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Coming soon: Fedora on Lenovo laptops

444 points by caution 6y ago

jhasse 6y ago
I hope this won't be US-only, does anyone know more details?
- caution 6y ago
  Looks like someone asked in the comments over there. – Will it be available globally? I.E in the U.K? >> As I understand the plan, yes, it should be globally, although there is some amount of regulatory red tape that needs to be cleared everywhere so I have no idea on timing. This is great for individuals around the world, of course, but it’s also important for companies who want to standardize on a Fedora OS and on the same laptop models worldwide
mindcrime 6y ago
Righteous! I had heard vague rumblings that something like this might be in the works, back when I was at Lenovo. Glad to see them actually take this step. Now more than ever, I could see my next new laptop being a ThinkPad.
codeisawesome 6y ago
Oh wow! I think I could finally be tempted to get an X1..!
- LeonM 6y ago
  Don't even bother. I have an X1E and the whole dual GPU situation is still a mess under Linux. Of course it depends on your use-case, but stuff like running external displays or using fractional scaling on the 4k internal display never seems to work. nVidia drivers are buggy a/f, Nouveau is a pain to get working properly.
  - tomxor 6y ago
    Totally agree with the whole dual GPU + nvidia thing, now using a modern intel integrated on an XPS 9370 FHD and zero issues... It makes me feel like the most i have to look forward to on linux is maybe the more powerful integrated vega AMD gpus which look to have good in kernel linux support. Is there any reliable mobile discrete GPU graphics experience to be had on linux these days?
  - elric 6y ago
    I had a hard time getting Fedora to run reliably on the P53 models we recently bought. Of course, NVIDIA turned out to be the culprit once more. Things improved after installing the proprietary drivers, but it sure would be nice if things would Just Work out of the box.
aquir 6y ago
This is very good. Manufacturers will make sure that the hardware is fully supported. There is also System76 and I think you can buy laptops from Dell as well w/ Ubuntu preinstalled
- N3cr0ph4g1st 6y ago
  My precision 5520 pre installed with Ubuntu was riddled with issues, had garbage audio compared to the windows version (tried all kinds of eq programs and tweaks), and the battery life was terrible... Was not a good experience
recursive 6y ago
One of the things that has kept me from trying Linux in earnest (and yes, I'm very lazy) is concerns about which hardware is supported by which flavors, and how much.
- hellcow 6y ago
  Buy a one- or two-year-old Thinkpad, and it'll be supported as well as anything.
  - recursive 6y ago
    > it'll be supported as well as anything. But how well is that exactly? Don't answer that, it's a rhetorical question.
  - clarry 6y ago
    My Thinkpad was very poorly supported by Debian Stale when I bought it. I guess it would've been roughly one-year-old at that point.
    - toyg 6y ago
      Debian Stable is never going to be a “laptop” distro, to be fair. One needs Ubuntu, Fedora, or some other quick-turnaround distro.
      - yjftsjthsd-h 6y ago
        > Debian Stable is never going to be a “laptop” distro, to be fair. Will never be a new laptop distro - I'll bet you I can run Debian stable on my Thinkpad X200 without issue;)
    - kick 6y ago
      Stable's entire selling-point is to be the Linux of yesterday, tomorrow. You probably would have had better luck with a distribution that didn't intentionally aim to be ancient.
    - 6y ago
jacek 6y ago
That's great news. It looks like Fedora will be available on the P series (powerful workstations) and X1 Carbon. I hope it will soon be expanded to other laptops. I am really interested in T series with AMD Ryzen 4000 line (should be released later this year) and would love to avoid paying the Windows tax. I just wonder if the fingerprint reader is finally supported on Linux. Also the LTE modem on my X1 Carbon (6th gen) has no support.
- lnkmails 6y ago
  The fingerprint reader is not yet supported on 6th gen X1.I never tried to get the LTE modem working. Funnily, I didn't even realize that the slot existed for almost a year after purchase.
  - petepete 6y ago
    I don't know which model of fingerprint reader is in the 6th gen, but on the 7th gen, enabling the beta firmware made it work perfectly. $ fwupdmgr enable-remote lvfs-testing If you temporarily enable, apply the Prometheus fingerprint updates then disable you won't need to worry about installing unstable firmware that will affect the system more widely.
    - yrro 6y ago
      I'm getting the following after doing that: Firmware metadata has not been updated for 30 days and may not be up to date. Update now? (Requires internet connection) [y|N]: y Fetching metadata https://cdn.fwupd.org/downloads/firmware-testing.xml.gz Downloading… [***************************************] Less than one minute remaining… Fetching signature https://cdn.fwupd.org/downloads/firmware-testing.xml.gz.asc Failed to update metadata for lvfs-testing: '48A6D80E4538BAC2' is not a valid signature Anyone else seen that?
    - jabl 6y ago
      fwupdmgr / LVFS is such a breath of fresh air compared to the various old vendor specific fw update procedures!
smacktoward 6y ago
Finally!
2OEH8eoCRo0 6y ago
This is awesome news with Fedora 32 right around the corner. I'm also in the market for a new laptop pretty soon.
vzaliva 6y ago
I prefer Ubuntu. If I buy one of these models, does it mean that there are drivers/support for all hardware in Ubuntu as well? Are some of the divers proprietary or Fedora-specific?
- mindcrime 6y ago
  I don't have any definitive inside knowledge, but based on history and reasoning by analogy, I doubt there will be much - if anything - that is Fedora specific. My hunch is that it's very likely that Ubuntu will install and run well on these machines as well.
- na85 6y ago
  I believe Dell ships their XPS line of laptops with either Debian or Ubuntu preinstalled. Friends of mine who use them say the driver support is quite good, and the experience overall is also good.
  - brabel 6y ago
    I have a Dell XPS with Ubuntu installed from factory, and been really happy with it. Everything works very well and never had any trouble connecting any devices.
- gnulinux 6y ago
  I bought a Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon 7th gen a few months ago. And almost nothing worked with Ubuntu 19.10 out of box. (Also tried Debian and archlinux and had worse driver problems). Wifi driver doesn't work; audio driver doesn't work, pulseaudio is buggy (since volume up/down changes master and not PCM so it does not change actual volume output); hibernation doesn't work properly (still drains battery even when laptop lid is closed); wifi does not connect to 5G even after driver starts working, screen tearing on fullscreen, audio doesn't output as loud as Window even if it claims it's running software amplification (150% volume)... Most of these were fixable, but took about a week of research on random forums, stackoverflow, kernel mail list (for wifi driver), Archlinux wiki etc... I never had any issues with linux before. Never. Zero. i was very excited when I first bought this $3000 laptop since this is the first time I bought an expensive electronics. It was absolute shit show from beginning to end. I'm still dealing with screen tearing and audio being quiet (compared to Windows running on the same machine, and my Macbook Pro playing the same song). I decided last night, I'll try another distro such as Fedora. I feel completely stuck. I hate using Windows. My macbook is work computer so I can't use it for personal stuff. I'm just stuck in this $3000 computer that requires hours of research every time. I sure hope Lenovo get their act together and have a "Recommended" linux image for these machines.
evacchi 6y ago
Red Hatter here. I have a Thinkpad T470s with Fedora as my daily driver and I have to admit it works pretty flawlessly
- m0xte 6y ago
  Interesting. My daily driver portable machine is a T470 so I may try that this weekend. I run out of a docking station with two monitors so have been scared to try it TBH. It works pretty flawlessly on windows though.
