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Comment by ggreer | Hacker News Reader

Be wary of Ubuntu's certification. I have a Lenovo X140e. It's certified to work with no issues[1], but I spent months fixing basic things like graphics acceleration and screen brightness. Though it has an 802.11n card, wifi transfers at G speeds. I still can't get Bluetooth to work. The X1's all-Intel hardware should fare better, but I'd still recommend waiting for a Linux-centric review before ordering.

1. http://www.ubuntu.com/certification/hardware/201309-14195/

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@ggreer, I have pretty much the same latop (e145) and I still have issue with video (free driver), for example the video quality in HD is very bad. Most of the power is handled by the processor and not by the video card... Did you find any solution ?

Did you get a preinstalled system? They make quite clear that standard images might not work with certain hardware which sounds exactly like what you are experiencing?

I tried, but I'm not sure Lenovo ever actually offered the X140e with Ubuntu preinstalled. The option isn't available on Lenovo's website. When customizing the order, OS choices are all Windows. I ended up buying over the phone, but couldn't get a Linux preinstall that way either. The person on the other end was just filling out a form similar to the one on the website.

Since I couldn't get Ubuntu preinstalled, I made sure to order the exact hardware specified on Ubuntu's certification page: A4-5000 APU, BCM43142 Wifi/Bluetooth, etc. I also updated the BIOS to the latest version, which had fixes for Linux.

I realize I was rather unlucky. The X140e is not a popular piece of hardware. Next time, I'll be sure to pick something widely used.

As part of Ubuntu certification if an altered image is used then we supply that to the OEM. So Lenovo was given an image for the X140e - that's why the Cert page specifies a vendor image.

You have to request that image from the manufacturer. Probably through their support process. I don't know how it works for Lenovo.

The reason this happens is because hardware revisions and Linux kernel, and OS releases (e.g Ubuntu) are not in sync with each other. Eventually the changes for each hardware certification flows into the Ubuntu LTS release for that time. So, they probably went into 12.04.2 in this case. But, in some rare cases it's not possible for all changes to be taken - so generally it's best to get the preinstall image.

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