Comment by gnulinux | Hacker News Reader

Comment by gnulinux | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

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.

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.

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.

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...

I just wish they offered higher density displays. I'd love to try them out but I'm never going back to a 1080p display.

Gladly... if system76 would offer a damn trackpoint on their laptops. Until then, I’ll take suffering.

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_Carb...

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.

That sure sounds like a crummy situation and I'm sorry you have to put up with it.

I don't buy new computers very often (except Rasberry Pi, I buy a fuck-ton of those), but when I do, I always do an inordinate amount of research beforehand to make sure there are no major issues with the laptop running Linux.

The two most important pieces of hardware I look at when buying a laptop are: 1) Does it have _only_ Intel video? 2) Does it have Intel wifi? If both of those are true, then there's a strong chance most everything will work out of the box. I'm no Intel fan boy, but they are very good at maintaining their hardware in the kernel.

This also means staying away from the latest-and-greatest. I don't know how new the X1 Carbon 7th gen is, but I would never buy a machine that has been out for less than 6 months. A year would be just about the right time frame, that's more than enough time to let the early adopters work out the bugs and write blog posts about it.

"My macbook is work computer so I can't use it for personal stuff."

I'm not sure if you're talking about a legal issue (e.g. permission for personal use, or ownership of intellectual property created) or a technical issue (don't want any data to get polluted in either direction).

If it's just technical, then an external USB 3.0 SSD is a cheap and effective solution. A MacBook will happily boot MacOS from an external drive, and performance is beyond acceptable. Booting Linux from an external drive requires more work to set up, and you might still suffer from missing drivers. But I've booted MacOS from an external drive on 4 different MacBooks (Pro/Air 2015-2017 models) and it's been a snap. Just create a MacOS installer on a flash drive, plug in both the flash drive and your target USB 3.0 SSD, and install MacOS as normal. When powering up, hold down the {cmd?option? i forget} key to show the boot menu.

I mean, I don't wanna use work computer to work on side (software) projects or play video games. My employer probably wouldn't mind that much, but doesn't seem like a good idea in principle.

I wish I bought a macbook instead of lenovo. The only reason I got lenovo is because I like linux more than OSX, so I figured might as well get a lenovo with better spec than macbook. If I got a macbook, I would use docker to get linux (although wouldn't be able to use linux DEs like AwesomeWM etc which is a bummer).

For brand new hardware, you really need the most recent version of the kernel. For that, the best option is a rolling-release distro like Arch, Manjaro, Solus, or OpenSUSE Tumbleweed.

It's no guarantee, but that will give you the best chance for things working out of the box (and for getting fixes as quickly as possible).

Just FYI on Ubuntu you can enable a PPA and get latest kernel, you enable a different PPA and you can get latest Xorg and video drivers. So you have good options on non-rolling distro to get latest drivers and kernel, test them and if you don't like them go back to the LTS ones.

This is a good option for me, upgrade only what I want and don't touch things that work.

FWIW Linux works fine for me on MacBook Pro 2015 (Ubuntu) and MacBook Pro 2017 (Arch).

I would rather use an older model than be without a desktop environment. I suppose you can use Xquartz on MacOS to get the desktop environment, but it seems like an every day hassle.

I am running Linux (Fedora) inside VMWare on the mac. Runs very nice and Linux is just one desktop you can switch to.

I had the same issues with x1c7. The most annoying one was the mic not working. I was really frustrated saying I should have gone for Dell. I read somewhere that Ubuntu 20.04 solves some of the problems and it did! Everything works now - mic and fingerprint reader included.

Maybe now that Lenovo will supply a Linux distro, other distros will be better supported on new models as well.

The worst is the microphone - only the prerelease of the Linux kernel supported the mic on X1C7 when it was new and it required a lot of moving parts to get usable.

It took almost a year before it works out of the box on Ubuntu.

you probably need to return the laptop. seems specific to your case. on thinkpad ubuntu works out of the box, like everything. I have a t490 currently but have had t460s n other models I have given to family members with no issues.

I doubt it, archlinux wiki is full of issues. More importantly, I made them all work by finding answers in stackoverflow specific to my drivers. Which means other people who need the same wifi driver experienced the same issue.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com