Linux support on Lenovo personal systems(lenovo.com)
lenovo.com
Linux support on Lenovo personal systems
https://www.lenovo.com/linux
74 comments
What benefit am I getting here over doing a fresh install?
None, but probably it sends the message "all hardware is supported" to users who can't find the information for themselves and wouldn't buy otherwise.
All hardware is not supported. There is no working Linux driver for the latest generation of fingerprint readers, for instance.
All they promise is "most of the basic functions work".
https://support.lenovo.com/gb/en/solutions/ht082374
All they promise is "most of the basic functions work".
https://support.lenovo.com/gb/en/solutions/ht082374
Haha, in the case of fingerprint drivers, this really tells how 1) useless and 2) locked-down that hardware is, given how little has been done by free/open-source software developers.
I recall about 15 years ago the Veridicom/Fujitsu MBF200/FPS200 (same device) fingerprint sensors being supported by a guy in Brazil who wrote OSS Linux device drivers for them, thanks to the open data sheets. Looks like some hardware companies didn't learn much since.
That was my first question: "do the latest fingerprint readers work?"
Because I definitely have not found a driver that supports the reader on my ThinkPad X1 Extreme.
Because I definitely have not found a driver that supports the reader on my ThinkPad X1 Extreme.
I have an X1 Extreme, and have been really wrestling with moving over to Ubuntu. Other than the fingerprint reader have you had any other problems? Do you think Ubuntu is safe/stable/performant on this machine, or would you recommend others avoid it?
We use X1 Extreme with a mixed bag of Ubuntu/Fedora/Arch. There are problems sometimes, like the thunderbolt works after updating to the latest BIOS.
All in all people are pretty pleased with the experience.
My coworker is running Arch with Sway/Wayland and is pretty pleased :)
There are some problems with adding a second screens but I think it's related to i3/Sway and our monitors.
All in all people are pretty pleased with the experience.
My coworker is running Arch with Sway/Wayland and is pretty pleased :)
There are some problems with adding a second screens but I think it's related to i3/Sway and our monitors.
Should be okay now. There were several BIOS updates early on that made it possible to brick your machine by toggling seemingly innocuous settings, like discrete/hybrid graphics or thunderbolt support.
As far as the Linux experience goes, I’m not aware of any issues apart from the fingerprint reader. I have never attempted to use thunderbolt connectivity or charge anything over USB.
As far as the Linux experience goes, I’m not aware of any issues apart from the fingerprint reader. I have never attempted to use thunderbolt connectivity or charge anything over USB.
Fingerprint reader support is in progress: https://github.com/nmikhailov/Validity90
Here is a list from Arch Linux about current support: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Laptop/Lenovo
ThinkWiki fingerprint readers page is slightly more informative http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Integrated_Fingerprint_Reader
That repo hasn't committed code in over a year. I would class that as "stalled", not in progress.
Wow this document is dated 2018 but references technologies that were commonly used in 2008 or earlier as the criteria for certification testing?
Buying a ThinkPad with an Ubuntu preload will probably save you 100 bucks (or whatever a Windows license costs these days)?
That's how it works with Dell anyway.
That's how it works with Dell anyway.
I thought Windows was generally free for OEM buys, but I haven't looked in a while.
I haven't looked into OEM pricing myself lately, but as an example:
Dell Inspiron 17 3000 1Tb w/Ubuntu: £419+tax Dell Inspiron 17 3000 1Tb+128SSD w/Windows 10 Pro: £619+tax
Dell Inspiron 17 3000 1Tb w/Ubuntu: £419+tax Dell Inspiron 17 3000 1Tb+128SSD w/Windows 10 Pro: £619+tax
Isn't the SSD making up the bulk of the difference here?
Those ~£200 could get you a 1TB M.2 Samsung 970 Evo[0].
[0]: https://pricespy.co.uk/computers-accessories/computer-compon...
[0]: https://pricespy.co.uk/computers-accessories/computer-compon...
A 128Gb M.2 SSD is maybe £30?
Yeah, but PC manufacturers still charge like 3x the price at least for SSDs (or any component actually) when choosing/making your builds at their websites.
after using linux (even those with GUIs) for over 13 years, I would personally still buy laptop with windows installed as primary OS.
