
Lenovo Shipping Ubuntu Linux on 2019 ThinkPad - alexanderdmitri
https://www.techrepublic.com/article/lenovo-shipping-ubuntu-linux-on-2019-thinkpad-p-series-models/
======
LeonM
I own an 4K X1-extreme, which is basically the P1 without the Quadro card and
Xeon/ECC option.

I run Ubuntu 19.04 on it and have so many problems.

\- Grub has ridiculous performance issues on 4K screens, it renders at less
than 1 fps, making it a real pain to do anything in it.

\- You can't update the bios through Linux, the update tool is windows only.

\- The Lenovo TB3 dock never works properly.

\- The dual GPU situation (Intel + nVidia) requires all sorts of hacks to make
it somewhat workable.

\- The power usage is an abomination under Linux as it can't properly scale
the nVidia GPU.

\- Working with the TPM under Linux feels hacky, but maybe that's mostly due
to my lack of experience and the lack of documentation.

OK, so all these problems are all due to my specific situation (running dual
boot, and an external 4K display through the TB3 dock), but I really, really
hope they start fixing these issues if they are going to officially support
Ubuntu.

One plus though: due to the high power consumption under Linux, the coil whine
is a lot less notable...

~~~
stemuk
Most of these pain points go away if you purchase the iGPU only version. I own
a Thinkpad T470 and Ubuntu works like a charm.

The only issue I still have is that the Gnome interface (Ubuntu 17.04+) does
not support factorial scaling, meaning that I am stuck between 100% (which is
way to small on a 14 inch screen) and 200% (which is way too big).

Ubuntu 16.10 still supports factorial scaling though, which means I am stuck
with it until a better version comes along.

~~~
enriquto
you can use the "arandr" program to set any possible resolution. No idea what
is "factorial" scaling, though.

~~~
y4mi
"scale with factor 1.4" to increase the display size by 40%

~~~
enriquto
The word "factorial" makes no sense here. Maybe "fractional"?

Besides, what is the fucking point of "scaling" at the display level? Isn't it
exactly equivalent to setting the font size in points using your physical
resolution?

~~~
floatboth
No, it's not like setting font size. Actual fractional scaling as done by
macOS and Wayland compositors is rendering at 2x and downscaling.

e.g. 1.5 scale on a 3840x2160 display means you have 2560x1440 logical pixels
(3840x(1/1.5) = 2560), applications render for 5120x2880 (2560x2=5120) and get
downscaled for 3840x2160.

~~~
enriquto
_Ah, mon dieu!_ This is the first time I read about "logical pixels". It is
horrifying.

------
lucb1e
Yay, more options for not paying Microsoft taxes anymore. Microsoft's policy
is that the vendor must have a policy on refunding licenses, but whenever I
ask for a refund with a new laptop, the procedure is forwarding me to five
different people because nobody knows and the last one goes "are you kidding
me" and "no". The policy could be "go away", but not having a policy is the
only thing that's not allowed. Unsurprisingly, Microsoft doesn't really mind
and keeps shipping OSes to vendors that don't follow their license agreement.

~~~
RandomBacon
Sounds like a class action to me.

------
throw2016
Running Ubuntu 16.04 on a Zenbook UX360 with a 4K screen and frankly its
working much better than expected. The 4K display is automatically scaled, all
the brightness and function buttons work, no issues with display drivers,
wifi, bluetooth, suspend and it pretty surprising to see this kind of
experience out of the box. And its really fast and smooth. Even battery life
is good if not excellent, around 8 hours on windows and 7 on Ubuntu for
browsing, youtube, some spreadsheets and terminal.

For those of us who have tried to get Linux working on laptops 5-10 years ago
this is quite a jump so clearly people have been working on this in the
background to get to this state. Was using WSL earlier but after Ubuntu worked
so well may as well use it. Of course for those who use Windows only apps WSL
remains a good option.

Also have an Matebook 13 and tried Ubuntu after this experience on the Zenbook
and there too it worked out of the box on a hi-res screen with dual graphics
but you need to use either the prime drivers to use both, or use bbswitch to
put off the Nvidia card for the best battery life. So it seems for recent
laptops Linux works pretty well out of the box.

------
meruru
Crossing fingers for China to adopt Linux rather than make their own thing in
response to the US export restrictions.

~~~
TkTech
China has used its own FreeBSD (kylin) and then ubuntu-based (neokylin) since
2001. Nearly half of all laptops are sold with it. Likewise, North Korea has
Red Star since 2008 which is mandatory or risk forced labor.

While kylin isn't too far off from a traditional distro, officers will force
you to install rootkits on both desktop/laptops and phones (JingWang). If
you're caught later with it missing you will most likely disappear.