  - evacchi 6y ago
    My docking station is connected to an external monitor :) works great -- I have just upgraded to Fedora 32
  - tristan957 6y ago
    I have a T470p with a docking station and an external monitor and I have no complaints much like the other user.
- joshuamcginnis 6y ago
  How's the battery life? I dual boot ubuntu and win10 on my T450 and the battery life under win is noticeably better.
mindcrime 6y ago
Really glad they decided to launch this with Fedora. Nothing against Ubuntu per-se, but I - and many others - prefer Linux from the RHEL / CentOS / Fedora family. And there already are, or have been, OEM's shipping Ubuntu. Nice to see somebody go with Fedora.
caution 6y ago
A bit more information: https://blogs.gnome.org/uraeus/2020/04/24/a-bold-new-chapter-for-fedora-workstation/ https://blogs.gnome.org/uraeus/2020/04/24/a-bold-new-chapter...
petepete 6y ago
This is great news. I use Fedora on a Thinkpad X1 Carbon (7th Gen) and it works flawlessly. Enabling beta firmware even made the fingerprint reader (historically a problem area) work perfectly. I'd definitely have bought it with Fedora if it'd been available at the time, the Windows 10 install was gone within twenty minutes of me opening the box.
enriquto 6y ago
I don't believe it. They said the same thing more than a year ago, it is still announced in their website for the P models (the choice for ubuntu or fedora), but yet they are impossible to buy. I have harassed the lenovo sales people for months and I have given up in buying a P laptop with linux installed. I do not understand why do they play this kind of stupid games. The only thing that they offer is to buy the laptop with windows, then renounce the windows licence, then follow an online guide to install linux. Honestly, to buy a few laptops for 4000 EUR each, it is fairly insulting to be told that.
- kick 6y ago
  That's only because you're in a less valuable market. You can purchase pretty much every single option they have with Linux in America. It's still unfortunate, but it's not like they don't sell many devices with Linux pre-installed.
  - enriquto 6y ago
    The thing is that the site in France, written in french, announces this option yet it is not available.
    - kick 6y ago
      Sure. It's understandable that'd be frustrating. It's still probably more likely due to poorly-adapted copy than due to a genuine interest in selling Linux laptops in France, or incompetence.
  - dubcanada 6y ago
    Which is funny because I believe Linux marketshare is higher in Europe than US (well based on statcounter and other sources).
    - kick 6y ago
      Market-share might be higher, but the market is much smaller, and it's still a minority. Selling to a minority in the US is much more profitable than selling to a minority in Europe, solely because of scale.
dyingkneepad 6y ago
This is great news, even if you don't plan to use Fedora or if you plan to buy the same laptop with Windows pre-installed instead of Linux. It means some Red Had people were paid to make sure all the hardware in the laptop works. Even if the patches are not all upstream at the time of release (and I'm 100% sure the Fedora people will try to upstream as much as they can), you know they exist and you will be able to use if needed. I recently got a Thinkbook from my employer and the touchpad doesn't work and there are no patches available for it. I'm stuck with having to use a mouse because my employer didn't care consult me before buying a laptop... The areas where Linux shine are the areas where people are paid to get open source stuff done. And I am thankful for the existence of companies like Red Hat, Suse and Canonical. Because HW manufacturers and OEMs clearly have no clue about how to write and ship software...
- AdmiralAsshat 6y ago
  > It means some Red Had people were paid to make sure all the hardware in the laptop works. IIRC, I've heard from former RH engineers that RH already runs mostly on either Thinkpads or Dell laptops, so this could easily have been an internal push to make their own rollouts easier. It certainly makes provisioning faster if the guy preparing the Lenovo laptop doesn't have to start with blowing away the OS, loading Fedora, and then applying a dozen patches or other config changes to make the laptop happy w/ Fedora.
  - dyingkneepad 6y ago
    I understand what you say, but this is different because there is official support from the OEM now. If something doesn't work the Red Hat engineer won't have to reverse-engineer stuff, they will officially contact Lenovo, which will officially contact the manufacturer of whatever component is not working, and they are going to work to a solution the proper way. Much better and faster than the alternative. Source: I worked doing exactly this many years ago.
  - yjftsjthsd-h 6y ago
    > It certainly makes provisioning faster if the guy preparing the Lenovo laptop doesn't have to start with blowing away the OS, loading Fedora, and then applying a dozen patches or other config changes to make the laptop happy w/ Fedora. Doesn't all of that boil down to, "plug into the imaging system, boot, let Foreman (or whatever) do everything"? I can't imaging Red Hat having laptop setup be a manual process.
arendtio 6y ago
Sounds great. From the major hardware vendors, I heard only of Dell, to offer laptops with Linux preinstalled. Sadly my personal experience with an Dell XPS was so bad (hardware, quality-wise) that I do not want to buy their hardware again. The big thing here is not that you don't have to install Linux yourself, but that they care about the driver support. Not having to install a Linux yourself is a nice bonus though.
- TekMol 6y ago
  What was your problem with the Dell XPS hardware?
  - arendtio 6y ago
    It started with minor annoyances like the touchpad looking greasy at the center after a few days (cleaning didn't make a difference). After a few months, the touch screen didn't work anymore. I tried different OS and after a while, I contacted the support. I had a call for about an hour during which they updated the BIOS, but it didn't help. So they sent a technician, who found out, that the Touchscreen didn't work, but had no replacement at hand. So a few days later another technician came and replaced the display. I didn't use the laptop very often at that time, but after a while, I noticed that the display flickered sometimes now, I tried to track down the root of the issue but to this day I don't know what causes it (at least it doesn't seem to be an OS issue). However, by the time I found out that the flickering was not related to the OS, the warranty period was over. In addition, to the screen issues, the touchpad is just not good. In the beginning, it was okay, after a while you couldn't press it properly anymore (didn't came back up). Some time later, the opposite effect was present: the touchpad popped out about 1mm and you can't press it again. However, those are just the aspects in which I would categorize the issue as low build quality. For example, other aspects are, that I like the keyboard layout very much and learned that I hate glare-type displays even more than I thought I would.
cbHXBY1D 6y ago
Interesting. I wonder if this will help bring better eGPU support. I have a Thinkpad 25 Retro with an NVIDIA 940MX and it doesn't play well with suspend and resume, optimus, etc.
bitwize 6y ago
Holy crap yes. I don't care for Fedora, but it beats having to scrape Windows off, and hopefully it means these laptops will be engineered for Linux/open source from the start.
mokus 6y ago
I have mixed feelings here. On one hand, more hardware makers supporting Linux is good. On the other, I don’t really feel like I want the kind of pre-installed “support” software Lenovo has given Windows to come to Linux.
- mattdm 6y ago
  Good news! The people we are working with at Lenovo have no interest in this either. We don't have any special deal here: they're shipping Fedora under the standard open source licenses and https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Legal:Trademark_guidelines#OEM_pre-loads_of_unmodified_Fedora_software https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Legal:Trademark_guidelines#OE..., which means there's nothing added (except their docs in /opt/lenovo).
