I own an 4K X1-extreme, which is basically the P1 without the Quadro card and Xeon/ECC option.
I run Ubuntu 19.04 on it and have so many problems.
- Grub has ridiculous performance issues on 4K screens, it renders at less than 1 fps, making it a real pain to do anything in it.
- You can't update the bios through Linux, the update tool is windows only.
- The Lenovo TB3 dock never works properly.
- The dual GPU situation (Intel + nVidia) requires all sorts of hacks to make it somewhat workable.
- The power usage is an abomination under Linux as it can't properly scale the nVidia GPU.
- Working with the TPM under Linux feels hacky, but maybe that's mostly due to my lack of experience and the lack of documentation.
OK, so all these problems are all due to my specific situation (running dual boot, and an external 4K display through the TB3 dock), but I really, really hope they start fixing these issues if they are going to officially support Ubuntu.
One plus though: due to the high power consumption under Linux, the coil whine is a lot less notable...
Most of these pain points go away if you purchase the iGPU only version. I own a Thinkpad T470 and Ubuntu works like a charm.
The only issue I still have is that the Gnome interface (Ubuntu 17.04+) does not support factorial scaling, meaning that I am stuck between 100% (which is way to small on a 14 inch screen) and 200% (which is way too big).
Ubuntu 16.10 still supports factorial scaling though, which means I am stuck with it until a better version comes along.
Can confirm that the T470 has been rock solid under Linux (I got one from work; running Slackware 14.2 with a -current kernel). Even OpenBSD ran reasonably well (had to switch off it because my work required me to use things like Google Hangouts that required Linux, but I might switch back pretty soon and try using an X-forwarded Linux VM).
I would've been much happier with the intel only version, the nvidia card is not worth it at all but at the time they didn't have 32gb of memory. Now the latest does, but too late.
I own an t490, also with ubuntu 19.04+gnome + dual boot.
I consider my problems are more basic than yours, and more hardware related.
- Under linux, the power management is VERY bad. I'm honestly starteled how it can be so bad. I loose 10-13% overnight while in 'deep sleep', compared to only 3% with 7.5 yo MBA. I get 5-6.5 hours of battery life. Less than the 2011 MBA. With windows it it much better - almost on par with my MBA.
- Trackpad has a big deadzone on the left+right + bad palm recognition.
- The display is very slow. More so on windows than on linux for some reason.
- Installing software is way too difficult compared to how it should be. Some software you install from the store, some from the command line, some offer AppImage. Sometimes the store has old versions that no longer works, things are not available for ubuntu 18.04/19.04, or you have to manually created a link such that the software is available in the desktop launcher.
I hope Apple finally fixes the Keyboard+durability issues with their next MBP iteration. Personally, I came to think that the 500$ Apple tax is worth it compared to all the (software) convenience + (hardware) quality that they offer.
> I hope Apple finally fixes the Keyboard+durability issues with their next MBP iteration. Personally, I came to think that the 500$ Apple tax is worth it compared to all the (software) convenience + (hardware) quality that they offer.
I agree, I bought the X1-e as the replacement of my rMBP because I just couldn't live with the keyboard and the touchbar of the new MBP. But the experience of the X1 didn't live up to it's expectations, mostly on the software side.
Don't get met wrong though, the X1 is a great piece of hardware. The keyboard is awesome and I really like upgradability.
But the experience on Windows (or Linux for that matter) is just not so good. A macbook is just more polished, and that is coming from someone who generally doesn't like Apple products.
In the end, this is a work laptop for me, and I just want stuff to work. And for that, the $500 Apple tax is worth it.
> You can't update the bios through Linux, the update tool is windows only.
I run Fedora on a T480s and BIOS updates come automatically through the software update channel (in fact, the frequency of BIOS updates is a little annoying).
> You can't update the bios through Linux, the update tool is windows only.
They offer ISO-images for these updates too. You can also create a USB-bootable version from these using the geteltorito tool (which is available via apt).
> Why are you using GRUB to dual-boot at all? Your machine has UEFI for that.
As far as I know, dual booting through UEFI requires me frantically hitting the F12 button during powerup to get into the boot menu. And then it won't remember your last chosen OS, so stuff like windows updates (requiring multiple reboots) become really annoying.
But I'll look into this, maybe I can just ditch grub all together, that would be great! My last linux/grub experience was on non-UEFI machines so I was just so used to installing grub that it didn't cross my mind that I might not need it.
I dual boot Windows and Fedora on a laptop with a NVIDIA dGPU and an Intel iGPU, don't use the NVIDIA one in Linux but when I boot to Windows I can game.