Red Star is horrifically oppressive and monitors everything you do. The GPL is
of course ignored and very few changes are ever released. Trying to circumvent
the restrictions causes the OS to self destruct. The few applications you can
use watermark every file you create.

Long story short them creating linux-based distros is just an easy way for
them to exert total control. It does nothing positive for the Linux or BSD
ecosystem.

~~~
_Donny
It has always amazed me that North Korea is able to create an OS like Red
Star. I assume it takes a lot of knowledge and skill to stitch together such
an OS, with fairly "unique" spying features not really seen in other distros.

Considering the limited access to the internet and not being able to ask
StackOverflow users, how can they even manage building such a complex piece of
software?

~~~
meruru
It's just a Linux distro. Anyone can make one.

~~~
_Donny
Yes, but even though I myself have created my own Linux distro, I would
absolutely not be able to do that with restricted internet access, without
access to the guide-books, and without the help of IRC. I suspect this would
be the case for most of my developer friends as well.

~~~
thinkingemote
The distros are not being created by independent developers and then the state
uses the distros, the distros are being made by the very state itself. The
same organisation that will lift internet access and guide books and send
their staff overseas to get training.

------
Aissen
It seems that Lenovo has been certifying their model for Ubuntu (probably for
enterprise customers) for a quite a long time. There are a bit less models
recently, but a few already have an Ubuntu 18.04 certification:

[https://certification.ubuntu.com/desktop/models/?query=&cate...](https://certification.ubuntu.com/desktop/models/?query=&category=Laptop&level=Any&release=18.04+LTS&vendors=Lenovo)

~~~
pedrocr
I didn't find confirmation but I assume being certified with 14.04 and 16.04
means they're still certified with 18.04. Assuming that's the case they've
certified pretty much their whole range.

~~~
Aissen
Yes, if you manage to buy the exact same hardware. Unfortunately with laptops,
the hardware configs change at best every year, and at worst every quarter,
for a single model family. And often you don't know the exact model before
buying it from a reseller.

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paulcarroty
Lenovo caught for unremovable crapware in BIOS, so I don't recommend to buy
their products anymore.

[https://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/08/12/lenovo_firmware_nas...](https://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/08/12/lenovo_firmware_nasty/)

~~~
Stratoscope
Your second link is about someone who flashed their own copy of Windows 3.1
into the boot ROM of their own ThinkPad X200. Lenovo didn't put Windows 3.1
there, that user did.

Your first link is about Lenovo's IdeaPad line. IdeaPad and ThinkPad could
well be thought of as products from two different companies.

Lenovo was already making laptops when they bought the ThinkPad line from IBM.
Their own laptops evolved into the consumer oriented IdeaPad line, while
ThinkPad remained the business oriented line.

They're both part of Lenovo, but are largely separate teams with different
business goals and philosophies.

In particular, ThinkPads were never infested with any of the stuff you're
talking about.

Here is the original notice from Lenovo about this. No ThinkPads are listed:

[https://web.archive.org/web/20190303121854/https://news.leno...](https://web.archive.org/web/20190303121854/https://news.lenovo.com/article_display.cfm?article_id=2013)

~~~
paulcarroty
> They're both part of Lenovo, but are largely separate teams with different
> business goals and philosophies.

Sounds like marketing fairy tale - one part of company is great, second is
bad, but we should love both.

~~~
oarsinsync
It's reasonably clear that this separation exists by looking at the hardware
build quality too. The general consumer range of Lenovo laptops is absolute
garbage.

The biggest problem comes from people recommending Lenovo laptops, without
stressing specifically that it's _ThinkPads_ that are being recommended, and
not any Lenovo laptop generally.

If you've used either range of laptop extensively, it's very obvious that
they're built to very different specs, with very different goals. There
doesn't appear to be much (if any) cross team work going on there.

------
jeena
This is great news, last year I was looking at Lenovo laptops but went for
Dell because they offered Linux and I wanted to vote with my wallet. And it
seems to have helped!

------
fulafel
Click saver: for desktop replacement Pxx models only.

~~~
oever
Which have NVIDIA graphics cards.

~~~
Eldt
Is that a good thing or a bad thing?

