I had the exact opposite experience. Perhaps it's a Unbuntu thing, hard to know, I use Fedora, or perhaps it's the Yoga...
In 2004 I got a T42, installed Fedora on it, it just worked.
In 2013 I got a T440p, installed Fedora, just worked. That Laptop is still in use, btw.
This year I got a X1 Extreme Gen2 (stupid name), installed the Fedora KDE spin, just works.
Sleep, etc, works, battery is life is really, the graphics card (internal and dedicated with the Nvidia drivers) work, etc, etc. So I am truly surprised by your experience.
I did a lot of research before, and these are the best Linux laptops that I could find (besides the "open" laptops like System76, etc).
The again, I am an engineer, so perhaps what I do in terms of setup comes easy to me without me noticing the complexity.
Literally? I can't even beat the installer because of the GPU. (Vanilla Fedora)
I really did not do anything special (after it was installed I installed the NVidia drivers from RPMFusion, but that was after the base install was done).
Perhaps you need to enable hybrid graphics in the BIOS.
I never tried the fingerprint reader, so I do not know whether that works or not.
0: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonevangelho/2020/05/08/lenov...
You're saying that like no work is being put into new Ubuntu's releases. Or its developers don't contribute to GNOME, for instance.
I tried Fedora Core several years ago. Got some broken package resolutions the very same day.
Reinstalled to Ubuntu, it had been more stable (probably simply thanks to 'apt', but still), and I didn't bother with Fedora since. Also, I'm not relishing having to learn rpm/yum/whatisname, with its new arguments, its different set of capabilities, and different names for packages I'm already familiar with.
Speaking of "modern and advanced", though, does it also support the NVIDIA driver's new "offload" PRIME mode? The one where you don't need to reboot or even relogin to use the discrete card.
Rather than Fedora, though, I opted to run Debian sid. I get all the up to date fresh-from-the-oven software packages I care about, can pilfer from external Ubuntu apt repos if I need to, without having to clear out any of the garish brown and sponsored Ubuntu junk, and it's fairly easy to install and maintain. Despite being the permanently unstable branch, it's never really meaningfully broken on me.
It is a problem if Hipster-Developers work on bleeding edge Linux, because their software will run on their system but nearly nowhere else (including their own system a year later). If you wanna develope do it on a debian or buntu - if it works there, others won't have a problem
Not sure with I totally agree with him, but we had multiple problems which seemed to proof his point.
Isn't this a bit too harsh on them? We've had good experiences on T and L series.
I am using L470 with fedora 27 for the last 2 years and I have not had any issues so far. I have gone till 78 days without a shutdown. It's been more stable than windows on suspend to ram cycles.
I did have issues with fonts out of the box but fixing was easy. One of the advantages of using Linux is it forces you to fix the broken parts and personally it has been a very rewarding experience.
Thinkpads from the T and X series (don't know about Yoga, P or L) are really great, usually work out of the box and if there is broken hardware you are visited tomorrow by a nice guy from IBM (yes, really!) who fixes things without complaining about the weird OS you are running (of course you should be able to test that the new component works somehow).
Non-Thinkpad laptops from Lenovo are worse at running with Linux and the hardware support seems to be far worse, send it in, wait a few weeks, no solution.
Note that other vendors are very similar: there is a big difference between the "for professional business use" and "for home use" lines, in prices as well as support for software and support if broken.
Why IBM? IBM sold Lenovo to China years ago, does IBM still handle support for Lenovo in your country?
I have a T440s, bought with the wrong (rtl8192ee) wifi chipset, and their support has been practically nonexistent.
If you're a big company, you can test the hardware before letting all your employees adopt it (and I know that my colleagues are quite happy with their X1 Carbon), but if you're a consumer and you find out that the hardware doesn't have (good/reliable) Linux drivers, you need to be prepared to return it... or to find a replacement FRU yourself (good luck with that!)
It's not my first Thinkpad running Linux, and the prior two ran quite well.
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.
Also, MS and Apple charge for their software. Linux OS are free. That doesn’t absolve Lenovo from selling “certified” laptops that aren’t compatible though.
I also find that sticking to older enterprise Thinkpads (X, T, W) and staying away from the toys posing as thinkpads tremendously helps avoid headaches with Linux. Shame on Lenovo for mucking the waters and using the name for enterprise and consumer machines.