holtalanm 6y ago
Honestly, ever since i moved from a pure linux environment, to just using Windows 10 pro, I have had 0 issues, and have spent a significantly smaller amount of time tweaking my environment settings. I get why some people would want a bare-metal OEM install of linux for technical reasons (some languages/tools just run better on linux, or are only available on linux), but I really don't understand the hate people have for Windows 10. With the WSL, I've actually got a linux shell I can pop into whenever the need comes up, as well.
- corndoge 6y ago
  Embrace, Extend, Extinguish. I also like WSL but the lack of a functional network stack is limiting.
  - holtalanm 6y ago
    Embrace, Extend, Extinguish hasn't been the Microsoft mantra for years now. I mean, I get it, 90's Microsoft burned you, but come on, that was 30 years ago now.
- slipheen 6y ago
  I don't hate Windows 10 by any means, I just find Linux works better for me. I use a Thinkpad and all the drivers work fine without tweaking, so that's not an issue for my setup. Personally, I just really like the little features I get with Linux. For example, I have a little script that recognizes when I insert a certain encrypted SD card, and automatically copies over some config files from my home directory. There may be a way to do that on Windows, it's just so much easier on Linux that Windows doesn't seem worth the trouble.
  - Kuinox 6y ago
    It's much easier on Linux because you know how to do it on Linux.
    - slipheen 6y ago
sh-run 6y ago
This is a really good sign. I hope this means more corporate IT support for Linux desktops. This is the first year I've been able to use Linux (Fedora 31) on a corporate owned machine (T490s) and I don't think I could go back. For my work, it really is a better experience. I've also been using Fedora as the primary OS on my personal devices since 2011 (T410 -> x220 -> T470s and a couple of custom PCs). I stay on fairly standard hardware and really haven't had any major issues in the past 9 years.
- danans 6y ago
  > I hope this means more corporate IT support for Linux desktops. Admittedly I'm biased by my own experience, but my understanding is that many software-engineering-heavy companies already primarily use some flavor of Linux for their corporate engineering workstations, including many of the FAANG companies (and excluding, for obvious reasons, Apple). Of course, I doubt many non-engineering workers are using a traditional desktop Linux, but I recently noticed that my kids' pediatricians' office does use a form of desktop Linux (something Gnome based) for their scheduling/reception system computers.
  - sh-run 6y ago
    I’m at a FAANG for the first time, but was previously at a big financial company with a relatively large IT org. It would’ve been nice to have an option to use Linux there. I think FAANGs are the exception not the norm. Edit: or maybe I haven’t been picky enough with my employers.
    - SahAssar 6y ago
      My last two employers (300-7000 employees) have both offered linux as a first class citizen for support (along windows and macos). The hardware for linux has been both very good and bad though, so the support does not count for much if the hardware sucks.
mtippett 6y ago
Lenovo (IBM) has been an active supporter of Linux since around 2006. The Thinkpad T43p had a lot of Linux enabled for the workstation users. I recall when I was at ATI involved in their effort, we worked closely with the engineering team in Japan to make sure that suspend/resume and hibernation worked well with the graphics portion. It's good to see that this has continued. Don't underestimate how much use of Linux on high end PC hardware happens within the Workstation market.
AdmiralAsshat 6y ago
Any grey-beards wanna weigh in on the state of current ThinkPad models? There usually seems to be quite a bit of nostalgia for the IBM-owned days, where everything was modular/replaceable and the laptops had a 10-year lifespan. I've seen some murmuring that the more "ultrabook" they become, the less dependable. In which case, I would probably just stick with the Dell XPS line, which I've been pretty happy with so far.
- INTPenis 6y ago
  My beard isn't completely grey yet but I've been to redhat offices in Stockholm and most people there use Lenovo laptops. I've enjoyed them for many years too. My first Lenovo "ultrabook" was X1 Carbon. It was quite obvious that there were very few (perhaps none) CRUs on it. But it has served me for 4 years and still works. The battery discharges faster now of course. So late 2019 I got an X1 Yoga to replace it, 2nd Lenovo Ultrabook. So far so good. I work in Fedora every single day, very extensively. I find these laptops and Fedora to be very dependable. But of course that means little because people who run OpenBSD make the same claims.
- gshulegaard 6y ago
  I have a Dell Precision 15" with Ubuntu pre-loaded for work and a ThinkPad X1 Extreme with PopOS loaded by me. Just on hardware, I would take the Thnkpad. It's lighter (like WAY lighter) and I vastly prefer the keyboard and track point, not to mention I got it for 1/3 the price of my work Dell. That said, I wouldn't not recommend the Dell. It's my second Sputnik system from Dell and this one had way better support out of the box. Disclaimer: I am not a grey-beard.
- ThePhysicist 6y ago
  I currently use a T460p which after almost 4 years of constant use and lots of traveling still runs perfectly and hasn't had any hardware defects. My battery even still has 95 % of its initial capacity, which I find really surprising in a positive way. The model I used before was a T430, which had to be repaired twice during its 3 year lifespan and which had many issues (broken/loud fan, failing hinges, broken display connectors, broken chassis parts). For a while I also used a Carbon X1 and a P60, which I had very good experience with again. So I'd say the build quality and materials can strongly vary depending on the model, though I think it has become much better again recently. The prices have gone up as well though, so I'm seriously thinking about buying a Macbook Air as my next laptop as the price difference to an X1 or T model isn't that large anymore.
TheSpiciestDev 6y ago
Huh, I've been using Fedora on my personal T460 for a few years (now on 31) without any major breaking issues. Performs well, upgrades well, bought refurbished for ~$500 of Amazon, bought it extra RAM and an SSD, good life w/standard battery, I can't remember ever hearing the fans run medium/high, uses the standard Thinkpad docking station just fine, and more I'm sure. I'll edit my post if I remember anything worth mentioning. A few minor issues that seem to get resolved by software updates within weeks of breaking installations: - The touchpad goes out, so I'll use the red keyboard nub or reboot the machine. - Sometimes can't use the touchscreen (between larger upgrades) but I don't use this often, it wasn't supposed to have one! - Screen can flicker in GNOME when bouncing between workspaces (Windows + Page Up/Down) Even then, these issues may just be my own machine/configuration! Others have mentioned being wary of pre-installed Lenovo support, and I can agree. While I'd still replace their Fedora for my own install, they'd certainly help my confidence that the laptop was built to fit Linux expectations.
- lofties 6y ago
  I had the same issue with the touchpad going out on my Thinkpad, running Ubuntu. This would always happen after coming out hibernation so I wrote a systemd service[1] that runs a small shell script [2] after coming out of hibernation. [1] https://gist.github.com/briandeheus/bfa498000f52fbf1b581b9a0cfad0e82 https://gist.github.com/briandeheus/bfa498000f52fbf1b581b9a0... [2] https://gist.github.com/briandeheus/3c765d520680053da54b680d808e89ae https://gist.github.com/briandeheus/3c765d520680053da54b680d...
  - ahnick 6y ago
    Thanks for sharing. I've been running the same modprobe commands, but manually using a bash alias. I'm going to use your systemd script going forward.
  - TheSpiciestDev 6y ago
    Thank you!.. I'll keep your gists in-mind if I ever come across this trackpad issue again. Thinking about it, since Fedora 30 or 29, I don't actually remember encountering this problem - I know where to come back to if I do though! Thanks again!
