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Lenovo to Certify ThinkPad and ThinkStation Workstation Portfolio for Linux

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Re: Lenovo to Certify ThinkPad and ThinkStation Workstation Portfolio for Linux

#41

Post by vetinari »

Havoc wrote: post #31
vetinari wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>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.

Re: Lenovo to Certify ThinkPad and ThinkStation Workstation Portfolio for Linux

#42

Post by vetinari »

thdrdt wrote: post #33
vetinari wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 t…

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?

Re: Lenovo to Certify ThinkPad and ThinkStation Workstation Portfolio for Linux

#43

Post by tannhaeuser »

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.

Re: Lenovo to Certify ThinkPad and ThinkStation Workstation Portfolio for Linux

#44

Post by dghf »

Jonnax wrote: post #23

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.

Re: Lenovo to Certify ThinkPad and ThinkStation Workstation Portfolio for Linux

#45

Post by xkr47 »

throwaway-9320 wrote: post #29

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?

Re: Lenovo to Certify ThinkPad and ThinkStation Workstation Portfolio for Linux

#46

Post by cinquemb »

rsynnott wrote: post #37
nnq wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 e…

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

Re: Lenovo to Certify ThinkPad and ThinkStation Workstation Portfolio for Linux

#48

Post by als0 »

prennert wrote: post #27

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…

> 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.

Re: Lenovo to Certify ThinkPad and ThinkStation Workstation Portfolio for Linux

#49

Post by miahi »

xkr47 wrote: post #45
throwaway-9320 wrote: post #29

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

Re: Lenovo to Certify ThinkPad and ThinkStation Workstation Portfolio for Linux

#50

Post by ledvd »

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
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