As far as I know, Ubuntu has even better NVIDIA support than Fedora so you should be good
You may need to install proprietary drivers though
Also I get really, really good battery life in Linux, I think it's accomplished with sudo powertop --auto or similar
I'm stoked about the upcoming AMD-based T series, which hopefully resolves the thermal throttling in the A series and has more ports and battery options than the E series. This would eliminate most of your issues since AMD GPU drivers are first class citizens on Linux.
All of your problems will magically disappear if you don't buy laptops with nvidia gpus. People really ought to do some basic basic research before dropping a couple of grand on hardware.
Yay, more options for not paying Microsoft taxes anymore. Microsoft's policy is that the vendor must have a policy on refunding licenses, but whenever I ask for a refund with a new laptop, the procedure is forwarding me to five different people because nobody knows and the last one goes "are you kidding me" and "no". The policy could be "go away", but not having a policy is the only thing that's not allowed. Unsurprisingly, Microsoft doesn't really mind and keeps shipping OSes to vendors that don't follow their license agreement.
Running Ubuntu 16.04 on a Zenbook UX360 with a 4K screen and frankly its working much better than expected. The 4K display is automatically scaled, all the brightness and function buttons work, no issues with display drivers, wifi, bluetooth, suspend and it pretty surprising to see this kind of experience out of the box. And its really fast and smooth. Even battery life is good if not excellent, around 8 hours on windows and 7 on Ubuntu for browsing, youtube, some spreadsheets and terminal.
For those of us who have tried to get Linux working on laptops 5-10 years ago this is quite a jump so clearly people have been working on this in the background to get to this state. Was using WSL earlier but after Ubuntu worked so well may as well use it. Of course for those who use Windows only apps WSL remains a good option.
Also have an Matebook 13 and tried Ubuntu after this experience on the Zenbook and there too it worked out of the box on a hi-res screen with dual graphics but you need to use either the prime drivers to use both, or use bbswitch to put off the Nvidia card for the best battery life. So it seems for recent laptops Linux works pretty well out of the box.
China has used its own FreeBSD (kylin) and then ubuntu-based (neokylin) since 2001. Nearly half of all laptops are sold with it. Likewise, North Korea has Red Star since 2008 which is mandatory or risk forced labor.
While kylin isn't too far off from a traditional distro, officers will force you to install rootkits on both desktop/laptops and phones (JingWang). If you're caught later with it missing you will most likely disappear.
Red Star is horrifically oppressive and monitors everything you do. The GPL is of course ignored and very few changes are ever released. Trying to circumvent the restrictions causes the OS to self destruct. The few applications you can use watermark every file you create.
Long story short them creating linux-based distros is just an easy way for them to exert total control. It does nothing positive for the Linux or BSD ecosystem.
>If you're caught later with it missing you will most likely disappear.
That could well be true in North Korea, but Chinese really isn’t like that. They have a very active tech industry so installing and experimenting with Linux distros and such that might not have monitoring software is fine. As long as you don’t do something openly suspect, like post something considered anti government, they just leave people alone.
I have relatives in China who have desktops and laptops and never come across Kylin. As far as I know it’s mainly used by the military and government departments.
It is my impression that despite initiatives like Kylin and Deepin, most of China is still on Windows. Am I wrong?
They adopting Linux would mean their hardware would work with it and developers targeting the Chinese market would have to make their programs work on Linux. That's all I'm hoping for.
It has always amazed me that North Korea is able to create an OS like Red Star. I assume it takes a lot of knowledge and skill to stitch together such an OS, with fairly "unique" spying features not really seen in other distros.
Considering the limited access to the internet and not being able to ask StackOverflow users, how can they even manage building such a complex piece of software?
It seems that Lenovo has been certifying their model for Ubuntu (probably for enterprise customers) for a quite a long time. There are a bit less models recently, but a few already have an Ubuntu 18.04 certification:
I can confirm that "everything works" is true for at least my T460. For Ubuntu 18.04 you even get BIOS updates via software updates. Battery life is also very good. With Ubuntu now again on Gnome I cannot complain. Under Ubuntu 16.04 I had occasionally problems where I needed to restart the network manager to see new wifi networks (wifi itself was always stable!), but this minor thing is also no issue anymore.
Recently my CPU broke down and I was "lucky" to try out the on-site warranty to replace my mainboard, which was not perfect (took a few days compared to the advertised "next business day"), but better compared to sending your stuff somewhere or searching your repair shop.
Also note that I do not use any nvidia graphics or 3d games. Just have not tried it and I know this could be a weak point. Videos etc work flawlessly though.
It is also no "free hardware" (bios etc). For an alternative in that regard I recommend to have a look into the nice Librem line from Purism: https://puri.sm/products/
>Lenovo has been certifying their model for Ubuntu (probably for enterprise customers) for a quite a long time
That certification racket between lenovo, canonical and redhat is not worth the paper it's printed on. It has no bearing on anything. Some firms/governments like such papers. That's about it.