yingw787 6y ago
I have a ThinkPad P1 Gen 2 with Ubuntu 20.04 LTS installed. It works fine. By contrast I had gotten a Dell Precision 5530 with Dell OEM Ubuntu, and after a factory reset the GPU couldn't be detected afterwards. Unless they get things like battery management or fractional scaling or a fingerprint reader working properly, you already have the freedom to install Linux on your machine and honestly you might do a better job than what a manufacturer might do anyways.
- jabl 6y ago
  I also have a P1Gen2, though I'm still on Ubuntu 19.10, haven't updated to 20.04 yet. For the most part it works fine: - Haven't tried the fingerprint reader - Multimonitor with the docking stations is extremely flaky. With various messing around with connecting/disconnecting cables, closing/opening the lid etc. I've occasionally gotten it to work, but not reliably. - Fractional scaling is reportedly not working with the nvidia driver in 20.04. In 19.10 it does work, though it's not enabled by default, you have to set an option on the cmdline to make it appear in the GUI. - And yeah, the entire multi-GPU thing is klunky, as you have to run the prime-select tool and reboot when switching.
SeanFerree 6y ago
Just got a Lenovo laptop. It's pretty nice! I had never heard of them before
elric 6y ago
Why should I trust their Linux installation any more than their Windows installations, which have been preloaded with backdoors, malware and all kinds of phone-home nasties at least several times over the years? It'll be nice if it ends up being cheaper than the Windows version, but I'll still be wiping it.
- bityard 6y ago
  Linked article states that all software installed on the laptop comes from the Fedora repos.
butz 6y ago
Neat. I've already been running Fedora on my ThinkPad for a few years and it works great. All devices are working, BIOS updates from boot USB. One issue was with that Intel security thing that needed updates and it was impossible to do on Linux. If someone is worried about backdoors or malware, you can easily wipe whole drive and install fresh from trusted source.
TheCapn 6y ago
Fedora has been the only distro that seems to work with my ThinkPad Yoga immediately after install. I battled against Ubuntu and other distros for ages trying to get the screen rotation to work and eventually just made scripts to convert between portrait and landsacpe and even with that the touch controls failed to work properly.
tsar9x 6y ago
Now Lenovo please step up your laptop game. 16:10 screen, small bezels, HiDPI screen with sane resolution (like 3200x1800) -> good trade-off between battery life and sharpness, and perfect for 2x integer scaling (better performance). Good speakers and microphone.
arminiusreturns 6y ago
I couple of words of warning. 1. Lenovo has a bit of a shady history, with Superfish and Service Engine/Center being the main pre-installed malware or data leaking things that come to mind. Those were windows focused, but if they'll do it there, why wouldn't they do it on linux? 2. Often manufacturers who ship linux will add really stupid EULA/TOSs to the system. A few years ago I bought a Dell linux system only to be greeted by one that had all kinds of things like arbitration clauses I did not agree to, so I highly suggest not using pre-shipped linux versions! 3. Be prepared to distro-hop to find the right one, regardless of "linux compat" tags. Each batch of production even on the same laptop line will have small variations, and after many years of testing linux on many laptops, my general advice is you really have to distro-hop to find the right linux for the laptop you have. I know this isn't ideal, but it is the state of things. For example, I have a newer Ryzen laptop 2-in-1. Every single major distro including arch with newer kernels had major, showstopping issues... On a hunch I tried Devuan... and I have now been running a non-systemd system for half a year with no major issues at all. (and it helps me stay on top of sysvinit land since I still manage some non-systemd boxen) On other systems I've had to distrohop and the one that works ends up being something else. For example in 2015 I had a MBP on which Ubuntu seemed to just work better than fedora or debian or arch. In 2017 the MBP I had Manjaro ended up being what worked over the others. (the Manjaro hardware detector is the best in linux land imho) 4. Consider different desktop environments and window managers. One of my pet peeves is someone trying out Ubuntu with KDE/Gnome with something and when it doesn't work throwing up their hands. I think far too often what people blame linux for is really the fault of the DE/WMs. Consider going outside the norm, try XFCE, i3, or my favorite, Awesome. (there are many more) 5. Finally, while I understand we all want things to just work on the practical side, remember that computing is inherently an ideological choice, at least in my opinion it is. (I am excluding work computing because sometimes you don't get a choice on that /stares at work Macbook menacingly) I believe in the four freedoms as posited by RMS and try to match my actions to that, for example almost everything I use is gpl+, with only a few exceptions which I am always looking for alternatives to. I've sacrificed some things to get here (gaming w/ friends on some games that don't work in proton/wine, for example) but it is worth it to me.
oriettaxx 6y ago
omg, is it true! finally!! i have to get a new lenovo in soon, and this is really good news! I will skip the windows backshis :)
tshanmu 6y ago
Bought a used ThinkPad 420 and stuck arch with lxqt on it. My teen child is quite happy with it!!
blaser-waffle 6y ago
Don't tease me like this son. Currently running Fedora on an old Thinkpad. If this was truly serious I would be interested. Dell has had a tenuous relationship with Ubuntu, but it was enough that I seriously looked at their business line a few months back.
bgorman 6y ago
This would be a major game changer. Fedora does things the right way Linux support wise (not relying on proprietary drivers). Combined with the high build quality of a thinkpad, this may become the go-to developer laptop.
daffy 6y ago
Great. Do they come without hardware backdoors as well?
jonahbenton 6y ago
As with most posters here: * I love Fedora, use it as my primary OS for more than a decade * also love Thinkpads, have used on and off for 25+ years But I have mixed feelings about this announcement and hope it is just more vaporware (as Fedora on Thinkpad has been announced before). Part of what I love about Fedora is that it is just on the other side of the river from corporate RHEL. So it inherits a ton of the infrastructure and the process and so forth, but it doesn't have to pay for it. Instead Fedora gets shiny new things pretty quickly and sometimes, not often, things break. Support is- whatever you can find. That's great. Once you get into the world where stuff has to work because sales and support contracts- the dynamic changes. Fewer new things, less speed, more conformity. It's not Fedora any more. We could see this looming in the acquisition. Hope it takes yet still longer for the bureaucracy to chew through.
mrtweetyhack 6y ago
Lenovo laptops are the worst. Worst touchpads ever, poor keyboard lettering. Don't buy them.
murtio 6y ago
Still, you'll get a machine that's not pleasant to look at. Funny that GNU/Linux OS has been advancing greatly the past decade, outperforming Windows and Mac, but without proper hardware match. Lenovo laptops are so ugly and battery performance usually not more than 6h. My work laptop used to be Dell 7000 series, which is perfect on Fedora but with one drawback: calling Dell support to change motherboard every 6 months. Now some companies come to fill the gap, one of them is Purism. I was so happy to see them operating. Well, after paying 1300$, for a really modest processor, the whole laptop fell apart in less than 6 months. It was even worst than any Ascer laptops I've used!! You finally, with all the shame, go back using a Macbook. Fedora on MacBook is the future; but long way to go to get everything working properly.
poppabox 6y ago
Super wish it wasn't called Fedora. That name is a little too on-the-nose for a Linux distro.

