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Lenovo ThinkPad P1 Gen3 Review – with Linux

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Re: Lenovo ThinkPad P1 Gen3 Review – with Linux

#271

Post by alluro2 »

leeoniya wrote: post #220
BeefWellington wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 amdgp…

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.

Re: Lenovo ThinkPad P1 Gen3 Review – with Linux

#272

Post by dtjb »

stuff4ben wrote: post #208
tim-- wrote: post #49

I recently acquired a ThinkBook 16p Gen 2, and while a different machine entirely to the ThinkPad, I must say that this is an _absolute beast_ of a machine. It's a total joy to use. It's the most fun I have had using a laptop since my first MacBook. Moving from the MBP to the ThinkBook has made me realize how... boring MacBooks are - not saying that's a bad thing. MacBooks do 'just work'. But the ThinkBook? The machi…

Not surprised your ThinkBook is beating the M1 MacBook since you crippled the Mac with 8GB of RAM.

A 'Pro' device shouldn't be sold with crippled specs.

Re: Lenovo ThinkPad P1 Gen3 Review – with Linux

#273

Post by xfs »

orangepurple wrote: post #221
LeonM wrote: post #193

Based on all the comments on HN about how great Thinkpads are supposed to be with Linux, I bought an X1-Extreme some time ago. From my experience, Linux support for Lenovo devices is terrible. ACPI, power management, and UEFI are consistently causing problems. Grub has an issue with the 4K display, causing it to render at about 1 FPS. The dual-GPU (Intel and nVidia) situation is unworkable under Linux. Suspend on lid…

Don't use Grub or any bootloader if you can avoid it. I haven't used Grub in 10 years. Load Linux directly as an EFI executable via the EFISTUB approach. You almost certainly only need to run two or three efibootmgr commands to accomplish this. For most people that means only the "Using UEFI directly" section is relevant. https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/EFISTUB S3 suspend was removed as a default option by many hard…

I have used EFISTUB for 10 years but I wouldn't recommend it for the next install. The bootloader is the one arcane place that you don't want to be clever with and get reminded of its presence daily, because once it fails for some reason, it wastes much more time to find and read docs and diagnose than the time saved in boot speedup, because the knowledge to debug it is not something you would remember everyday. And this setup is even rarer than Grub, so any failure cases will not have help from cached knowledge and thus require much more research from first principle. Some backup options here would help in case, even if they impose some tax in boot speed. (If Grub takes a tax of 3 seconds per boot, and if a failure in EFISTUB takes 1 hour to resolve, it takes 1200 boots for EFISTUB to be worth the risk, which is 3 years if it's a laptop booting once per day, and much longer for a desktop.)

Once my desktop using the EFISTUB setup had a kernel that failed to boot, stuck at some filesystem error. Then I had to come up with a rescue plan at the spot, because there was no other way to boot into the desktop and there was no tutorial to help with this at the time.

The issues of EFISTUB:

- It doesn't interact with kernel updates nicely. I used a script in /etc/kernel/postinst.d to copy /vmlinuz to \EFI\debian\vmlinuz.efi. There is no rollback, and no multiple kernels.

- It doesn't work well with kernel parameters. The parameters are encoded in UEFI NVRAM. You have to create separate entries for different kernel parameters, or manipulate the NVRAM back and forth with efibootmgr, which is another gun that easily shoots the foot (you can easily mess up the bootorder variable).

- It doesn't play nicely with Windows and Secure Boot.

Re: Lenovo ThinkPad P1 Gen3 Review – with Linux

#274

Post by Sakos »

smoldesu wrote: post #270
ptsneves wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By not using Grub you lose the ability to fallback on a safe kernel. That may be quite dangerous depending on how reliable kernel update is for you. I have been saved by kernel fallbacks before. Double that for laptops whose ACPI drivers randomly break from version to version, as evidenced by your note on 5.17.x kernels. Regardless I sympathize, as I recently had a good deal of trouble updating from BIOS to UEFI. The…

I mean, that's not entirely true. You can chroot into your box and change your kernel if something goes horrifically wrong, the situation isn't as unsalvageable as you paint it out to be.

It's possible but it's more inconvenient than it needs to be. I'd rather be able to select a previous kernel from a list instead of trying to remember how to change the kernel through chroot on a broken system.

Re: Lenovo ThinkPad P1 Gen3 Review – with Linux

#275

Post by ziml77 »

halotrope wrote: post #110

Generally great machines for Linux. Just a PSA from a X1E gen2 owner: Do NOT get the NVidia GPU, do NOT get the fastest CPU and most importantly: do NOT opt for the 4k screen. With 1080p and Intel GPU it is a good, even great laptop with ok battery life (if you can look over the touchpad). Wonderful keyboard, good Linux support (even fingerprint reader works). But just as with the last Intel macbook, the GPU, 10th ge…

> and most importantly: do NOT opt for the 4k screen

Good advice for any laptop purchase. You will burn through battery driving that and the pixel density is much higher than necessary. Yes, 1920x1080/1200 is slightly too low when it comes to pixel density at 15", but it's still very reasonable and with decent eyesight you won't have to worry about any of the mess of DPI scaling.