The ease of day-to-day apps such as Microsoft Office, especially Word and Excel is unparalleled. If you are into DB and work in place that has MS SQL, MS SQL combined with SQL Studio is a very powerful feature. IDE selection is somewhat better because you have more options available -- things like Visual Studio (even for non Microsoft programming languages) are available.
If you go down Linux route and you need GUI, a portion of your time would be consumed by hunting for and finding analyzing options available for you on Linux -- for GUI stuff, Windows seem to be default.
In my opinion, if I am buying a non-Apple laptop, unless Microsoft rolls out a Linux distro with emphasis on GUI and which they will support and develop, I won't bother with Linux as my default OS on my machine.
The ease of day-to-day apps such as Microsoft Office, especially Word and Excel is unparalleled. If you are into DB and work in place that has MS SQL, MS SQL combined with SQL Studio is a very powerful feature. IDE selection is somewhat better because you have more options available -- things like Visual Studio (even for non Microsoft programming languages) are available.
If you go down Linux route and you need GUI, a portion of your time would be consumed by hunting for and finding analyzing options available for you on Linux -- for GUI stuff, Windows seem to be default.
In my opinion, if I am buying a non-Apple laptop, unless Microsoft rolls out a Linux distro with emphasis on GUI and which they will support and develop, I won't bother with Linux as my default OS on my machine.
As a Linux on the desktop user for 15+ years (who has had some OSX boxes for some time and also has to run Windows from time to time), here's what I love about running Linux as my daily desktop driver:
* all software I need can be installed with some CLI commands
* similar to the server envs I tend to
* no hassle with anti-virus/malware/trojans/etc (I merely install clam-av for some compliance thingy, that's all)
* basic tools are top quality (I hate the default terminal apps on both OSX and windows)
* I can use decade old scripts to do all kinds of helpful tasks for me (backups, music mgmt, etc.)
* no need to look for some pirated software because I created some file with some software that I now do not have the license for at hand
* I know really well how to fix problems and that knowledge stays relevant (the OS is not moving stuff around all the time)
* Less resource hungry (apart from the browser)
There are some things I'm not too happy with as well:
* Having to read reviews before I can buy some hardware
* Touchpad not as good as Apple's
* Not sure if some USB-C docking station actually will work for me (no review from Linux users found at this point)
* The Hi-PDI screen story is far from perfect (yet slowly progressing)
* all software I need can be installed with some CLI commands
* similar to the server envs I tend to
* no hassle with anti-virus/malware/trojans/etc (I merely install clam-av for some compliance thingy, that's all)
* basic tools are top quality (I hate the default terminal apps on both OSX and windows)
* I can use decade old scripts to do all kinds of helpful tasks for me (backups, music mgmt, etc.)
* no need to look for some pirated software because I created some file with some software that I now do not have the license for at hand
* I know really well how to fix problems and that knowledge stays relevant (the OS is not moving stuff around all the time)
* Less resource hungry (apart from the browser)
There are some things I'm not too happy with as well:
* Having to read reviews before I can buy some hardware
* Touchpad not as good as Apple's
* Not sure if some USB-C docking station actually will work for me (no review from Linux users found at this point)
* The Hi-PDI screen story is far from perfect (yet slowly progressing)
Here at my job we have some devs using Linux (mostly Ubuntu 18.04) on recent Dell XPS 15 (Kaby Lake and up) with Dell's Thunderbolt 3 docks
Cheers. I'm looking for info on a USB-C dock with a Thinkpad T480.
Turns out some are using plain USB-C dongles to connect to external monitors and USB-A peripherals
that while also being able to charge the machine through usb-c, that's what i'm looking for :)
If I was doing any development, I think I'd use Linux over Windows purely for the filesystem performance
It seems like most of those are a non-issue if you aren't working on a Microsoft stack.
Word and Excel are probably worth running Windows/Mac over Linux GUI alone if you have to spend any time in them, which I do in a non-Microsoft stack for business-related things. I'd imagine most people have to spend some non-negligible time in these.
O365/open source office products come nowhere close.
O365/open source office products come nowhere close.
