling used.

Fwiw, i have a Thinkpad x395 with AMD Apu. It's mostly nice, but there are GPU driver issues that have been unsolved for almost 3 years now with that generation of ThinkPads (0). Let's hope such issues are sorted out for newer models

(0) https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/1870971

With such issues, don't expect Ubuntu to fix it while staying at the same kernel version. Instead, either try their HWE-stacks or upgrade to the intermediate non-LTS releases.

Fedora, for example, will always use the latest upstream kernel while keeping the rest of the packages reasonably stable. Usually, this plays nicer with new hardware.

Yeah Fedora is my go-to for anything business related because of this. In my experience it's the best mix of platform stability while still getting the good stuff that gets added to the kernel on a regular basis.

What gave the impression that I stay with lots releases? New kernels,.distro releases, different amdgpu ppas.... I've tried a lot of stuff, but these errors don't go away

I'm also waiting for the X13 Gen3 AMD becoming available, with RNDA2. Shall work well with Archlinux, enough performance for programming (GCC), playing (CSGO) and very portable. A lot better in a backpack on a roadbike or while traveling (plane, train).

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Lenovo-announces-the-ThinkPad-...

Using privately a X220 and begin mobile with it is just remains a nice device. Standard keyboard, standard performance and pleasure to carry around without worries.

PS: I'm surprised that Lenovo still don't give users a "quick start manual" explaining how to use the TrackPoint. It is a game changer for everyone capable of touch-typing. Why leave a good keyboard when your fingertips can remain there? I don't blame the users here. Apple contrary uses video advertisements as hidden "introducton guide" to buyers. Remember when IBM just didn't build in TrackPads? The area was used a palm-rest.

I have been looking for one but unfortunately 95% of lenovos with ryzen have soldered ram which i a hard no for me :(

I have 2. Lenovo Legion 7 with aand AND cpu. And a ThinkPad X1 Extreme gen 1. I’m hoping new job I can get the X1 Extreme gen 5 cos I love the 16:10 screen.

The Lenovo Legion 7 Pro and 5 Pro also have a 16:10 screen.

Yup that’s Why I want my work computer to have one too. Try to keep work and play seperate.

Yep, that's what I'm also looking for. I bought the Thinkpad E14 Gen3 not because it was the best I could afford but because it was the best Thinkpad with AMD chips in it. I'd happily chip in +1000 euros for a higher build quality laptop with similar stuff inside.

Something significant has to happen before I buy another Intel/Nvidia combo ever again. I'd much rather suffer the mediocre OS and go to Apple.

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