~~~
oarsinsync
In the context of running Linux, I suspect the parent was alluding to that
nvidia only provide binary blob drivers rather than open drivers.

~~~
gurkendoktor
Besides being proprietary, the whole dual-GPU switching setup is generally
more troublesome than a single-GPU design. Even on macOS you can feel a subtle
delta in glitchiness between Intel-only and mixed-GPU machines.

Plus Nvidia drivers are the least likely to support Wayland in the near
future.

------
yellowapple
My main issue with Lenovo's mobile workstations (and why I've yet to buy one)
is that they all use Nvidia for their secondary GPUs. Meanwhile, Dell's
Precision line offers the option of AMD GPUs (e.g. my Precision 7510, which I
got specifically because it shipped with a FirePro card).

That said, I've been pretty happy with my T470 at work (running Slackware), so
an integrated-GPU-only ThinkPad that ships with Ubuntu sounds interesting (or
even an Nvidia-GPU ThinkPad if they've managed to make Intel/Nvidia hybrid
setups less painful). I'd probably be willing to pick up one of the all-AMD
ThinkPads (I've got my eye on the T495, E595, and X395; all of them seem to
have the same CPU and integrated GPU offerings, though the E595 offers way
more RAM so that gives it a bit of an advantage); none of those offer
preinstalled Ubuntu, though.

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jason_slack
I'm running 18.04.2 on a Thinkpad L460 (32gb RAM, SSD). It's an older laptop.
I always get nervous to upgrade because it seems everything works with the
L460. Wifi, Dock, wired etc, trackpad, etc. It has mad me return to Linus for
day-to-day work again. I don't want to loose this feeling.

------
nudq
Interesting, and a sigh that the area of the Windows tax may be ending.

Windows is now an ad delivery platform. That probably sounded like a great
plan to MS management, but consumer Windows is now on its way to shovelware
status. Microsoft will end up paying hardware makers to include it.

------
jgaa
Finally! Last fall I bought a Lenovo Legion with 'DOS', in stead of a ThinkPad
P (with the same CPU), primarily because of the Windows Tax.

------
lelf
See also: [https://www.lenovo.com/linux](https://www.lenovo.com/linux) (the
list of ”Linux certified” hardware).

------
galkk
If it will work flawlessly with \- external dual monitor setup (one/both 4k)
via docking station \- battery usage \- fix the throttling and power
management issues

it will be great, otherwise it will be the same miserable experience out of
the box that you're getting now.

(I own X1 Extreme 2018, like it, but stick to windows).

------
ldng
Thinkpad A486 on Debian 10 here. Both ethernet chip and WiFi chip requires
firmware so install is not straight forward. Wireless driver is marked as
alpha and it shows ... weekly hard freeze on the menu. A shame as it could be
a great laptop.

------
enriquto
The article does not seem to be true. I want to buy one right now, but the
only OS that are offered for each P model are different versions of windows.

~~~
nhumrich
The article is true, you just interpreted it incorrectly.

> Will be available this month

It doesn't say "right now"

~~~
enriquto
Just to nitpick, the whole sentence is "Applicable models can be configured
with Ubuntu 18.04 LTS, and will be available this month." The first part of
the sentence is written in the present tense and it is not true. The second
part, it may be true or not, we'll see...

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chillytoes
This company sells ThinkPads with pre-installed Linux:
[https://shop.lacpdx.com/](https://shop.lacpdx.com/). Presumably they only
sell models which work well under Linux.

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karmakaze
Does anyone know if any of these models (or any high-end Thinkpad) has a
taller than 16x9 screen? Without that this news is only of precursory value to
me.

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rv-de
Linux Mint 19 all the way. Run's flawlessly on my s/o's Acer, my father's T530
and my T450.

------
IloveHN84
Yeah but it would be cool to have a Zen2 AMD processor instead of a Zen+

~~~
Osiris
AMD doesn't have any mobile processors with Zen2 yet, so it would be hard for
them to offer it. I hope they'll be available within a year.

------
VitoVan
And still have a __WIN __key on the keyboard?

That always frustrated me.

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chungus
I am so psyched about this.

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INTPenis
Is windows tax really that bad? I mean I can get an OEM license for 12 dollars
most of the time because of promotions.

So if I as a consumer pay 12 dollars for an OEM version, I would expect Lenovo
to pay much less.

Also my first observation is that these laptops are far too big and powerful
for my work with Linux.

I work full time in Linux but I focus more on weight and form factor than CPU
and GPU because all my work is done in terminals.

The X280 or X1 are perfect for me. No dedicated GPU means slim form factor,
light weight, and everything I need for my type of work in Gnome and Terminal.

~~~
stakhanov
Besides the windows tax aspect there is also the aspect of a vendor taking a
bit of responsibility around what the user experience (hardware support etc)
is like when running linux on their hardware. Offering an option for shipping
with linux seems to serve as a catalyst for that.

~~~
AnIdiotOnTheNet
I'd be a little surprised if that actually happens. Most likely they're
shipping Linux for webdevs and people who want to avoid the Windows tax,
neither of which they'll care much about supporting.