I read often on HN how Excel is used a lot, but I don't really understand the use cases. If you're a software developer, what would you use Excel for? Maybe it's because I work for small companies, but I've almost never had Excel come up at work, and in the few cases where it did, LibreOffice was sufficient because those were very small and simple sheets.
95% of my work has always been in the source tree (so git), some kind of ticket or project software (Jira, redmine, etc), and a wiki-like documentation system (Confluence, mediawiki). And of the remaining 5% most would be some kind of stuff with a Web interface on the network. I'm pretty sure I haven't edited a Word doc for 5 years. Is this really the exception I get to encounter because of avoiding "corporate" companies?
95% of my work has always been in the source tree (so git), some kind of ticket or project software (Jira, redmine, etc), and a wiki-like documentation system (Confluence, mediawiki). And of the remaining 5% most would be some kind of stuff with a Web interface on the network. I'm pretty sure I haven't edited a Word doc for 5 years. Is this really the exception I get to encounter because of avoiding "corporate" companies?
I've seen anything and everything passed around in Excel.
Project timelines, infrastructure descriptions/allocations, working on systems that allow users to deposit parts of their workflows via spreadsheets (financial related), some RFPs come and are returned in Excel form.
I can't speak to any exceptions but I personally use Word and Excel semi-daily.
I also believe there are a variety of people on HN beyond traditional strictly software devs. DevOps, Cloud-related (myself), Product Managers, Project Managers and the like.
Project timelines, infrastructure descriptions/allocations, working on systems that allow users to deposit parts of their workflows via spreadsheets (financial related), some RFPs come and are returned in Excel form.
I can't speak to any exceptions but I personally use Word and Excel semi-daily.
I also believe there are a variety of people on HN beyond traditional strictly software devs. DevOps, Cloud-related (myself), Product Managers, Project Managers and the like.
> Word
99% of uses can be trivially replaced by plain text, Markdown, or Org. For the others you probably want a real typesetting system anyway, so Word would still not be appropriate.
> Excel
If you're at a point where it feels appropriate to use vendor-specific spreadsheet features then you have already outgrown by far spreadsheets. It's probably both simpler and more maintainable to decouple your data from your code by using a database (even SQLite, if you still want to pass files around) and/or a scripting language instead.
99% of uses can be trivially replaced by plain text, Markdown, or Org. For the others you probably want a real typesetting system anyway, so Word would still not be appropriate.
> Excel
If you're at a point where it feels appropriate to use vendor-specific spreadsheet features then you have already outgrown by far spreadsheets. It's probably both simpler and more maintainable to decouple your data from your code by using a database (even SQLite, if you still want to pass files around) and/or a scripting language instead.
> 99% of uses can be trivially replaced by plain text, Markdown, or Org.
For organizing content, yes. For communicating with others, no. For example, we are using Word documents on the edge, when communicating externally. We cannot expect them to access our internal wiki, and neither we want them to.
> If you're at a point where it feels appropriate to use vendor-specific spreadsheet features then you have already outgrown by far spreadsheets. It's probably both simpler and more maintainable to decouple your data from your code by using a database (even SQLite, if you still want to pass files around) and/or a scripting language instead.
Sure, if you have the budget to do it right. The excel-based solutions are often done so, because everyone has excel anyway, and the one coming with that has no budget or buy-in to procure the server-based solution.
For organizing content, yes. For communicating with others, no. For example, we are using Word documents on the edge, when communicating externally. We cannot expect them to access our internal wiki, and neither we want them to.
> If you're at a point where it feels appropriate to use vendor-specific spreadsheet features then you have already outgrown by far spreadsheets. It's probably both simpler and more maintainable to decouple your data from your code by using a database (even SQLite, if you still want to pass files around) and/or a scripting language instead.
Sure, if you have the budget to do it right. The excel-based solutions are often done so, because everyone has excel anyway, and the one coming with that has no budget or buy-in to procure the server-based solution.
> For organizing content, yes. For communicating with others, no. For example, we are using Word documents on the edge, when communicating externally. We cannot expect them to access our internal wiki, and neither we want them to.
You can't just copy the Markdown (or whatever format your wiki uses)? Most of them read fine as plain text.
