I own an 4K X1-extreme, which is basically the P1 without the Quadro card and Xeon/ECC option.<p>I run Ubuntu 19.04 on it and have so many problems.<p>- 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.<p>- You can't update the bios through Linux, the update tool is windows only.<p>- The Lenovo TB3 dock never works properly.<p>- The dual GPU situation (Intel + nVidia) requires all sorts of hacks to make it somewhat workable.<p>- The power usage is an abomination under Linux as it can't properly scale the nVidia GPU.<p>- Working with the TPM under Linux feels hacky, but maybe that's mostly due to my lack of experience and the lack of documentation.<p>OK, so all these problems are all due to my specific situation (running dual boot, and an external 4K display through the TB3 dock), but I really, really hope they start fixing these issues if they are going to officially support Ubuntu.<p>One plus though: due to the high power consumption under Linux, the coil whine is a lot less notable...
Yay, more options for not paying Microsoft taxes anymore. Microsoft's policy is that the vendor must have a policy on refunding licenses, but whenever I ask for a refund with a new laptop, the procedure is forwarding me to five different people because nobody knows and the last one goes "are you kidding me" and "no". The policy could be "go away", but not having a policy is the only thing that's not allowed. Unsurprisingly, Microsoft doesn't really mind and keeps shipping OSes to vendors that don't follow their license agreement.
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.<p>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.<p>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.
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:<p><a href="https://certification.ubuntu.com/desktop/models/?query=&category=Laptop&level=Any&release=18.04+LTS&vendors=Lenovo" rel="nofollow">https://certification.ubuntu.com/desktop/models/?query=&cate...</a>
Lenovo caught for unremovable crapware in BIOS, so I don't recommend to buy their products anymore.<p><a href="https://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/08/12/lenovo_firmware_nasty/" rel="nofollow">https://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/08/12/lenovo_firmware_nas...</a>
This is great news, last year I was looking at Lenovo laptops but went for Dell because they offered Linux and I wanted to vote with my wallet. And it seems to have helped!
My main issue with Lenovo's mobile workstations (and why I've yet to buy one) is that they all use Nvidia for their secondary GPUs. Meanwhile, Dell's Precision line offers the option of AMD GPUs (e.g. my Precision 7510, which I got specifically because it shipped with a FirePro card).<p>That said, I've been pretty happy with my T470 at work (running Slackware), so an integrated-GPU-only ThinkPad that ships with Ubuntu sounds interesting (or even an Nvidia-GPU ThinkPad if they've managed to make Intel/Nvidia hybrid setups less painful). I'd probably be willing to pick up one of the all-AMD ThinkPads (I've got my eye on the T495, E595, and X395; all of them seem to have the same CPU and integrated GPU offerings, though the E595 offers way more RAM so that gives it a bit of an advantage); none of those offer preinstalled Ubuntu, though.
I'm running 18.04.2 on a Thinkpad L460 (32gb RAM, SSD). It's an older laptop. I always get nervous to upgrade because it seems everything works with the L460. Wifi, Dock, wired etc, trackpad, etc. It has mad me return to Linus for day-to-day work again. I don't want to loose this feeling.
Interesting, and a sigh that the area of the Windows tax may be ending.<p>Windows is now an ad delivery platform. That probably sounded like a great plan to MS management, but consumer Windows is now on its way to shovelware status. Microsoft will end up paying hardware makers to include it.
See also: <a href="https://www.lenovo.com/linux" rel="nofollow">https://www.lenovo.com/linux</a> (the list of ”Linux certified” hardware).
If it will work flawlessly with
- external dual monitor setup (one/both 4k) via docking station
- battery usage
- fix the throttling and power management issues<p>it will be great, otherwise it will be the same miserable experience out of the box that you're getting now.<p>(I own X1 Extreme 2018, like it, but stick to windows).
Thinkpad A486 on Debian 10 here. Both ethernet chip and WiFi chip requires firmware so install is not straight forward. Wireless driver is marked as alpha and it shows ... weekly hard freeze on the menu. A shame as it could be a great laptop.
The article does not seem to be true. I want to buy one right now, but the only OS that are offered for each P model are different versions of windows.
This company sells ThinkPads with pre-installed Linux: <a href="https://shop.lacpdx.com/" rel="nofollow">https://shop.lacpdx.com/</a>. Presumably they only sell models which work well under Linux.
Does anyone know if any of these models (or any high-end Thinkpad) has a taller than 16x9 screen? Without that this news is only of precursory value to me.
Is windows tax really that bad? I mean I can get an OEM license for 12 dollars most of the time because of promotions.<p>So if I as a consumer pay 12 dollars for an OEM version, I would expect Lenovo to pay much less.<p>Also my first observation is that these laptops are far too big and powerful for my work with Linux.<p>I work full time in Linux but I focus more on weight and form factor than CPU and GPU because all my work is done in terminals.<p>The X280 or X1 are perfect for me. No dedicated GPU means slim form factor, light weight, and everything I need for my type of work in Gnome and Terminal.