[HN Gopher] OK Lenovo, we need to talk
___________________________________________________________________
OK Lenovo, we need to talk
Author : southerntofu
Score : 138 points
Date : 2021-10-24 12:10 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.haiku-os.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.haiku-os.org)
| owenversteeg wrote:
| I personally gave up on Lenovo after trying several of their
| modern laptops and running into constant issues. The last one was
| a C940 specced out to the max, and for such a premium laptop
| costing nearly $2000 it was an embarrassment. Windows came with
| bloatware, I ran into several issues trying to run Linux, the
| battery life was so-so, and the performance wasn't even that
| impressive.
|
| I realized that modern Lenovos aren't even that repairable or
| upgradeable (even the Thinkpad line) so hell... might as we'll
| get a Mac right? I picked up a used M1 Macbook Air for $700 and
| have been absolutely blown away. Battery life, performance,
| display, speakers, the thing blows away any Thinkpad I've owned.
| Sure, impossible to repair or upgrade, but it's not like you can
| change out the CPU/RAM/graphics on modern Thinkpads either.
| jbj wrote:
| I got one of their new linux supporting machins through their
| reseller, Digital River Ireland Ltd.
|
| I set it up with dualboot since I hadn't run windows a while and
| needed a windows for a few things anyway.
|
| Must say that windows 10 is not totally bad, but why must it be
| so blinky, and have an appstore with a front page of colourful
| games, and even autodownload candy crush?
|
| anyways, the lenovo machine is greay with ubuntu, and the
| trackpoint work with both middle click as well as scroll,
| something I could only pick one of in wimdows.
| josteink wrote:
| > So yes, you can install GNU/Linux, but it's far from an easy
| experience. All thanks to Microsoft. And to the companies writing
| those buggy firmwares.
|
| Has he even _tried_ installing Linux on it before publishing this
| rant?
|
| It works OOB on pretty much all machines, even with secure boot
| turned on. Worst case scenario, you can just turn secure boot
| off.
|
| I seriously don't get why people are still making a big deal out
| of this, 10 years or more since this was first arriving as a
| concern.
|
| As it turned out, there's _still_ nobody preventing us from
| installing Linux on our PCs. Instead we only have one extra
| option if we want to improve the security of our boot process.
| forgotpwd16 wrote:
| Truthfully, I found hard following the article. It seems many
| topics (hardware, software, ethics, Microsoft monopoly,
| smartphones, and others) smashed together. Most of them being
| generic commentary on current status quo (e.g. UEFI).
| mmu_man wrote:
| Then I wasn't clear enough because it's all linked together for
| me. The UEFI mention was not just for a commentary, but to back
| the discussion on the monopoly. And I think you missed some
| conclusions I drew from all this that I don't recall reading
| anywhere else.
| forgotpwd16 wrote:
| Well, if you're the author, it will be weird if it didn't
| made sense to you. The argument I'm making isn't that all
| this information is out of place, as indeed they all link
| together, but that many of those (specifically the things I
| mentioned) apply to every manufacturer. So it's kinda strange
| when the subject is about Lenovo and read all those which
| aren't specific to Lenovo.
| mmu_man wrote:
| Yes they apply to the others as well, but also to them, and
| fact is it's Lenovo machines I bought. And for once the
| lesson is not directed at Apple. But I understand it can be
| disconcerting. I should probably try to rework this generic
| part into its own article someday.
| guerrilla wrote:
| I can recommend that iPhone video he links to[1]. It shows the
| switching of the mainboard between two identical Apple phones and
| goes through all the somewhat surprising consequences, including
| them both claiming not to be using genuine Apple hardware
| anymore.
|
| 1. https://youtu.be/8s7NmMl_-yg
| mettamage wrote:
| How is this legal? This should be illegal.
| criddell wrote:
| It's like that to protect consumers. If you want your phone
| to have cryptographic integrity, then all the parts have to
| share keys. Otherwise, if the police wanted to look inside
| your phone, they could easily bypass all the cryptography
| with a custom part that either extracts the keys from the
| other components or disables encryption entirely.