444 points by caution 6y ago

jhasse 6y ago

I hope this won't be US-only, does anyone know more details?

caution 6y ago
Looks like someone asked in the comments over there. – Will it be available globally? I.E in the U.K? >> As I understand the plan, yes, it should be globally, although there is some amount of regulatory red tape that needs to be cleared everywhere so I have no idea on timing. This is great for individuals around the world, of course, but it’s also important for companies who want to standardize on a Fedora OS and on the same laptop models worldwide

mindcrime 6y ago

Righteous! I had heard vague rumblings that something like this might be in the works, back when I was at Lenovo. Glad to see them actually take this step. Now more than ever, I could see my next new laptop being a ThinkPad.

codeisawesome 6y ago

Oh wow! I think I could finally be tempted to get an X1..!

LeonM 6y ago
Don't even bother. I have an X1E and the whole dual GPU situation is still a mess under Linux. Of course it depends on your use-case, but stuff like running external displays or using fractional scaling on the 4k internal display never seems to work. nVidia drivers are buggy a/f, Nouveau is a pain to get working properly.
- tomxor 6y ago
  Totally agree with the whole dual GPU + nvidia thing, now using a modern intel integrated on an XPS 9370 FHD and zero issues... It makes me feel like the most i have to look forward to on linux is maybe the more powerful integrated vega AMD gpus which look to have good in kernel linux support. Is there any reliable mobile discrete GPU graphics experience to be had on linux these days?
- elric 6y ago
  I had a hard time getting Fedora to run reliably on the P53 models we recently bought. Of course, NVIDIA turned out to be the culprit once more. Things improved after installing the proprietary drivers, but it sure would be nice if things would Just Work out of the box.

aquir 6y ago

This is very good. Manufacturers will make sure that the hardware is fully supported. There is also System76 and I think you can buy laptops from Dell as well w/ Ubuntu preinstalled

N3cr0ph4g1st 6y ago
My precision 5520 pre installed with Ubuntu was riddled with issues, had garbage audio compared to the windows version (tried all kinds of eq programs and tweaks), and the battery life was terrible... Was not a good experience

recursive 6y ago

One of the things that has kept me from trying Linux in earnest (and yes, I'm very lazy) is concerns about which hardware is supported by which flavors, and how much.

hellcow 6y ago
Buy a one- or two-year-old Thinkpad, and it'll be supported as well as anything.
- recursive 6y ago
  > it'll be supported as well as anything. But how well is that exactly? Don't answer that, it's a rhetorical question.
- clarry 6y ago
  My Thinkpad was very poorly supported by Debian Stale when I bought it. I guess it would've been roughly one-year-old at that point.
  - toyg 6y ago
    Debian Stable is never going to be a “laptop” distro, to be fair. One needs Ubuntu, Fedora, or some other quick-turnaround distro.
    - yjftsjthsd-h 6y ago
      > Debian Stable is never going to be a “laptop” distro, to be fair. Will never be a new laptop distro - I'll bet you I can run Debian stable on my Thinkpad X200 without issue;)
  - kick 6y ago
    Stable's entire selling-point is to be the Linux of yesterday, tomorrow. You probably would have had better luck with a distribution that didn't intentionally aim to be ancient.
  - 6y ago

jacek 6y ago

That's great news. It looks like Fedora will be available on the P series (powerful workstations) and X1 Carbon. I hope it will soon be expanded to other laptops. I am really interested in T series with AMD Ryzen 4000 line (should be released later this year) and would love to avoid paying the Windows tax. I just wonder if the fingerprint reader is finally supported on Linux. Also the LTE modem on my X1 Carbon (6th gen) has no support.

lnkmails 6y ago
The fingerprint reader is not yet supported on 6th gen X1.I never tried to get the LTE modem working. Funnily, I didn't even realize that the slot existed for almost a year after purchase.
- petepete 6y ago
  I don't know which model of fingerprint reader is in the 6th gen, but on the 7th gen, enabling the beta firmware made it work perfectly. $ fwupdmgr enable-remote lvfs-testing If you temporarily enable, apply the Prometheus fingerprint updates then disable you won't need to worry about installing unstable firmware that will affect the system more widely.
  - yrro 6y ago
    I'm getting the following after doing that: Firmware metadata has not been updated for 30 days and may not be up to date. Update now? (Requires internet connection) [y|N]: y Fetching metadata https://cdn.fwupd.org/downloads/firmware-testing.xml.gz Downloading… [***************************************] Less than one minute remaining… Fetching signature https://cdn.fwupd.org/downloads/firmware-testing.xml.gz.asc Failed to update metadata for lvfs-testing: '48A6D80E4538BAC2' is not a valid signature Anyone else seen that?
  - jabl 6y ago
    fwupdmgr / LVFS is such a breath of fresh air compared to the various old vendor specific fw update procedures!

smacktoward 6y ago

Finally!

2OEH8eoCRo0 6y ago

This is awesome news with Fedora 32 right around the corner. I'm also in the market for a new laptop pretty soon.

vzaliva 6y ago

I prefer Ubuntu. If I buy one of these models, does it mean that there are drivers/support for all hardware in Ubuntu as well? Are some of the divers proprietary or Fedora-specific?

mindcrime 6y ago
I don't have any definitive inside knowledge, but based on history and reasoning by analogy, I doubt there will be much - if anything - that is Fedora specific. My hunch is that it's very likely that Ubuntu will install and run well on these machines as well.
na85 6y ago
I believe Dell ships their XPS line of laptops with either Debian or Ubuntu preinstalled. Friends of mine who use them say the driver support is quite good, and the experience overall is also good.
- brabel 6y ago
  I have a Dell XPS with Ubuntu installed from factory, and been really happy with it. Everything works very well and never had any trouble connecting any devices.
gnulinux 6y ago
I bought a Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon 7th gen a few months ago. And almost nothing worked with Ubuntu 19.10 out of box. (Also tried Debian and archlinux and had worse driver problems). Wifi driver doesn't work; audio driver doesn't work, pulseaudio is buggy (since volume up/down changes master and not PCM so it does not change actual volume output); hibernation doesn't work properly (still drains battery even when laptop lid is closed); wifi does not connect to 5G even after driver starts working, screen tearing on fullscreen, audio doesn't output as loud as Window even if it claims it's running software amplification (150% volume)... Most of these were fixable, but took about a week of research on random forums, stackoverflow, kernel mail list (for wifi driver), Archlinux wiki etc... I never had any issues with linux before. Never. Zero. i was very excited when I first bought this $3000 laptop since this is the first time I bought an expensive electronics. It was absolute shit show from beginning to end. I'm still dealing with screen tearing and audio being quiet (compared to Windows running on the same machine, and my Macbook Pro playing the same song). I decided last night, I'll try another distro such as Fedora. I feel completely stuck. I hate using Windows. My macbook is work computer so I can't use it for personal stuff. I'm just stuck in this $3000 computer that requires hours of research every time. I sure hope Lenovo get their act together and have a "Recommended" linux image for these machines.