I didn't find confirmation but I assume being certified with 14.04 and 16.04 means they're still certified with 18.04. Assuming that's the case they've certified pretty much their whole range.
Yes, if you manage to buy the exact same hardware. Unfortunately with laptops, the hardware configs change at best every year, and at worst every quarter, for a single model family. And often you don't know the exact model before buying it from a reseller.
Your second link is about someone who flashed their own copy of Windows 3.1 into the boot ROM of their own ThinkPad X200. Lenovo didn't put Windows 3.1 there, that user did.
Your first link is about Lenovo's IdeaPad line. IdeaPad and ThinkPad could well be thought of as products from two different companies.
Lenovo was already making laptops when they bought the ThinkPad line from IBM. Their own laptops evolved into the consumer oriented IdeaPad line, while ThinkPad remained the business oriented line.
They're both part of Lenovo, but are largely separate teams with different business goals and philosophies.
In particular, ThinkPads were never infested with any of the stuff you're talking about.
Here is the original notice from Lenovo about this. No ThinkPads are listed:
I was wondering what "crapware in BIOS" is, it turns out to be software in the UEFI/BIOS system that installs software in your Windows install. I doubt I'll be affected as a Linux user. And it's a little short sighted to go "they did something wrong in 2015 on Windows, let's just exclude one of the vendors shipping Linux because there are so many others already".
This is great news, last year I was looking at Lenovo laptops but went for Dell because they offered Linux and I wanted to vote with my wallet. And it seems to have helped!
Readit News
I run Ubuntu 19.04 on it and have so many problems.
- Grub has ridiculous performance issues on 4K screens, it renders at less than 1 fps, making it a real pain to do anything in it.
- You can't update the bios through Linux, the update tool is windows only.
- The Lenovo TB3 dock never works properly.
- The dual GPU situation (Intel + nVidia) requires all sorts of hacks to make it somewhat workable.
- The power usage is an abomination under Linux as it can't properly scale the nVidia GPU.
- Working with the TPM under Linux feels hacky, but maybe that's mostly due to my lack of experience and the lack of documentation.
OK, so all these problems are all due to my specific situation (running dual boot, and an external 4K display through the TB3 dock), but I really, really hope they start fixing these issues if they are going to officially support Ubuntu.
One plus though: due to the high power consumption under Linux, the coil whine is a lot less notable...
The only issue I still have is that the Gnome interface (Ubuntu 17.04+) does not support factorial scaling, meaning that I am stuck between 100% (which is way to small on a 14 inch screen) and 200% (which is way too big).
Ubuntu 16.10 still supports factorial scaling though, which means I am stuck with it until a better version comes along.
I would've been much happier with the intel only version, the nvidia card is not worth it at all but at the time they didn't have 32gb of memory. Now the latest does, but too late.
I consider my problems are more basic than yours, and more hardware related.
- Under linux, the power management is VERY bad. I'm honestly starteled how it can be so bad. I loose 10-13% overnight while in 'deep sleep', compared to only 3% with 7.5 yo MBA. I get 5-6.5 hours of battery life. Less than the 2011 MBA. With windows it it much better - almost on par with my MBA.
- Trackpad has a big deadzone on the left+right + bad palm recognition.
- The display is very slow. More so on windows than on linux for some reason.
- Installing software is way too difficult compared to how it should be. Some software you install from the store, some from the command line, some offer AppImage. Sometimes the store has old versions that no longer works, things are not available for ubuntu 18.04/19.04, or you have to manually created a link such that the software is available in the desktop launcher.
I hope Apple finally fixes the Keyboard+durability issues with their next MBP iteration. Personally, I came to think that the 500$ Apple tax is worth it compared to all the (software) convenience + (hardware) quality that they offer.
I agree, I bought the X1-e as the replacement of my rMBP because I just couldn't live with the keyboard and the touchbar of the new MBP. But the experience of the X1 didn't live up to it's expectations, mostly on the software side.
Don't get met wrong though, the X1 is a great piece of hardware. The keyboard is awesome and I really like upgradability. But the experience on Windows (or Linux for that matter) is just not so good. A macbook is just more polished, and that is coming from someone who generally doesn't like Apple products.
In the end, this is a work laptop for me, and I just want stuff to work. And for that, the $500 Apple tax is worth it.
Are you sure?
https://pcsupport.lenovo.com/au/en/products/laptops-and-netb...
This lists both a bootable image and a Linux utility. I've got standard X1 carbon and have been using the bootable bios updates successfully.
> No upgrades for 20HRCTO1WW System Firmware, current is 0.1.39: 0.1.39=same, 0.1.37=older, 0.1.36=older, 0.1.35=older, 0.1.34=older
I run Fedora on a T480s and BIOS updates come automatically through the software update channel (in fact, the frequency of BIOS updates is a little annoying).
