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Based on all the comments on HN about how great Thinkpads are supposed to be with Linux, I bought an X1-Extreme some time ago. From my experience, Linux suppor

• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• gtk40 4y ago
  Last time I got a new laptop, I simply ordered a Lenovo Thinkpad (X1 Carbon, not Extreme) with Linux pre-installed. I am past where I want to tinker to get the hardware and software working together, but do prefer Linux as my daily driver. I haven't had any issues with it, but I also got a relatively simple setup. I've ordered a Linux pre-installed Dell in the past with similar fine results.
  • petepete 4y ago
    Same for me, both my X1 Carbon and Precision Pro (2013 with Ubuntu pre-installed) worked flawlessly. ThinkPad battery life could be a bit better, but that's my fault for choosing the 4k one.
• BeefWellington 4y ago
  Have you used it without the dock? Because my experience with daily driving Linux at work for 10+ years with Thinkpads has been the complete opposite, with the exception of NVidia's driver garbage (which is just a problem with NVidia generally). My current work system is a P53 that has an Nvidia GPU though and it's been working very very well for me through updates and the like via dkms. The only other problem on that list I've encountered was within the first month or so after buying my T14s suspend support was a problem. A bad dock can introduce a lot of problems.
  • LeonM 4y ago
    > A bad dock can introduce a lot of problems. That's why I bought the $400 official Lenovo dock. Unfortunately, I can't do my daily work without the dock. (at least not without having to introduce numerous dongles and USB hubs, which may cause more issues)
    • SailingCactus33 4y ago
      I was unable to make the official dock work with my Lenovo (Fedora), but a usb-c dongle has been working without issues.
      • ledgerdev 4y ago
        Same here, my $400 dock is completely non-functional with Fedora 35. I have read some reports it works with Arch, so maybe Fedora 36 will work.
• augusto-moura 4y ago
  I think most of the praise on Thinkpads comes from older versions, from IBM and the first Lenovos. I have an X220, and even though it's quite outdated hardware for today's world, it is still a very capable machine. The most recent laptops are very good, but their support of linux is lacking compared with the older ones. As a rule of thumb, I try to find the model page in arch wiki before any purchase, it should list most of the common problems and how to fix them (if they are fixable at all, your X1-Extreme page for example[1]). [1]: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Lenovo_ThinkPad_X1_Extreme https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Lenovo_ThinkPad_X1_Extreme
  • debacle 4y ago
    The last ThinkPad I owned disintegrated in under a year. The chassis was so poorly made that it just crumbled with normal use. I have been buying Asus ever since. Not the prettiest machines but durable and reliable.
    • bitL 4y ago
      I have a Zephyrus G15 with 5800u/RTX3080/40GB/3TB and with the 5.15 kernel it works flawlessly on Linux Mint. I use it more often than MBP these days. The only drawback is no DisplayPort for VR.
• hsbauauvhabzb 4y ago
  I’ll second you on the grub stuff, and the nvidia stuff. I wish I could switch to an intel gpu. I’ve considered buying a thunderbolt dock just so I can not use nvidia when at home.
• hef19898 4y ago
  I cannot confirm any of this, and I am a complete noob regarding Linux. I don't have a 4k screen, and the Intel GPU is deactivated since day one anyway, so I can't say anything about using both GPUs in parallel. Sleep and power saving works just fine, firmware updates work without interference from my side. I use Nvidia proprietary drivers. Thunderbolt and external screens work without trouble. And battery life is good, maybe a little worse then under Windows, but that rather feels like minutes and not hours. Max I get out is just a little over 4 hours of Civ VI. Leaving it in sleep depletes the battery in the course of 3 days, more or less.
• orangepurple 4y ago
  Don't use Grub or any bootloader if you can avoid it. I haven't used Grub in 10 years. Load Linux directly as an EFI executable via the EFISTUB approach. You almost certainly only need to run two or three efibootmgr commands to accomplish this. For most people that means only the "Using UEFI directly" section is relevant. https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/EFISTUB https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/EFISTUB S3 suspend was removed as a default option by many hardware manufacturers. You will likely need to enter the BIOS to change this. There is a bug in 5.17.x kernels where suspend doesn't work with bluetooth enabled. It will be fixed soon.
  • LeonM 4y ago
    > Don't use Grub or any bootloader if you can avoid it. I haven't used Grub in 10 years. Load Linux directly as an EFI executable via the EFISTUB approach. I run Windows dual boot, since I need (native) Windows for certain work related tasks. > S3 suspend was removed as a default option by many hardware manufacturers. You will likely need to enter the BIOS to change this. It's on, S3 is not the problem > There is a bug in 5.17.x kernels where suspend doesn't work with bluetooth enabled. It will be fixed soon. I'm not running 5.17. But frankly, I don't want to care about all this "oh, but you just have to do [insanely_technical_thing]" Sure, if I invest $LOTS_OF_TIME in it, I might be able to fix most of the issues. But this is a $3000 professional laptop, which is supposed to have good Linux support. This machine is my work equipment and I chose this expensive machine so I don't have to tinker with this stuff. It should just work.
    • weberer 4y ago
      >But frankly, I don't want to care about all this "oh, but you just have to do [insanely_technical_thing]" >It should just work. Then you should buy a laptop that ships with Linux and has official support from the vendor. Like the Dell XPS Developer edition, or anything from System76.