And older enterprise class thinkpads are dirt cheap on top of being easily fixable and upgradable for peanuts because every IT department is on a 3 years lease cycle.
I paid ~2k$ for a Lenovo Laptop certified for Ubuntu. I don't really see the difference between doing that and paying 2k$ for an Apple laptop that's certified for MacOS (which i've upgraded for 8 years for free), or some other laptop certified for windows.
Except for the obvious difference that the Lenovo Laptop does not work with Ubuntu as promised.
How do Apple charge for their software? They do sell things like Logic Pro I suppose, but not the OS itself.
To add some more useful (anecdotal) data, I have a Thinkpad T15 with Ubuntu 20.04 and everything works smoothly (even secure boot) EXCEPT the fingerprints reader, although TBH I still haven't tried after updating to 20.04. So in my opinion Lenovo support for Ubuntu is really good.
But since I paid 2k$ for a Lenovo Ubuntu laptop, I'm the one that's wrong for expecting the fingerprint reader to actually work.
For what its worth however they didn't work all that great in Windows either. The sensor was pretty picky about your thumb being absolutely dry and spotless and getting the swipe speed just right. I found it less convenient than just typing in a password. When I switched the laptops to Linux and discovered that the driver situation was hopeless I wasn't too broken up.
I also have had great experience with fwup. I've gotten tons of bios, firmware, microcode etc updates from Lenovo and they all apply seamlessly.
I think Linux support of new hardware is always going to be shaky unless we can get vendors to care and support it themselves. Otherwise, we have to wait and let the open source devs make drivers after the hardware is released.
I think the idea of $random_component_vendor maintaining an up-to-date Linux driver themselves may be unrealistic, and laptop vendors probably won't be doing that for all of their components either. At least on Linux that tends to involve being a competent kernel developer, too, at least if you want to be the maintainer of the driver in kernel upstream.
If the OEMs that are interested in Linux support collaborated with distros and/or kernel/driver developers before the new hardware hits the shelves, even if they didn't plan on writing and supporting the drivers themselves, that might work. Otherwise there's always catching up to do, as you said.
For years now, I've also had nothing that didn't work on my now fairly old X240. Everything's pretty dandy. At some point the clickpad didn't work after resuming from suspend, though, and that was a major issue that really shouldn't happen on a laptop series that's supposed to have great Linux support.
Other than that (and the fingerprint reader initially not working even though it was supposed to be supported, but that wasn't a big deal), there's really been nothing that didn't work.
I agree. I wonder what the Windows model is, and is there a way to emulate that in Linux?
If there is a bug, exploit, whatever, good luck. If there is a newer version of the component with a minor difference (e.g. different range of serial numbers, different device id, etc) usually the newer driver won't work, so no bugfixes for you. However, you can keep on upgrading your windows version, at least within the same Service Pack and major version, sometimes longer, because the age-old driver will continue to work.
The way to emulate it would be "have a binary compatibility layer for kernel modules". However, this gets you old, broken, weird and incompatible drivers that just happen to run with the new version if you are lucky. Also, because every vendor will reinvent the wheel while doing the minimum amount possible, drivers will be less capable, come with weird special tools, crapware and a generally bad compatibility to devices from other vendors.
Believe me, the grass isn't greener on the other side, just different.
If this laptop has Insyde BIOS, the relevant utility is called "H2OFFT-L" (Insyde H2O Firmware Flash Tool - Linux). In the worst case, you might have to run a tool from DOS.
FWIW, I've also used fwup and it has worked perfectly, so that's something that Lenovo did get right.
> I think Linux support of new hardware is always going to be shaky unless we can get vendors to care and support it themselves.
This is what I actually expect from a Ubuntu-certified laptop. That the manufacturer makes sure that the Laptop actually works with Ubuntu.
That's the same bar I have for Apple and windows laptops.
Otherwise they should just call them "Linux tinkerer friendly" or similar.
Waiting 7 months to be able to use sound was not an option for me. I needed to use the microphone and headphones for work.
Luckily I managed to get Arch set up, which came with a recent enough kernel and SOF driver. As of June 2020, Ubuntu still does not.