Re: Lenovo ThinkPad P1 Gen3 Review – with Linux

#276

Post by jeffbee »

Would have been more interesting if the review covered anything about the actual experience of Linux on this rig other than "works". In particular, rough edges that a long-time Linux user might expect such as suspend/resume reliability, backlight control, peripheral power management w.r.t. bluetooth, webcam, fingerprint reader, nvme device, sound codec, etc, whether Linux is able to continue if a usb-c display is removed while the machine is suspended, etc. For the most part I do expect many of these things to work out of the box on Thinkpad X-series machines but you never know, and power management in particular has often been a mess. The author's claims about battery life are so poor that I suspect power management is not really optimal on their machine, either.

Re: Lenovo ThinkPad P1 Gen3 Review – with Linux

#277

Post by ekianjo »

fps_doug wrote: post #234
LeonM wrote: post #193

Based on all the comments on HN about how great Thinkpads are supposed to be with Linux, I bought an X1-Extreme some time ago. From my experience, Linux support for Lenovo devices is terrible. ACPI, power management, and UEFI are consistently causing problems. Grub has an issue with the 4K display, causing it to render at about 1 FPS. The dual-GPU (Intel and nVidia) situation is unworkable under Linux. Suspend on lid…

Yes, people who tell you that you can blindly buy any Lenovo laptop for Linux are lying. You have to do some googling first. Or check the inofficial Thinkpad Wiki. But other than that, if you pick a device that's recommended for use with Linux, it's as good as it gets regarding Linux on laptops if you ask me. Saying that your next Laptop isn't a Lenovo because your random purchase sucked is a little :rolleyes: Oh and…

Not lying if you talk about Thinkpads. Thry have been very good at Linux support for most of the thinkpad line up.

Re: Lenovo ThinkPad P1 Gen3 Review – with Linux

#278

Post by middleclick »

lvl102 wrote: post #227

I still wonder what could have been if IBM just kept the Thinkpad lines. Those IBM-designed Thinkpads were built like tanks. Industrial. Legendary keyboards. I really miss those machines. I had some of the best coding sessions on them and can’t help but think Thinkpads played a role in creating that experience.

The quality has noticeably deteriorated after Lenovo brought the Thinkpad line but then in general the quality of electronics is only getting worse not better.

Re: Lenovo ThinkPad P1 Gen3 Review – with Linux

#279

Post by vondur »

orangepurple wrote: post #221
LeonM wrote: post #193

Based on all the comments on HN about how great Thinkpads are supposed to be with Linux, I bought an X1-Extreme some time ago. From my experience, Linux support for Lenovo devices is terrible. ACPI, power management, and UEFI are consistently causing problems. Grub has an issue with the 4K display, causing it to render at about 1 FPS. The dual-GPU (Intel and nVidia) situation is unworkable under Linux. Suspend on lid…

Don't use Grub or any bootloader if you can avoid it. I haven't used Grub in 10 years. Load Linux directly as an EFI executable via the EFISTUB approach. You almost certainly only need to run two or three efibootmgr commands to accomplish this. For most people that means only the "Using UEFI directly" section is relevant. https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/EFISTUB S3 suspend was removed as a default option by many hard…

I see that you can use systemd as a boot loader (UEFI only). I've never tried it, but would like to set it up. The Arch wiki (of course) has info on it: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/systemd-boot

Re: Lenovo ThinkPad P1 Gen3 Review – with Linux

#280

Post by csdvrx »

ptsneves wrote: post #254
orangepurple wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't use Grub or any bootloader if you can avoid it. I haven't used Grub in 10 years. Load Linux directly as an EFI executable via the EFISTUB approach. You almost certainly only need to run two or three efibootmgr commands to accomplish this. For most people that means only the "Using UEFI directly" section is relevant. https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/EFISTUB S3 suspend was removed as a default option by many hard…

By not using Grub you lose the ability to fallback on a safe kernel. That may be quite dangerous depending on how reliable kernel update is for you. I have been saved by kernel fallbacks before. Double that for laptops whose ACPI drivers randomly break from version to version, as evidenced by your note on 5.17.x kernels. Regardless I sympathize, as I recently had a good deal of trouble updating from BIOS to UEFI. The…

> By not using Grub you lose the ability to fallback on a safe kernel

That is factually wrong: if you create other EFI entries with different kernel payloads, then enroll them in your UEFI bios, you can select them at boot time in a menu.

This is how I test cmdline options (same kernel packaged in different .EFI)

If you forgot to do that before a problem, but still have the old payloads around, you can even use the UEFI to add EFI payloads by selecting their files from your EFI partition.

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