> Sure, if you have the budget to do it right. The excel-based solutions are often done so, because everyone has excel anyway, and the one coming with that has no budget or buy-in to procure the server-based solution.
You don't need a server to use SQL (see: SQLite, H2, Derby, or even Access).
You can't just copy the Markdown (or whatever format your wiki uses)? Most of them read fine as plain text.
> Sure, if you have the budget to do it right. The excel-based solutions are often done so, because everyone has excel anyway, and the one coming with that has no budget or buy-in to procure the server-based solution.
You don't need a server to use SQL (see: SQLite, H2, Derby, or even Access).
> You can't just copy the Markdown (or whatever format your wiki uses)? Most of them read fine as plain text.
In the process you will lose links, images, etc. Additional complication is, if these are multiple wiki pages, you have to save each separately.
You are not going to explain that to normal users. (Ever explained to a user, why he cannot attach word documents into bug tracker, but he is supposed to put the content of the document right into the appropriate text fields? Not fun).
> You don't need a server to use SQL (see: SQLite, H2, Derby, or even Access).
The reason why Access is not being used is, that it is not a part of the most sold Office SKUs (neither SoHo nor Pro). In fact, I just tried to quickly find out, which are the the non-365 SKUs that do include Access, and I failed.
And again, normal users are not going to use sqlite, h2 or derby without having some kind of forms frontend. Access would be ok, but it is not accessible to everyone who has Excel anyway.
In the process you will lose links, images, etc. Additional complication is, if these are multiple wiki pages, you have to save each separately.
You are not going to explain that to normal users. (Ever explained to a user, why he cannot attach word documents into bug tracker, but he is supposed to put the content of the document right into the appropriate text fields? Not fun).
> You don't need a server to use SQL (see: SQLite, H2, Derby, or even Access).
The reason why Access is not being used is, that it is not a part of the most sold Office SKUs (neither SoHo nor Pro). In fact, I just tried to quickly find out, which are the the non-365 SKUs that do include Access, and I failed.
And again, normal users are not going to use sqlite, h2 or derby without having some kind of forms frontend. Access would be ok, but it is not accessible to everyone who has Excel anyway.
> In the process you will lose links
Err, no? They're preserved in the source just fine.
> images
Good riddance.
> Additional complication is, if these are multiple wiki pages, you have to save each separately.
Depends on your wiki system. For example, Gollum[0] (GitHub's wiki) stores everything in a Git repo, so it's trivial to get everything out using your regular file management tools.
> And again, normal users are not going to use sqlite, h2 or derby without having some kind of forms frontend.
DBeaver seems fine to me, and supports pretty much everything.
[0]: https://github.com/gollum/gollum
Err, no? They're preserved in the source just fine.
> images
Good riddance.
> Additional complication is, if these are multiple wiki pages, you have to save each separately.
Depends on your wiki system. For example, Gollum[0] (GitHub's wiki) stores everything in a Git repo, so it's trivial to get everything out using your regular file management tools.
> And again, normal users are not going to use sqlite, h2 or derby without having some kind of forms frontend.
DBeaver seems fine to me, and supports pretty much everything.
[0]: https://github.com/gollum/gollum
We are talking about normal users there, not developers. Think salespeople, assistants, project/product managers. They are not going to use git or dbeaver. Nor they are going without their diagrams, charts, schemas or links rendered inline.
If you understand this, you will understand why Word and Excel are still a thing.
If you understand this, you will understand why Word and Excel are still a thing.
My main use cases for MS Word is RFP responses, architecture descriptions, requirement definitions. Neither of those options would satisfy that an an inter-operable way with the rest of the relevant people.
I guess if you're purely writing code all day then I could understand never needing productivity suites, but I assume most roles have either customer-facing or organizational interactions beyond consuming Jira tickets.
Using a database and scripting is overkill for 90% of things and is just over-engineering a problem that spreadsheets already solves well and are understood by the people who are meant to read them.
I guess if you're purely writing code all day then I could understand never needing productivity suites, but I assume most roles have either customer-facing or organizational interactions beyond consuming Jira tickets.