evacchi 6y ago

Red Hatter here. I have a Thinkpad T470s with Fedora as my daily driver and I have to admit it works pretty flawlessly

m0xte 6y ago
Interesting. My daily driver portable machine is a T470 so I may try that this weekend. I run out of a docking station with two monitors so have been scared to try it TBH. It works pretty flawlessly on windows though.
- evacchi 6y ago
  My docking station is connected to an external monitor :) works great -- I have just upgraded to Fedora 32
- tristan957 6y ago
  I have a T470p with a docking station and an external monitor and I have no complaints much like the other user.
joshuamcginnis 6y ago
How's the battery life? I dual boot ubuntu and win10 on my T450 and the battery life under win is noticeably better.

mindcrime 6y ago

Really glad they decided to launch this with Fedora. Nothing against Ubuntu per-se, but I - and many others - prefer Linux from the RHEL / CentOS / Fedora family. And there already are, or have been, OEM's shipping Ubuntu. Nice to see somebody go with Fedora.

caution 6y ago

A bit more information: https://blogs.gnome.org/uraeus/2020/04/24/a-bold-new-chapter-for-fedora-workstation/ https://blogs.gnome.org/uraeus/2020/04/24/a-bold-new-chapter...

petepete 6y ago

This is great news. I use Fedora on a Thinkpad X1 Carbon (7th Gen) and it works flawlessly. Enabling beta firmware even made the fingerprint reader (historically a problem area) work perfectly. I'd definitely have bought it with Fedora if it'd been available at the time, the Windows 10 install was gone within twenty minutes of me opening the box.

enriquto 6y ago

I don't believe it. They said the same thing more than a year ago, it is still announced in their website for the P models (the choice for ubuntu or fedora), but yet they are impossible to buy. I have harassed the lenovo sales people for months and I have given up in buying a P laptop with linux installed. I do not understand why do they play this kind of stupid games. The only thing that they offer is to buy the laptop with windows, then renounce the windows licence, then follow an online guide to install linux. Honestly, to buy a few laptops for 4000 EUR each, it is fairly insulting to be told that.

kick 6y ago
That's only because you're in a less valuable market. You can purchase pretty much every single option they have with Linux in America. It's still unfortunate, but it's not like they don't sell many devices with Linux pre-installed.
- enriquto 6y ago
  The thing is that the site in France, written in french, announces this option yet it is not available.
  - kick 6y ago
    Sure. It's understandable that'd be frustrating. It's still probably more likely due to poorly-adapted copy than due to a genuine interest in selling Linux laptops in France, or incompetence.
- dubcanada 6y ago
  Which is funny because I believe Linux marketshare is higher in Europe than US (well based on statcounter and other sources).
  - kick 6y ago
    Market-share might be higher, but the market is much smaller, and it's still a minority. Selling to a minority in the US is much more profitable than selling to a minority in Europe, solely because of scale.

dyingkneepad 6y ago

This is great news, even if you don't plan to use Fedora or if you plan to buy the same laptop with Windows pre-installed instead of Linux. It means some Red Had people were paid to make sure all the hardware in the laptop works. Even if the patches are not all upstream at the time of release (and I'm 100% sure the Fedora people will try to upstream as much as they can), you know they exist and you will be able to use if needed. I recently got a Thinkbook from my employer and the touchpad doesn't work and there are no patches available for it. I'm stuck with having to use a mouse because my employer didn't care consult me before buying a laptop... The areas where Linux shine are the areas where people are paid to get open source stuff done. And I am thankful for the existence of companies like Red Hat, Suse and Canonical. Because HW manufacturers and OEMs clearly have no clue about how to write and ship software...

AdmiralAsshat 6y ago
> It means some Red Had people were paid to make sure all the hardware in the laptop works. IIRC, I've heard from former RH engineers that RH already runs mostly on either Thinkpads or Dell laptops, so this could easily have been an internal push to make their own rollouts easier. It certainly makes provisioning faster if the guy preparing the Lenovo laptop doesn't have to start with blowing away the OS, loading Fedora, and then applying a dozen patches or other config changes to make the laptop happy w/ Fedora.
- dyingkneepad 6y ago
  I understand what you say, but this is different because there is official support from the OEM now. If something doesn't work the Red Hat engineer won't have to reverse-engineer stuff, they will officially contact Lenovo, which will officially contact the manufacturer of whatever component is not working, and they are going to work to a solution the proper way. Much better and faster than the alternative. Source: I worked doing exactly this many years ago.
- yjftsjthsd-h 6y ago
  > It certainly makes provisioning faster if the guy preparing the Lenovo laptop doesn't have to start with blowing away the OS, loading Fedora, and then applying a dozen patches or other config changes to make the laptop happy w/ Fedora. Doesn't all of that boil down to, "plug into the imaging system, boot, let Foreman (or whatever) do everything"? I can't imaging Red Hat having laptop setup be a manual process.

arendtio 6y ago

Sounds great. From the major hardware vendors, I heard only of Dell, to offer laptops with Linux preinstalled. Sadly my personal experience with an Dell XPS was so bad (hardware, quality-wise) that I do not want to buy their hardware again. The big thing here is not that you don't have to install Linux yourself, but that they care about the driver support. Not having to install a Linux yourself is a nice bonus though.

TekMol 6y ago
What was your problem with the Dell XPS hardware?
- arendtio 6y ago
  It started with minor annoyances like the touchpad looking greasy at the center after a few days (cleaning didn't make a difference). After a few months, the touch screen didn't work anymore. I tried different OS and after a while, I contacted the support. I had a call for about an hour during which they updated the BIOS, but it didn't help. So they sent a technician, who found out, that the Touchscreen didn't work, but had no replacement at hand. So a few days later another technician came and replaced the display. I didn't use the laptop very often at that time, but after a while, I noticed that the display flickered sometimes now, I tried to track down the root of the issue but to this day I don't know what causes it (at least it doesn't seem to be an OS issue). However, by the time I found out that the flickering was not related to the OS, the warranty period was over. In addition, to the screen issues, the touchpad is just not good. In the beginning, it was okay, after a while you couldn't press it properly anymore (didn't came back up). Some time later, the opposite effect was present: the touchpad popped out about 1mm and you can't press it again. However, those are just the aspects in which I would categorize the issue as low build quality. For example, other aspects are, that I like the keyboard layout very much and learned that I hate glare-type displays even more than I thought I would.

cbHXBY1D 6y ago

Interesting. I wonder if this will help bring better eGPU support. I have a Thinkpad 25 Retro with an NVIDIA 940MX and it doesn't play well with suspend and resume, optimus, etc.

bitwize 6y ago

Holy crap yes. I don't care for Fedora, but it beats having to scrape Windows off, and hopefully it means these laptops will be engineered for Linux/open source from the start.

mokus 6y ago

I have mixed feelings here. On one hand, more hardware makers supporting Linux is good. On the other, I don’t really feel like I want the kind of pre-installed “support” software Lenovo has given Windows to come to Linux.

mattdm 6y ago
Good news! The people we are working with at Lenovo have no interest in this either. We don't have any special deal here: they're shipping Fedora under the standard open source licenses and https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Legal:Trademark_guidelines#OEM_pre-loads_of_unmodified_Fedora_software https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Legal:Trademark_guidelines#OE..., which means there's nothing added (except their docs in /opt/lenovo).