|
| It's an unfortunately consequence of a secure device.
| guerrilla wrote:
| Sounds like terrible design if that's necessary. Also
| absurd that the owner can't re-sign hardware given that
| they should have a master key.
| throwaway2048 wrote:
| Its not necessary, its just a smokescreen apple can use
| to shut out third party repairs.
| criddell wrote:
| All designs are trade-offs. The number of people that
| want to swap a logic board is pretty tiny. It would
| probably be pretty hard to justify the extra expanse
| based on customer benefit.
|
| Apple seems to know what they are doing considering how
| happy their customers are.
| AshamedCaptain wrote:
| > It's an unfortunately consequence of a secure device.
|
| No, that's bullshit, and it saddens me that on the day
| where everyone is finally coming up to learn that not only
| Google is evil but that even the stuff Google does "in the
| name of privacy" is still evil, people still give Apple a
| free pass for the very same shady behavior.
|
| I can think of a million ways to make this "cryptographic
| integrity" that do not have the side effect of making
| repair impossible. For example, and even the video author
| mentions it, why not allow "pairing" the motherboard with
| the new components after a secure wipe of the data?
|
| And that's just the first obvious thing. But even if it was
| completely impossible to do this "cryptographic integrity"
| without impacting repairability (which it isn't), which of
| these scenarios do you think worries the average iPhone
| customer more: an evil-maid replaces the $300 screen on
| their iPhone with a compromised one in order to get to
| their passcode; or: Apple trying to charge $800 in order to
| repair the same $300 screen which their toddler broke ?
|
| Let's not give these companies a pass on their obviously
| anti-competitive behavior just because they claim to do in
| the name of "privacy" or "security".
| shell0x wrote:
| I have a Lenovo Thinkpad L380 and it's the worst laptop I haver
| ever owned. When I put it on my lap and I hit the wrong spot, it
| freezes and only turning it off and on again fixes the issue.
|
| I sent it to the Lenovo support center in HK once, but the
| problem has never been fixed.
|
| Long story short, as a guy who moves a lot internationally, Apple
| and Lenovo are the only companies offering global warranty and
| after my horrible experience with Lenovo, I'll be back to Apple!
|
| Thinkpad quality has been terrible after the sale to the China-
| based Lenovo.
|
| Maybe my experience would have been better with the T or X series
| though.
| spamizbad wrote:
| Personally, unless you need discrete graphics, I would strongly
| recommend people who want to use Linux, Haiku-os etc to just get
| a Framework laptop. The manufacturer actually provides enough
| detail on their hardware to facilitate OS support. I have one and
| it's great. I've basically lost interest in every other PC
| manufacturer's laptops, but I will conceded I don't require
| larger screens or nVidia/AMD graphics.
| southerntofu wrote:
| Some discussion on Haiku forums: https://discuss.haiku-
| os.org/t/ok-lenovo-we-need-to-talk-hai...
|
| Beyond the GNU/Linux debate [0], there's some interesting points
| in there.
|
| [0] Today i learnt: Haiku should not be called GNU/Haiku because
| Haiku is the entire system and not just the kernel, and rms (to
| my surprise) approves this interpretation
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| Right, same as how the BSDs are just themselves (natively, that
| is; things like Debian kFreeBSD loop back to being GNU/kFreeBSD
| or so). Linux is actually pretty rare in being just the kernel.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| Linux is the operating system. It manages hardware and provides
| system calls. It's possible to write software that Linux boots
| directly into, no user space at all.
|
| This GNU/Linux stuff comes from POSIX's definition of operating
| system. That piece of paper says operating systems have all
| these little commands like cp, mv, etc. Therefore, GNU gets to
| be part of the operating system because it provides those
| commands. It doesn't have to be this way though, _especially_
| on Linux where one can just trash all the GNU stuff and obtain
| or write custom software directly on top of the kernel.
| msla wrote:
| If we're doing this, Linux is the _kernel_ and it 's possible
| to have a GNU system without the Linux kernel.