Using a database and scripting is overkill for 90% of things and is just over-engineering a problem that spreadsheets already solves well and are understood by the people who are meant to read them.
> RFP responses
This might as well just be a PDF. The source format shouldn't matter if the recipient is just going to read it.
> architecture descriptions, requirement definitions
A hierarchical plain text document (biasing towards Org if you want internal links) would satisfy the same use case and play much better with source control.
> Using a database and scripting is overkill for 90% of things and is just over-engineering a problem that spreadsheets already solves well and are understood by the people who are meant to read them.
It's not a binary. I don't particularly like Python or SQLite, but I'd take a couple of quick and dirty Python+SQLite scripts over a bunch of unstructured spreadsheets any day.
This might as well just be a PDF. The source format shouldn't matter if the recipient is just going to read it.
> architecture descriptions, requirement definitions
A hierarchical plain text document (biasing towards Org if you want internal links) would satisfy the same use case and play much better with source control.
> Using a database and scripting is overkill for 90% of things and is just over-engineering a problem that spreadsheets already solves well and are understood by the people who are meant to read them.
It's not a binary. I don't particularly like Python or SQLite, but I'd take a couple of quick and dirty Python+SQLite scripts over a bunch of unstructured spreadsheets any day.
All of those things are collaborative. Project managers aren't going to learn how to edit those documents. Sales guys aren't going to start including their bits with markdown and the marketing team isn't going to fiddle with images in markdown.
Its a solved problem, I don't see why you would want to engineer so much around such simple tasks for the only reason seemingly to be not using Microsoft.
Its a solved problem, I don't see why you would want to engineer so much around such simple tasks for the only reason seemingly to be not using Microsoft.
> All of those things are collaborative.
Indeed. So why on earth would you pay for tools that make all version control systems barf?
> Project managers aren't going to learn how to edit those documents. Sales guys aren't going to start including their bits with markdown and the marketing team isn't going to fiddle with images in markdown.
It's not that hard. Ask a random nine-year-old to come up with a formatting syntax and they'd likely come up with something with a canny resemblence Org.
> Its a solved problem, I don't see why you would want to engineer so much around such simple tasks for the only reason seemingly to be not using Microsoft.
Why would you use a overcomplicated WYSIWYG editor to make a few things bold and add a list? Why would you pay for that miserable experience?
Indeed. So why on earth would you pay for tools that make all version control systems barf?
> Project managers aren't going to learn how to edit those documents. Sales guys aren't going to start including their bits with markdown and the marketing team isn't going to fiddle with images in markdown.
It's not that hard. Ask a random nine-year-old to come up with a formatting syntax and they'd likely come up with something with a canny resemblence Org.
> Its a solved problem, I don't see why you would want to engineer so much around such simple tasks for the only reason seemingly to be not using Microsoft.
Why would you use a overcomplicated WYSIWYG editor to make a few things bold and add a list? Why would you pay for that miserable experience?
Ask a random nine-year-old to create a Word document. If triviality is your concern, everyone is at some point required to learn Word. It is quite literally one of the first software anyone in the US is introduced to. You are absolutely guaranteed to encounter it at some point K-12 or and in college. Random markdown syntax and git, not so much. The idea that you are going to dictate how you communicate to and share with the rest of your organization (sales, marketing, compliance, legal) because of an affinity for software related tooling is laughable.
Especially with the recently released WSL2, Windows is becoming a viable general-purpose development platform.
I say this as a long-term Mac user, but I do sometimes wonder how much more polished & supported desktop/laptop Linux would be if Apple hadn't shipped a BSD-based OS on fantastic hardware with access to Office & etc.
I'm sure I would've gone that route in 2001, when I needed a platform to support freelance LAMP work, if my Mac hadn't literally already had most everything installed already.
Even emacs. ;)
I'm sure I would've gone that route in 2001, when I needed a platform to support freelance LAMP work, if my Mac hadn't literally already had most everything installed already.
Even emacs. ;)
For DB stuff, I'd suggest DBeaver which is great.
For code stuff, I migrated over to the JetBrains suite of things.
For the rest of the stuff like video games, I still stick with windows. I know about proton but it still not there yet for me because it turns out some of my most played games have denuvo.
