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Linux on the Fujitsu Lifebook U729

borretti.me

51–60 of 173 posts

Re: Linux on the Fujitsu Lifebook U729

#51

> But the thing that got me, in all honesty, was the brand. “Fujitsu laptop” sounds like colour in a William Gibson novel: “crawling into the avionics bay, Case took out a battered Fujitsu refurb, and stuck a JTAG port in the flight computer—”. It's kind of hard to take this opinion seriously after that.

Suit yourself. I think a little whimsy is refreshing.

Re: Linux on the Fujitsu Lifebook U729

#52

> install Windows 11. This came with the laptop. And the installation makes installing Linux feel easy: I had to do so many weird tricks to avoid having to create an account with Microsoft during the installation. The way secure boot evolved is disgusting. Specially because, at the time it was becoming popular, people we're warned that was more a tool of control than for security. Having to install a proprietary OS t…

But what happened doesn't make sense even. Why would upgrading the BIOS suddenly restore the option to toggle Secure Boot? If the previous owner (assuming, some company) disabled this, why would it be so trivial (comparatively) to work around it?

[deleted]

Re: Linux on the Fujitsu Lifebook U729

#53
For something portable with a dGPU, I recommend the Asus ProArt px13. Works very well with Linux, including NixOS with the right config, with the community asusctl and supergfxctl. AMD, OLED screen, nVidia 4070 (4060 in the US, maybe we'll get 50xx next year). Downsides: the keyboard is not amazing, it comes with MediaTek WiFi, but is replaceable, and the SSD is 2230, which limits capacity. I haven't been able to fine-tune touchpad sensitivity in Wayland and I do get some screen flickering despite fiddling with some boot params and being on 6.17.x. Fewer constraints if you're willing to go 14-inch with the Zephyrus.

Re: Linux on the Fujitsu Lifebook U729

#54

In my opinion, touching anything made by Fujitsu is not ethical. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Post_Office_scandal

The OA was describing the use of a refurbished laptop made by Fujitsu Japan (so 50% owned by Lenovo since 2017). No profit goes to Fujitsu UK (a subsidiary). And the Horizon system has a complex history [1].

But still, perhaps no, simply in solidarity.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horizon_accounting_system

Re: Linux on the Fujitsu Lifebook U729

#55
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Things I learned to look out for: Don't buy any recent Intels. Some Intel ThinkPads have accelerometers built-in just to throttle your PC to oblivion when it moves. Basically unusable in any moving vehicle such as a train. It's basically anti-portability baked-in. When it doesn't throttle, it just has abysmal battery life compared to AMD Ryzen ThinkPads of the same generation. Both lose horribly to Apple's ARM chip…

M1 and M2. But those are in an entirely different price bracket. I’d go so far as to say those are not comparable.

You can buy refurb M1s for $379 at Walmart.

Re: Linux on the Fujitsu Lifebook U729

#56
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

MacBook Air M1. Find one with max ram (Facebook marketplace, $400), have storage upgraded to 2TB (IYKYK), Linux support is good.

How did you upgrade the soldered storage?

There’s a guy who offers it for a very reasonable fee in USA. I’ve used his services a few times with great success! Email me, I wouldn’t want to post someone else’s contact info publicly.

Re: Linux on the Fujitsu Lifebook U729

#57

If you want portability on something premium, I can't recommend enough the Lenovo Yoga Slim 7. Specwise I've got the one with the Core ultra 5 125h. It also has an option with the 155h, but it battery and thermals can take a hit that I don't think it's worth it. It's got 16gb spread across 8x2gb modules and 512gb of ssd, both soldered, both extremely fast. Build quality that rivals MacBooks, but with superior keyboar…

Do you know what the oled screen resolution is on your device? One of my family members has what I believe is the same laptop, and while I appreciate the build quality, the OLED clearly isn't RGB (in its subpixel arrangement - or some other such major aspect), because the 1080p screen looks so bad for text I initially thought it was broken.

Oled pc screens have a terrible reputation for text. Some more than others, but it seems it's better to stick to lcd if you happen to read or write a lot.

Re: Linux on the Fujitsu Lifebook U729

#59
post #17
post #2

Is there a good linux ARM laptop, fanless ?

A Lenovo Chromebook Plus 14 has a M2 equivalent ARM CPU/GPU (Mediatek Kompanio Ultra/Mali Immortalis G925), and comes with an arm64 Linux VM (Debian Bookworm) ready to go out of the box that supports most regular Linux apps built for ARM (including VSCode, Cursor, Claude code, etc). I use it for my software development daily driver. Battery life is amazing as you'd expect. I've even run local LLMs and have gotten 30…

"If ChromeOS's Linux VM doesn't suit you, you can replace ChromeOS with Linux with a bit of work:"

"Installing ubuntu on arm laptops is usually not easy, and the GPU drivers are unavailable in most cases (so, the performance is not great unless you use XFCE/LXDE/LxQt)"

I do like to use the GPU, though.

Re: Linux on the Fujitsu Lifebook U729

#60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Some Intel ThinkPads have accelerometers built-in just to throttle your PC to oblivion when it moves Wtf? That sounds crazy, any sources?

They don't want you to burn your testicles when keeping it in your lap. https://download.lenovo.com/pccbbs/pubs/x1e_p1_gen5/html/htm... > The Cool and Quiet on lap feature helps cool down your computer when it becomes hot. Any extended contact with your body, even through clothing, could cause discomfort. If you prefer using your computer on the lap, it is recommended that you enable the Cool and Quiet on lap feature…

Honestly, I wasn't to say this is ridiculous but I've got a i7 13" laptop which I bought to do practically everything (personal coding projects, a bit of gaming, video editing, 3d modeling etc). I do find the heat of it is quite uncomfortable after a short period of time on my lap. I was thinking about getting a M series MacBook for messing around on the couch and building a desktop for many of those other tasks.

My work MacBook Pro on the other hand could do with the opposite some times. Burn a bit of battery to heat up the aluminium case please!

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