If you are running a supported combination of hardware and software, the hardware vendor can't officially close your case just because "you are running unsupported software and we are sure your OpenBSD damaged your mouse" or similar BS. However, as long as there is a hardware problem you are able to clearly identify, support is usually not a problem even with non-certified software with most (but not all) vendors. Problems that might be either hardware or software are always a problem, because you are almost always dealing with 2 vendors blaming each other. The certification leads to a slightly lower overhead for convincing the support to take the case and a slightly higher number of solved cases. But nothing dramatic. And also take care that the supported software is usually a specially adapted version of something, e.g. the exact installation of Windows your laptop came with. If you reinstall your companies default Windows image you are out of luck. If you upgrade to another service pack or major version, you are out of luck.
Also "certfied" is necessary for stuff like "our processes for adding numbers are certified ISO12345 and demand supported hard- and software". There is no real benefit besides complying with some obscure checklist some useless PHB came up with. But in some industries, you cannot do business without that, no matter how pointless, expensive, unsafe, insecure or counterproductive it might be.
In sum "certified" means "the bureaucracy won't be able to complain", not "it works".
Maybe its my fault for having unreasonable expectations. No idea what the story is on Windows.
I've had great experiences with my Thinkpads (t410s and t530) running Linux. Granted, I was just running Ubuntu, but I never had an issue. I will note that I disabled the fingerprint sensor, camera, and microphone at the BIOS level so didn't have experience dealing with those drivers. I expect most others will have a fine experience with the non-touchscreen Thinkpads, and probably some of the newer models as well.
I am a long time Linux user so that may be the difference. The fact that you prefer Ubuntu is probably a bit telling about you experience and skill level with Linux on the desktop.
I think the yoga subbrand is a lower end model, so maybe they're sloppier there?
I bought a Linux laptop from System76 almost to years ago, and it have been a painless experience. They even manage CUDA updates fairly much hassle free. Anyway, I was tired of 25 years of futzing around with configuring Linux, so I decided on an easier path.
Are you using that kernel version? If not, use Ukuu or some other method and install it
As a troubleshooting step, trying with the specific kernel version that was used for the certification might of course work.
Windows bends over backwards to try to support old code. If you have something with Vista drivers there's a decent chance you can get it working in Windows 10, unless they were 32 bit only drivers. Even if you supply the source code (gasp shock! Unheard of!) you still end up chasing Kernel ABI changes from time to time.
For an example, I have an old Canon LiDE 35 scanner that I use from time to time. On Linux it just works as part of the huge SANE bundle. On Windows all I have are ancient 32 bit drivers that don't work on Windows 10, but if you download the Windows 7 x64 drivers for the LiDE 60 and hack some strings you can get it to work. A complete reversal in the amount of technical wizardry necessary to get it working over the course of about 10 years.
I expect Canonical or Lenovo or both to test all release candidates of all kernel versions after release and make sure that the hardware actually works, and if it doesn't, prevent the release of a broken Linux kernel version.
That would be the minimum level of QA acceptable for a "certified" laptop.
My macs have far more problems.
Dont even get me started on my windows machines.
People may have forgotten on the windows side they added software to the bios that would install itself even on a clean windows install
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenovo#Lenovo_Service_Engine
hmm, "Customer Feedback Program" or "Lenovo Accelerator" look similar.
There's been plenty of time to get things working since the T450s was released.
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 is completely worthless. Reading the first comments in the Ubuntu forums from a year ago and the evolution of the Arch Wiki for my laptop, I have a hard time believing that somebody actually tested it before releasing the laptop. At best, somebody looked at the spec sheet and said "we have supported similar hardware before, this is good to go".
1 year later, the laptop is almost in a barely usable state. Canonical broke Audio support (soundcard not detected anymore) with 19.04 and did not fixed it before 20.04, essentially telling users to wait till the next Ubuntu release due to in 6 months. The only officially supported version is a 4 year old custom 16.04 that I never got the chance of trying, but this should tell you a lot about "long term" support of Canonical and Lenovo for these machines.
The only ones that should be getting any praise are the dozens of volunteers that have been screwed by both Lenovo and Canonical into buying one of these and have made their work and support time available to others for free.
If you want to buy a Linux laptop, avoid Lenovo like the plague. They have absolutely zero quality assurance for Linux.
EDIT: link to certification: https://certification.ubuntu.com/hardware/201906-27127
what a worthless bag of bytes.