holtalanm 6y ago

Honestly, ever since i moved from a pure linux environment, to just using Windows 10 pro, I have had 0 issues, and have spent a significantly smaller amount of time tweaking my environment settings. I get why some people would want a bare-metal OEM install of linux for technical reasons (some languages/tools just run better on linux, or are only available on linux), but I really don't understand the hate people have for Windows 10. With the WSL, I've actually got a linux shell I can pop into whenever the need comes up, as well.

corndoge 6y ago
Embrace, Extend, Extinguish. I also like WSL but the lack of a functional network stack is limiting.
- holtalanm 6y ago
  Embrace, Extend, Extinguish hasn't been the Microsoft mantra for years now. I mean, I get it, 90's Microsoft burned you, but come on, that was 30 years ago now.
slipheen 6y ago
I don't hate Windows 10 by any means, I just find Linux works better for me. I use a Thinkpad and all the drivers work fine without tweaking, so that's not an issue for my setup. Personally, I just really like the little features I get with Linux. For example, I have a little script that recognizes when I insert a certain encrypted SD card, and automatically copies over some config files from my home directory. There may be a way to do that on Windows, it's just so much easier on Linux that Windows doesn't seem worth the trouble.
- Kuinox 6y ago
  It's much easier on Linux because you know how to do it on Linux.
  - slipheen 6y ago

sh-run 6y ago

This is a really good sign. I hope this means more corporate IT support for Linux desktops. This is the first year I've been able to use Linux (Fedora 31) on a corporate owned machine (T490s) and I don't think I could go back. For my work, it really is a better experience. I've also been using Fedora as the primary OS on my personal devices since 2011 (T410 -> x220 -> T470s and a couple of custom PCs). I stay on fairly standard hardware and really haven't had any major issues in the past 9 years.

danans 6y ago
> I hope this means more corporate IT support for Linux desktops. Admittedly I'm biased by my own experience, but my understanding is that many software-engineering-heavy companies already primarily use some flavor of Linux for their corporate engineering workstations, including many of the FAANG companies (and excluding, for obvious reasons, Apple). Of course, I doubt many non-engineering workers are using a traditional desktop Linux, but I recently noticed that my kids' pediatricians' office does use a form of desktop Linux (something Gnome based) for their scheduling/reception system computers.
- sh-run 6y ago
  I’m at a FAANG for the first time, but was previously at a big financial company with a relatively large IT org. It would’ve been nice to have an option to use Linux there. I think FAANGs are the exception not the norm. Edit: or maybe I haven’t been picky enough with my employers.
  - SahAssar 6y ago
    My last two employers (300-7000 employees) have both offered linux as a first class citizen for support (along windows and macos). The hardware for linux has been both very good and bad though, so the support does not count for much if the hardware sucks.

mtippett 6y ago

Lenovo (IBM) has been an active supporter of Linux since around 2006. The Thinkpad T43p had a lot of Linux enabled for the workstation users. I recall when I was at ATI involved in their effort, we worked closely with the engineering team in Japan to make sure that suspend/resume and hibernation worked well with the graphics portion. It's good to see that this has continued. Don't underestimate how much use of Linux on high end PC hardware happens within the Workstation market.

AdmiralAsshat 6y ago

Any grey-beards wanna weigh in on the state of current ThinkPad models? There usually seems to be quite a bit of nostalgia for the IBM-owned days, where everything was modular/replaceable and the laptops had a 10-year lifespan. I've seen some murmuring that the more "ultrabook" they become, the less dependable. In which case, I would probably just stick with the Dell XPS line, which I've been pretty happy with so far.

INTPenis 6y ago
My beard isn't completely grey yet but I've been to redhat offices in Stockholm and most people there use Lenovo laptops. I've enjoyed them for many years too. My first Lenovo "ultrabook" was X1 Carbon. It was quite obvious that there were very few (perhaps none) CRUs on it. But it has served me for 4 years and still works. The battery discharges faster now of course. So late 2019 I got an X1 Yoga to replace it, 2nd Lenovo Ultrabook. So far so good. I work in Fedora every single day, very extensively. I find these laptops and Fedora to be very dependable. But of course that means little because people who run OpenBSD make the same claims.
gshulegaard 6y ago
I have a Dell Precision 15" with Ubuntu pre-loaded for work and a ThinkPad X1 Extreme with PopOS loaded by me. Just on hardware, I would take the Thnkpad. It's lighter (like WAY lighter) and I vastly prefer the keyboard and track point, not to mention I got it for 1/3 the price of my work Dell. That said, I wouldn't not recommend the Dell. It's my second Sputnik system from Dell and this one had way better support out of the box. Disclaimer: I am not a grey-beard.
ThePhysicist 6y ago
I currently use a T460p which after almost 4 years of constant use and lots of traveling still runs perfectly and hasn't had any hardware defects. My battery even still has 95 % of its initial capacity, which I find really surprising in a positive way. The model I used before was a T430, which had to be repaired twice during its 3 year lifespan and which had many issues (broken/loud fan, failing hinges, broken display connectors, broken chassis parts). For a while I also used a Carbon X1 and a P60, which I had very good experience with again. So I'd say the build quality and materials can strongly vary depending on the model, though I think it has become much better again recently. The prices have gone up as well though, so I'm seriously thinking about buying a Macbook Air as my next laptop as the price difference to an X1 or T model isn't that large anymore.

TheSpiciestDev 6y ago

Huh, I've been using Fedora on my personal T460 for a few years (now on 31) without any major breaking issues. Performs well, upgrades well, bought refurbished for ~$500 of Amazon, bought it extra RAM and an SSD, good life w/standard battery, I can't remember ever hearing the fans run medium/high, uses the standard Thinkpad docking station just fine, and more I'm sure. I'll edit my post if I remember anything worth mentioning. A few minor issues that seem to get resolved by software updates within weeks of breaking installations: - The touchpad goes out, so I'll use the red keyboard nub or reboot the machine. - Sometimes can't use the touchscreen (between larger upgrades) but I don't use this often, it wasn't supposed to have one! - Screen can flicker in GNOME when bouncing between workspaces (Windows + Page Up/Down) Even then, these issues may just be my own machine/configuration! Others have mentioned being wary of pre-installed Lenovo support, and I can agree. While I'd still replace their Fedora for my own install, they'd certainly help my confidence that the laptop was built to fit Linux expectations.

lofties 6y ago
I had the same issue with the touchpad going out on my Thinkpad, running Ubuntu. This would always happen after coming out hibernation so I wrote a systemd service[1] that runs a small shell script [2] after coming out of hibernation. [1] https://gist.github.com/briandeheus/bfa498000f52fbf1b581b9a0cfad0e82 https://gist.github.com/briandeheus/bfa498000f52fbf1b581b9a0... [2] https://gist.github.com/briandeheus/3c765d520680053da54b680d808e89ae https://gist.github.com/briandeheus/3c765d520680053da54b680d...
- ahnick 6y ago
  Thanks for sharing. I've been running the same modprobe commands, but manually using a bash alias. I'm going to use your systemd script going forward.
- TheSpiciestDev 6y ago
  Thank you!.. I'll keep your gists in-mind if I ever come across this trackpad issue again. Thinking about it, since Fedora 30 or 29, I don't actually remember encountering this problem - I know where to come back to if I do though! Thanks again!

