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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 proprietar

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 7y 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 7y 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 7y 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 7y 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.
- kick 7y ago
  Did you check the wiki for your specific model? It looks like there's still a few problems, but it's actually got pretty trivial fixes for just about everything: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Lenovo_ThinkPad_X1_Carbon_(Gen_7) https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Lenovo_ThinkPad_X1_Carb...
  - gnulinux 7y ago
    Yes of course. My issues were absolutely not limited to these though, but I encountered all of these issues. I had maybe twice this many issues. For those that are not in archlinux wiki I used other resources listed in my OP.
- jchw 7y ago
  This was my experience with Lenovo laptops. The thing is, I am pretty sure it's not uncommon. I'm pretty sure if you buy completely brand new hardware, there's a good chance it won't be ready to run Linux out of the box. Lenovo sure isn't putting in all the work to make it happen. On the flip side, if you're a developer it may not be outside the realm of possibility to fix some of the problems yourself and contribute. If that's not what you want to be doing with a new laptop, totally understandable, but I have found some unexpected joy in doing so myself. Well OK. As long as nothing is wrong with the WiFi. After about a year, pretty much any Lenovo laptop should be working well out of the box, at least that's what I've experienced.
  - vinceguidry 7y ago
    And then when it comes time to refresh the operating system in a few years, get ready to do it all over again. If you want hardware that is actually supported, buy System76 or Purism. I have two Meerkats, a Thelio, and a Librem 13. Everything just works.
    - gnulinux 7y ago
      Our niche is very small. Most people are frustrated by linux, and switch to Windows or OSX. I CANNOT do that, because Windows frustrates me even more, systematically; at least on linux it's tremendous amount of frustration the first time, then it just works. I suppose what I should have done was to buy an older laptop, instead of a cutting edge one. Oh well. The more you learn...
pkilgore 7y ago
Dells strategy for this wasn't to ship new drivers, as much as it was to just use components that already have drivers. I imagine Lenovo would do the same, but I don't know. It does make distro hopping painless on my precision (I'm running POP!_OS now, and still automatically get dell firmware updates!)
AdmiralAsshat 7y ago
I'm curious about the same. Fedora takes a slightly harder line on its "only free" philosophy than Ubuntu does, so the proprietary WiFi driver for the Broadcom card was a big headache back a few years back when I loaded Fedora onto a Dell XPS 13. It became such an annoyance that I tore out the card itself and replaced it with an Intel WiFi card, which had an in-kernel driver. Fedora worked happily with it after that.
swebs 7y ago
I have a Dell XPS that came with Ubuntu and everything has drivers except the fingerprint reader. Dell actually opted to reimburse Ubuntu users something like $13 than have the fingerprint reader manufacturer create Linux drivers.
mattdm 7y ago
This is going to be stock Fedora Workstation, with no proprietary drivers. (You can install the Nvidia binary drivers after the fact if you need or want them.) We follow the upstream kernel closely and generally do not include out-of-tree drivers (with a few historic exceptions). So, everything that works here should eventually benefit everyone.

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 7y 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 7y 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 7y 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 7y 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.

kick 7y ago
Did you check the wiki for your specific model? It looks like there's still a few problems, but it's actually got pretty trivial fixes for just about everything: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Lenovo_ThinkPad_X1_Carbon_(Gen_7) https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Lenovo_ThinkPad_X1_Carb...
- gnulinux 7y ago
  Yes of course. My issues were absolutely not limited to these though, but I encountered all of these issues. I had maybe twice this many issues. For those that are not in archlinux wiki I used other resources listed in my OP.
jchw 7y ago
This was my experience with Lenovo laptops. The thing is, I am pretty sure it's not uncommon. I'm pretty sure if you buy completely brand new hardware, there's a good chance it won't be ready to run Linux out of the box. Lenovo sure isn't putting in all the work to make it happen. On the flip side, if you're a developer it may not be outside the realm of possibility to fix some of the problems yourself and contribute. If that's not what you want to be doing with a new laptop, totally understandable, but I have found some unexpected joy in doing so myself. Well OK. As long as nothing is wrong with the WiFi. After about a year, pretty much any Lenovo laptop should be working well out of the box, at least that's what I've experienced.
- vinceguidry 7y ago
  And then when it comes time to refresh the operating system in a few years, get ready to do it all over again. If you want hardware that is actually supported, buy System76 or Purism. I have two Meerkats, a Thelio, and a Librem 13. Everything just works.
  - gnulinux 7y ago
    Our niche is very small. Most people are frustrated by linux, and switch to Windows or OSX. I CANNOT do that, because Windows frustrates me even more, systematically; at least on linux it's tremendous amount of frustration the first time, then it just works. I suppose what I should have done was to buy an older laptop, instead of a cutting edge one. Oh well. The more you learn...

pkilgore 7y ago

Dells strategy for this wasn't to ship new drivers, as much as it was to just use components that already have drivers. I imagine Lenovo would do the same, but I don't know. It does make distro hopping painless on my precision (I'm running POP!_OS now, and still automatically get dell firmware updates!)

AdmiralAsshat 7y ago

I'm curious about the same. Fedora takes a slightly harder line on its "only free" philosophy than Ubuntu does, so the proprietary WiFi driver for the Broadcom card was a big headache back a few years back when I loaded Fedora onto a Dell XPS 13. It became such an annoyance that I tore out the card itself and replaced it with an Intel WiFi card, which had an in-kernel driver. Fedora worked happily with it after that.

swebs 7y ago

I have a Dell XPS that came with Ubuntu and everything has drivers except the fingerprint reader. Dell actually opted to reimburse Ubuntu users something like $13 than have the fingerprint reader manufacturer create Linux drivers.

mattdm 7y ago

This is going to be stock Fedora Workstation, with no proprietary drivers. (You can install the Nvidia binary drivers after the fact if you need or want them.) We follow the upstream kernel closely and generally do not include out-of-tree drivers (with a few historic exceptions). So, everything that works here should eventually benefit everyone.