They offer ISO-images for these updates too. You can also create a USB-bootable version from these using the geteltorito tool (which is available via apt).
https://workaround.org/article/updating-the-bios-on-lenovo-l...
Edit:
> OK, so all these problems are all due to my specific situation (running dual boot
Why are you using GRUB to dual-boot at all? Your machine has UEFI for that.
As far as I know, dual booting through UEFI requires me frantically hitting the F12 button during powerup to get into the boot menu. And then it won't remember your last chosen OS, so stuff like windows updates (requiring multiple reboots) become really annoying.
But I'll look into this, maybe I can just ditch grub all together, that would be great! My last linux/grub experience was on non-UEFI machines so I was just so used to installing grub that it didn't cross my mind that I might not need it.
https://fwupd.org/lvfs/devicelist
- grub has no problems
- Bios updates work through LVFS
- this has no dual gpu.
- power usage and fan usage is about the same as windows, running a bit cooler.
- Suspend has a linux and windows option in the UEFI options, works fine.
As far as I know, Ubuntu has even better NVIDIA support than Fedora so you should be good
You may need to install proprietary drivers though
Also I get really, really good battery life in Linux, I think it's accomplished with sudo powertop --auto or similar
Does hwupd work with Thinkpads?
Do these even work on Windows?
For those of us who have tried to get Linux working on laptops 5-10 years ago this is quite a jump so clearly people have been working on this in the background to get to this state. Was using WSL earlier but after Ubuntu worked so well may as well use it. Of course for those who use Windows only apps WSL remains a good option.
Also have an Matebook 13 and tried Ubuntu after this experience on the Zenbook and there too it worked out of the box on a hi-res screen with dual graphics but you need to use either the prime drivers to use both, or use bbswitch to put off the Nvidia card for the best battery life. So it seems for recent laptops Linux works pretty well out of the box.
While kylin isn't too far off from a traditional distro, officers will force you to install rootkits on both desktop/laptops and phones (JingWang). If you're caught later with it missing you will most likely disappear.
Red Star is horrifically oppressive and monitors everything you do. The GPL is of course ignored and very few changes are ever released. Trying to circumvent the restrictions causes the OS to self destruct. The few applications you can use watermark every file you create.
Long story short them creating linux-based distros is just an easy way for them to exert total control. It does nothing positive for the Linux or BSD ecosystem.
That could well be true in North Korea, but Chinese really isn’t like that. They have a very active tech industry so installing and experimenting with Linux distros and such that might not have monitoring software is fine. As long as you don’t do something openly suspect, like post something considered anti government, they just leave people alone.
I have relatives in China who have desktops and laptops and never come across Kylin. As far as I know it’s mainly used by the military and government departments.
They adopting Linux would mean their hardware would work with it and developers targeting the Chinese market would have to make their programs work on Linux. That's all I'm hoping for.
Considering the limited access to the internet and not being able to ask StackOverflow users, how can they even manage building such a complex piece of software?
I wonder how true that really is, given the proliferation of ancient (i.e. pre-XP) versions of Windows in heavy use over there.
https://certification.ubuntu.com/desktop/models/?query=&cate...
Recently my CPU broke down and I was "lucky" to try out the on-site warranty to replace my mainboard, which was not perfect (took a few days compared to the advertised "next business day"), but better compared to sending your stuff somewhere or searching your repair shop.
Also note that I do not use any nvidia graphics or 3d games. Just have not tried it and I know this could be a weak point. Videos etc work flawlessly though.
It is also no "free hardware" (bios etc). For an alternative in that regard I recommend to have a look into the nice Librem line from Purism: https://puri.sm/products/
That certification racket between lenovo, canonical and redhat is not worth the paper it's printed on. It has no bearing on anything. Some firms/governments like such papers. That's about it.
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/08/12/lenovo_firmware_nas...
Your first link is about Lenovo's IdeaPad line. IdeaPad and ThinkPad could well be thought of as products from two different companies.
Lenovo was already making laptops when they bought the ThinkPad line from IBM. Their own laptops evolved into the consumer oriented IdeaPad line, while ThinkPad remained the business oriented line.
They're both part of Lenovo, but are largely separate teams with different business goals and philosophies.
In particular, ThinkPads were never infested with any of the stuff you're talking about.
Here is the original notice from Lenovo about this. No ThinkPads are listed:
https://web.archive.org/web/20190303121854/https://news.leno...
Sounds like marketing fairy tale - one part of company is great, second is bad, but we should love both.
There's no reason for Lenovo to put a DOS based operating system into their BIOS :/
Holding grudges about this in 2019 as a Linux-user seems very misguided, or worse, uninformed.