    • sigzero 4y ago
      Yeah for the most part it's a "Linux on laptops works if you <list of steps to configure things>...". At least that has been my experience. Although I have not run Linux on a laptop in years so maybe it's time to revisit that.
• NikolaNovak 4y ago
  Thank you for sharing; these comments make me pause. At work, RHEL on Thinkpad is one of the standard offerings, and has continued to be across many generations. EVERYTHING works. I've had a work-provided RHEL Thinkpad (T450) which was smooth and seamless, as have my colleagues (most of them chose X1 variations, some T480, some with the newer T14). I have a large number of Thinkpads at home and I want to install Linux on some of them, but comments like these make me wonder how much extra work and special juice our IT department had to commit in order to make it happen - and what my own experience would be in real world.
  • rgrmrts 4y ago
    Older (1/2 years) models will generally have good support. In my experience you start running into issues when you purchase the latest gen and kernel support hasn’t yet caught up (e.g. 12th gen Intel processors)
  • tempest_ 4y ago
    The largest stumbling block is typically when the machine has 2 GPUs. If it is just a normal Intel with integrated graphics / ultra-book it will work out of the box with distros like Ubuntu.
• fps_doug 4y ago
  Yes, people who tell you that you can blindly buy any Lenovo laptop for Linux are lying. You have to do some googling first. Or check the inofficial Thinkpad Wiki. But other than that, if you pick a device that's recommended for use with Linux, it's as good as it gets regarding Linux on laptops if you ask me. Saying that your next Laptop isn't a Lenovo because your random purchase sucked is a little :rolleyes: Oh and yes, avoid nvidia if you do Linux. Some people say it "works for them", but I for one would recommend just completely staying away from Linux if you want nvidia. The truth is, and will probably always be, that you have to do some research before buying HW if you're using Linux and don't feel lucky.
  • kodah 4y ago
    > Yes, people who tell you that you can blindly buy any Lenovo laptop for Linux are lying. I wouldn't say they're lying, per se, just that it's not 100% true. If you use PopOS with an X1 Extreme then almost all of those features work out of the box. On another OS they may not though. A good portion of what OP is describing require some applications present (and configured) in the userland, just having drivers isn't enough. The bit about grub I'm not sure about, but I believe it; that said grub is always a YMMV situation in my experience.
    • ge96 4y ago
      Ubuntu for me just works. I use it on an X1 Gen 5. Also used on XPS13.
  • 22SAS 4y ago
    I agree. I got a Lenovo Thinkpad L13 and I got lucky that there were no major issues running Linux on it. Although, this will be my last Lenovo laptop and also running Linux on a laptop. I use Linux entirely for programming, and I already do that on VM's, on a server that I have. I basically just need to SSH and start Vim to do whatever I need to. I have decided to move to using a Macbook Air with OS X. I like iTerm2 more and can just SSH into my Linux VM's. I am waiting to see if the new Air's launched this year will have dual monitor support, otherwise will just get an Intel based Macbook Air from 2019 or 2020.
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• matheusmoreira 4y ago
  > ACPI, power management, and UEFI are consistently causing problems. > Suspend on lid close is unpredictable. Yeah, same experience here. The worst part is I can't even figure out how to debug this stuff. No idea where things are going wrong. I've gotten as far as dumping ACPI tables and disassembling some of its code but I can't find anything relevant. What is Windows doing that Linux isn't? It can't be so insanely difficult, can it? > The dual-GPU (Intel and nVidia) situation is unworkable under Linux. Yup. Gotta choose one of them, can't use hybrid graphics. > The battery life under Linux is about half of what you can expect from Windows. I think it's due to power management issues, especially the dGPU which can't be turned off due to lack of hybrid graphics. On my laptop I got great battery life after disabling the GPU in the firmware settings. Also, pretty much everything is GPU accelerated nowadays. Even terminal emulators. Kitty for example will cause massive power usage spikes.
• ledgerdev 4y ago
  > Maybe I could solve some of this stuff if I'd spend some time on it, I don't know. I do know that as long as I run Linux as my daily driver, my next laptop won't be a Lenovo. Could not agree more. I was using mac's for a decade prior to buying thinkpad X1E a couple years ago. It's been an absolute disaster and I now loath them. Multiple years after purchase, the only distro I could find that even half works is Fedora. Docking is worse, even under windows. So the dock was working under linux for a while but as a last week it's completely non-functional, no usb, no display. Under windows, probably 25% of the time the USB devices don't function on startup, and have to be unplugged and plugged back in. I was trying to run a monitor with hdmi and it would half the time not wake up. Switched to display port and it's a little better but still problematic. And if your computer goes to sleep, it's 5-10 minutes of trying to wake and often requires hard power cycle to come back. I had to set the computer to sleep only after 2 hour or so. This is with all firmware and os updates applied. In the future, will be be selling these hot messes, and moving to a framework laptop. Doubtful I every buy another thinkpad, I have many fond memories of my first couple of IBM based thinkpads those were awesome machines.
• ochoseis 4y ago
  I have run into issues when the hardware is very recent, but usually have a “works out of the box” experience if the model has been out more than 6-12mo. This often coincides with good deals on those models since Lenovo refreshes every 6-12mo and has sales to clear out the prior year’s inventory.
• ReaLNero 4y ago
  > Grub has an issue with the 4K display, causing it to render at about 1 FPS. Just lower the resolution in grub's config file.