yingw787 6y ago

I have a ThinkPad P1 Gen 2 with Ubuntu 20.04 LTS installed. It works fine. By contrast I had gotten a Dell Precision 5530 with Dell OEM Ubuntu, and after a factory reset the GPU couldn't be detected afterwards. Unless they get things like battery management or fractional scaling or a fingerprint reader working properly, you already have the freedom to install Linux on your machine and honestly you might do a better job than what a manufacturer might do anyways.

jabl 6y ago
I also have a P1Gen2, though I'm still on Ubuntu 19.10, haven't updated to 20.04 yet. For the most part it works fine: - Haven't tried the fingerprint reader - Multimonitor with the docking stations is extremely flaky. With various messing around with connecting/disconnecting cables, closing/opening the lid etc. I've occasionally gotten it to work, but not reliably. - Fractional scaling is reportedly not working with the nvidia driver in 20.04. In 19.10 it does work, though it's not enabled by default, you have to set an option on the cmdline to make it appear in the GUI. - And yeah, the entire multi-GPU thing is klunky, as you have to run the prime-select tool and reboot when switching.

SeanFerree 6y ago

Just got a Lenovo laptop. It's pretty nice! I had never heard of them before

elric 6y ago

Why should I trust their Linux installation any more than their Windows installations, which have been preloaded with backdoors, malware and all kinds of phone-home nasties at least several times over the years? It'll be nice if it ends up being cheaper than the Windows version, but I'll still be wiping it.

bityard 6y ago
Linked article states that all software installed on the laptop comes from the Fedora repos.

butz 6y ago

Neat. I've already been running Fedora on my ThinkPad for a few years and it works great. All devices are working, BIOS updates from boot USB. One issue was with that Intel security thing that needed updates and it was impossible to do on Linux. If someone is worried about backdoors or malware, you can easily wipe whole drive and install fresh from trusted source.

TheCapn 6y ago

Fedora has been the only distro that seems to work with my ThinkPad Yoga immediately after install. I battled against Ubuntu and other distros for ages trying to get the screen rotation to work and eventually just made scripts to convert between portrait and landsacpe and even with that the touch controls failed to work properly.

tsar9x 6y ago

Now Lenovo please step up your laptop game. 16:10 screen, small bezels, HiDPI screen with sane resolution (like 3200x1800) -> good trade-off between battery life and sharpness, and perfect for 2x integer scaling (better performance). Good speakers and microphone.

arminiusreturns 6y ago

I couple of words of warning. 1. Lenovo has a bit of a shady history, with Superfish and Service Engine/Center being the main pre-installed malware or data leaking things that come to mind. Those were windows focused, but if they'll do it there, why wouldn't they do it on linux? 2. Often manufacturers who ship linux will add really stupid EULA/TOSs to the system. A few years ago I bought a Dell linux system only to be greeted by one that had all kinds of things like arbitration clauses I did not agree to, so I highly suggest not using pre-shipped linux versions! 3. Be prepared to distro-hop to find the right one, regardless of "linux compat" tags. Each batch of production even on the same laptop line will have small variations, and after many years of testing linux on many laptops, my general advice is you really have to distro-hop to find the right linux for the laptop you have. I know this isn't ideal, but it is the state of things. For example, I have a newer Ryzen laptop 2-in-1. Every single major distro including arch with newer kernels had major, showstopping issues... On a hunch I tried Devuan... and I have now been running a non-systemd system for half a year with no major issues at all. (and it helps me stay on top of sysvinit land since I still manage some non-systemd boxen) On other systems I've had to distrohop and the one that works ends up being something else. For example in 2015 I had a MBP on which Ubuntu seemed to just work better than fedora or debian or arch. In 2017 the MBP I had Manjaro ended up being what worked over the others. (the Manjaro hardware detector is the best in linux land imho) 4. Consider different desktop environments and window managers. One of my pet peeves is someone trying out Ubuntu with KDE/Gnome with something and when it doesn't work throwing up their hands. I think far too often what people blame linux for is really the fault of the DE/WMs. Consider going outside the norm, try XFCE, i3, or my favorite, Awesome. (there are many more) 5. Finally, while I understand we all want things to just work on the practical side, remember that computing is inherently an ideological choice, at least in my opinion it is. (I am excluding work computing because sometimes you don't get a choice on that /stares at work Macbook menacingly) I believe in the four freedoms as posited by RMS and try to match my actions to that, for example almost everything I use is gpl+, with only a few exceptions which I am always looking for alternatives to. I've sacrificed some things to get here (gaming w/ friends on some games that don't work in proton/wine, for example) but it is worth it to me.

oriettaxx 6y ago

omg, is it true! finally!! i have to get a new lenovo in soon, and this is really good news! I will skip the windows backshis :)

tshanmu 6y ago

Bought a used ThinkPad 420 and stuck arch with lxqt on it. My teen child is quite happy with it!!

blaser-waffle 6y ago

Don't tease me like this son. Currently running Fedora on an old Thinkpad. If this was truly serious I would be interested. Dell has had a tenuous relationship with Ubuntu, but it was enough that I seriously looked at their business line a few months back.

bgorman 6y ago

This would be a major game changer. Fedora does things the right way Linux support wise (not relying on proprietary drivers). Combined with the high build quality of a thinkpad, this may become the go-to developer laptop.

daffy 6y ago

Great. Do they come without hardware backdoors as well?

jonahbenton 6y ago

As with most posters here: * I love Fedora, use it as my primary OS for more than a decade * also love Thinkpads, have used on and off for 25+ years But I have mixed feelings about this announcement and hope it is just more vaporware (as Fedora on Thinkpad has been announced before). Part of what I love about Fedora is that it is just on the other side of the river from corporate RHEL. So it inherits a ton of the infrastructure and the process and so forth, but it doesn't have to pay for it. Instead Fedora gets shiny new things pretty quickly and sometimes, not often, things break. Support is- whatever you can find. That's great. Once you get into the world where stuff has to work because sales and support contracts- the dynamic changes. Fewer new things, less speed, more conformity. It's not Fedora any more. We could see this looming in the acquisition. Hope it takes yet still longer for the bureaucracy to chew through.

mrtweetyhack 6y ago

Lenovo laptops are the worst. Worst touchpads ever, poor keyboard lettering. Don't buy them.

murtio 6y ago

Still, you'll get a machine that's not pleasant to look at. Funny that GNU/Linux OS has been advancing greatly the past decade, outperforming Windows and Mac, but without proper hardware match. Lenovo laptops are so ugly and battery performance usually not more than 6h. My work laptop used to be Dell 7000 series, which is perfect on Fedora but with one drawback: calling Dell support to change motherboard every 6 months. Now some companies come to fill the gap, one of them is Purism. I was so happy to see them operating. Well, after paying 1300$, for a really modest processor, the whole laptop fell apart in less than 6 months. It was even worst than any Ascer laptops I've used!! You finally, with all the shame, go back using a Macbook. Fedora on MacBook is the future; but long way to go to get everything working properly.

poppabox 6y ago

Super wish it wasn't called Fedora. That name is a little too on-the-nose for a Linux distro.