What kind of GUI do you actually __need__ on Linux? Word's and Excel's ease of day-to-day use comes not from UX, but purely from purposely made compatibility issues, literally designed to make it harder for you to work with other people using Microsoft's Word and Excel. IDEs are just preference and MS SQL is available for Linux these days.
Will those also come preinstalled with Lenovo "productivity apps"?
and spyware, don’t forget the spyware.
I don't get it, when I try to configure a laptop I cannot select linux. Also, it's a lot of older versions?
I have installed Ubuntu on my Thinkpad t460 and it worked great out of the box.
I have installed Ubuntu on my Thinkpad t460 and it worked great out of the box.
This page has existed for quite a long time, actually. I feel like I had used it more than two years ago for a quick reference on which distro had the highest chance of just working without much effort on my part.
I don't think there's anything here that suggests Lenovo is now shipping with Linux installed.
I don't think there's anything here that suggests Lenovo is now shipping with Linux installed.
I think they just mean you get a blank laptop and save money on the windows license. And that they tested it with Linux.
I'm a little confused by the link, seems more like it is "they support linux" than "I can buy one with linux preinstalled"
[deleted]
No. This link is about which distros and versions of Linux were tested on these models.
Is there any benefit to ordering a thinkpad pre-installed with Linux vs re-imaging it myself after purchasing (besides cost)? I’d have a few one-off cases where it’d be nice to boot into a windows environment but would otherwise love a dedicated Linux laptop. I’m wondering if there is any special configurations that Lenovo adds to their Linux installs that I would be missing if I just reimaged a windows one.
I can see a benefit in companies that provide their employees with laptops. If a subset of their employees want to run Linux, I can imagine that they'd be more willing to provide them with a ThinkPad with Linux pre-installed than allow employees to re-image the company laptop.
Presumably any company that cares about this would have standard corporate images that they apply anyway?
Only incidentally, in that they would make sure that linux worked on them. I'd immediately blast whatever dist they shipped it with and put something else on anyway. I'd blast it and reinstall even if I were just going to replace it with the same dist.
Maybe that will give them a reason to publish an official linux driver for the fingerprint reader.
Currently there only seems to be a reverse engineered prototype: https://github.com/nmikhailov/Validity90
Currently there only seems to be a reverse engineered prototype: https://github.com/nmikhailov/Validity90
I can imagine two things. One is that if they're willing to ship with Linux it's an attestation to the fact that it definitely has good Linux support. Second is that you could examine the image they ship with it to solve any driver issues. Make a backup of it before reinstalling with your distro of choice.
This is exactly right. My company gave me a Lenovo Thinkpad X1 carbon for work that originally had windows on it, and the IT dept slapped Ubuntu on there. I have a fingerprint scanner on this device that I don't bother to fiddle with to get working, so basically its this really expensive laptop with a non functional part on it staring me in the face. If you buy the thing from lenovo with linux preinstalled, you know that the parts you are getting are going to work with that machine, and if they don't you can actually complain to someone and they are forced to deal with you.
We talked about reporting bugs to Lenovo just last week but didn't since it was running Ubuntu. This is a welcomed change!
You should also add Suse Linux as lenovo laptops now come with pre installed RH, Ubuntu and Suse Linux.
I live in Hungary, EU and most of the retail stores sells laptops with FreeDOS. Or you can choose that you want FeeDOS or Windows. But most people goes with FreeDOS obviously as you pay less and you get Windows on your "own way"
Why FreeDOS tho? Good question I never thought about it but I also never seen Linux on retail store laptops
Why FreeDOS tho? Good question I never thought about it but I also never seen Linux on retail store laptops
Because FreeDOS is the easiest and lightest OS to put on, since it doesn't even have a graphical interface. It sounds like they literally put the most basic OS possible on so they can sell it and claim to Microsoft the person won't turn around and pirate Windows immediately.
If they actually wanted them to use an OS that's not Windows, they'd preinstall Linux on it. But that's not the point.
If they actually wanted them to use an OS that's not Windows, they'd preinstall Linux on it. But that's not the point.
If it's going to be uninstalled anyway, they don't bother to configure a Linux and take care of drivers, etc.