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Lenovo Shipping Ubuntu Linux on 2019 ThinkPad

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Re: Lenovo Shipping Ubuntu Linux on 2019 ThinkPad

#81

Post by throw2016 »

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.

Re: Lenovo Shipping Ubuntu Linux on 2019 ThinkPad

#82

Post by stemuk »

enriquto wrote: post #76
stemuk wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 s…

you can use the "arandr" program to set any possible resolution. No idea what is "factorial" scaling, though.

Factorial scaling means being able to set the entire desktop scale to 120%, 140% and so on.

It is important to me because most of the work I do in my PC is text based (coding and research), so being able to scale text and ui elements 'globally' is critical for good visibility.

Edit: It's supposed to be 'fractional', my bad.

Re: Lenovo Shipping Ubuntu Linux on 2019 ThinkPad

#83

Post by stemuk »

enriquto wrote: post #80
y4mi wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"scale with factor 1.4" to increase the display size by 40%

The word "factorial" makes no sense here. Maybe "fractional"? Besides, what is the fucking point of "scaling" at the display level? Isn't it exactly equivalent to setting the font size in points using your physical resolution?

Yeah, I just realized it's called fractional scaling too, my bad.

It is still important though, because on 14inch desktops the Ubuntu interface looks way too small on 100% scale and way too big on 200%. At the end of the day you can think of fractional scaling as giving yourself more screen real-estate while at the same time keeping everything in a readable state.

Re: Lenovo Shipping Ubuntu Linux on 2019 ThinkPad

#84

Post by Aissen »

pedrocr wrote: post #69
Aissen wrote: post #44

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: https://certification.ubuntu.com/desktop/models/?query=&cate...

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.

Re: Lenovo Shipping Ubuntu Linux on 2019 ThinkPad

#85

Post by bubblethink »

LeonM wrote: post #35

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 situati…

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.

Re: Lenovo Shipping Ubuntu Linux on 2019 ThinkPad

#86

Post by enriquto »

stemuk wrote: post #83
enriquto wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The word "factorial" makes no sense here. Maybe "fractional"? Besides, what is the fucking point of "scaling" at the display level? Isn't it exactly equivalent to setting the font size in points using your physical resolution?

Yeah, I just realized it's called fractional scaling too, my bad. It is still important though, because on 14inch desktops the Ubuntu interface looks way too small on 100% scale and way too big on 200%. At the end of the day you can think of fractional scaling as giving yourself more screen real-estate while at the same time keeping everything in a readable state.

I don't understand what you mean by the interface. Is it the font size? You can change it independently of everything else.

Re: Lenovo Shipping Ubuntu Linux on 2019 ThinkPad

#87

Post by bubblethink »

stemuk wrote: post #72
LeonM wrote: post #35

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 situati…

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 s…

I'm assuming that you are using something in unity, which can be easily installed in later versions. Just do apt install ubuntu-unity-desktop

Re: Lenovo Shipping Ubuntu Linux on 2019 ThinkPad

#88

Post by bubblethink »

Aissen wrote: post #44

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: https://certification.ubuntu.com/desktop/models/?query=&cate...

>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.

Re: Lenovo Shipping Ubuntu Linux on 2019 ThinkPad

#89

Post by floatboth »

enriquto wrote: post #80
y4mi wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"scale with factor 1.4" to increase the display size by 40%

The word "factorial" makes no sense here. Maybe "fractional"? Besides, what is the fucking point of "scaling" at the display level? Isn't it exactly equivalent to setting the font size in points using your physical resolution?

No, it's not like setting font size. Actual fractional scaling as done by macOS and Wayland compositors is rendering at 2x and downscaling.

e.g. 1.5 scale on a 3840x2160 display means you have 2560x1440 logical pixels (3840x(1/1.5) = 2560), applications render for 5120x2880 (2560x2=5120) and get downscaled for 3840x2160.

Re: Lenovo Shipping Ubuntu Linux on 2019 ThinkPad

#90

Post by floatboth »

LeonM wrote: post #59
josteink wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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). 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-boo…

> 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…

Get rEFInd, much nicer UI for selecting between various EFI bootloaders, remembers the last one you selected
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