|
| Debian GNU/kFreeBSD, the Hurd, and even Windows with a GNU
| userspace (such as Cygwin) all exist.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| If we go down this route, we might as well name everything
| installed in user space. I'm running an
| i3/GNU/systemd/custom Linux system on my laptop. When do we
| stop?
|
| Sure, it's totally possible to install GNU software on
| other operating systems. You can install it on Linux, the
| BSDs, even Windows. They're just regular programs.
| southerntofu wrote:
| I believe "Debian GNOME", "Manjaro KDE", or "guix sway"
| are very valid answers to "what system are you running?",
| don't you? I wouldn't list all userspace components for
| sure, but some can be relevant to include.
|
| "GNU/Linux" is a relevant label to me so i know we're
| talking about a system which has common POSIX-inspired
| utilities... "Linux" can be Android for all i know, which
| is a very different system.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| I agree. It makes complete sense to mention the
| distribution you're using. Saying you use Debian is much
| better than saying GNU/Linux. People understand perfectly
| what sort of software Debian distributes, there is no
| need to mention anything else.
|
| Mentioning that I use Arch Linux annoys people for some
| reason so I stopped doing that. I just say I use Linux.
| fsflover wrote:
| https://www.gnu.org/gnu/gnu-linux-faq.html#many
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| I know about that page. They too think it's absurd to
| name every user space software when referring to the
| system. This is where I disagree:
|
| > The principal developer is the GNU Project, and the
| system is basically GNU.
|
| I think the system is basically Linux.
| msla wrote:
| I think we agree more than we disagree.
|
| I was pointing out that most definitions of operating
| system I've seen say it's a kernel plus a userspace, and
| that Linux, the kernel, is a replaceable component.
| [deleted]
| southerntofu wrote:
| > This GNU/Linux stuff comes from POSIX's definition of
| operating system
|
| Technically true. But do you run a lot of software that works
| without glibc and other userland utilities?
|
| > on Linux where one can just trash all the GNU stuff and
| obtain or write custom software directly on top of the kernel
|
| True, yet most of us still use a GNU/Linux distribution.
| zibzab wrote:
| Just don't forget that it goes both ways. GNU today's is
| much more relevant than GNU 30 years ago thanks to the
| Linux community.
|
| Would not surprise me if 80% of recent GNU contributions
| come from the Linux crowd.
| geofft wrote:
| FROM alpine:latest
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| > But do you run a lot of software that works without glibc
| and other userland utilities?
|
| Yes. I made a few of these utilities for my own use. I
| actually started developing a Linux system call library to
| facillitate this but then I discovered the kernel
| developers themselves already made one for their own tools.
|
| https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/tools/include
| /...
|
| People can include this awesome header file in a
| freestanding C project and enjoy making 100% dependency-
| free Linux binaries. No C standard library cruft anywhere.
| It's amazing. You could boot Linux directly into one of
| these things just by writing init=/my/program in the kernel
| command line. You'd need to do some init stuff like
| mounting procfs and sysfs but it's totally fine. I've even
| seen _graphical software_ running this way with OpenGL ES
| on top of kernel interfaces for mode setting and buffer
| management, people could even make video games that run
| this way. I really want to get into this.
| southerntofu wrote:
| > https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/tools/inc
| lude/...
|
| Cool, thanks for sharing!
|
| > I really want to get into this.
|
| Hope to see more links on that topic popping up on HN.
| Are you aware, beyond "raw" OpenGL, of any GUI/TUI
| frameworks for Go/Rust that would work this way?
| 5e92cb50239222b wrote:
| >But do you run a lot of software that works without glibc
| and other userland utilities
|
| More and more as time goes on. Most applications written in
| Go do not require libc. Some of my servers have nothing on
| them but a few Go applications, like influxdb + prometheus
| + grafana. Theoretically you can strip out everything but
| the kernel (and replace systemd with something extremely
| lightweight, maybe also written in Go), but mainstream
| distributions don't make this easy, and what's the point
| anyway.
