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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

#71

Post by fluffything »

lallysingh wrote: post #67
fluffything wrote: post #61

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 i…

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.

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

#72

Post by disgruntledphd2 »

vetinari wrote: post #41
Havoc wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

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

#73

Post by diffeomorphism »

nymiro wrote: post #63
paines wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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... T…

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...

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

#75

Post by nabla9 »

fluffything wrote: post #61

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 i…

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

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

#76

Post by exceptione »

Legogris wrote: post #58
exceptione wrote: post #55

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 Wi…

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

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

#77

Post by viraptor »

sp0ck wrote: post #74

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.

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

#78

Post by anogrebattle »

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.

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

#80

Post by foo2020 »

tannhaeuser wrote: post #43

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, s…

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