| fsflover wrote:
| > and rms (to my surprise) approves this interpretation
|
| Why wouldn't he? See FAQ: https://www.gnu.org/gnu/gnu-linux-
| faq.html
| pdimitar wrote:
| Rant:
|
| I am only 41 and don't care about these articles anymore.
|
| I was able to explain the problems this article raises, to a
| 20-year girl who knows almost nothing about technology, in a
| 15-minute conversation. And she agreed the current situation
| spells doom for future buyers and that she still wants to be able
| to buy a pink laptop and put whatever CPU, GPU and RAM she wants
| in it.
|
| Quote from her: "Why must I buy a VAIO or Acer when I need some
| more colors? Why can't I buy a lime green ThinkPad and then
| replace the CPU?".
|
| So look, we all get it just fine. Can you start doing something?
| This endless virtue signalling will not achieve anything, is this
| not glaringly obvious at this point?
|
| You all _really_ underestimate the unbridled relentless greed of
| the shareholders and their servants. They will NEVER stop.
|
| If you want a change, pioneer it.
|
| And to the general HN audience: please understand most devs and
| hardware guys here are almost literal slaves. A good chunk of you
| (especially Americans) are privileged beyond what like 80% of us
| here will ever have, in terms of income and job security.
|
| Please start using your free bandwidth to do good! Patting
| yourself on the back like "hey, I can articulate the problems, I
| am helping!" is just you being a quiet accomplice in a future
| state of affairs where there will be no recourse.
|
| Oh yeah, and I almost forgot: get off my lawn. :P
|
| Seriously though, those articles don't help nothing. Awareness
| has been raised a long time ago. It's time for action.
|
| Corporations only understand one thing: coercion. Especially if
| you hit them in the wallets. Everything else they ignore.
| temptemptemp111 wrote:
| Your attitude is so much better than your peers (on this
| website)... They simply will not comprehend it because they're
| on a lower wavelength where their sense of responsibility is
| lacking.
| bigpeopleareold wrote:
| I don't know, I found the articles interesting.
|
| It's a niche market calling saying "I will give you money if
| you just make design decisions that made your computers great
| to work with in the past." How big is this market? What can
| really be expected from trying to sell to that market when
| computers are complex things to build?
|
| If anything, there are companies out on the market trying to
| serve this niche market. System76 has been around for awhile
| now, for example (I bought a System76 laptop in 2013 and I
| hated it, but that's a different story.) I think a few of us
| would at least hope that these companies look at old ThinkPads
| and take a few notes. I think maybe that time is coming soon (I
| would hope :) )
| noirbot wrote:
| What power do you think American software developers have here
| that they're not exercising? They should all quit their jobs
| and move into hardware design so they could band together and
| start a non-profit chip manufacturer to support some new laptop
| company? And in the meantime, not buy from any other
| corporation so we can "hit them in their wallets" and coerce
| them to... something? All so Apple might offer color options on
| their laptops?
|
| I don't think most of them underestimate the relentless greed
| of corporations. If anything, HN is one of the forums I'm on
| that's the most anti-corporate while not being explicitly
| communist/anarchist.
|
| You can dismiss the OP as simply complaining, but they're also
| literally writing an alternate OS for tips. Is that not "using
| their free bandwidth to do good"? Does it not count because
| it's not hardware? What about companies like System76 and
| Framework that are seemingly trying to do exactly what you're
| claiming people in the US aren't doing?
|
| I generally agree with where you're trying to go, and the
| futility of just complaining, but you're painting with a really
| broad brush, assuming a lot of bad/ignorant intentions on the
| part of anyone you disagree with, and only proposing vague "go
| do something you ignorant privileged Americans" to solve it.
| pdimitar wrote:
| Truthfully, so far I am mostly recognizing only System 76 and
| Frame.Work as making a true difference.
|
| As for your questions, they are fair. My main point was that
| lengthy rants against corporations will achieve nothing and
| are a distraction from more noble pursuits.
|
| I am not saying "quit your job". I am saying however that
| many of those devs have the free time and energy bandwidth
| that many others don't, and maybe that should be used to put
| their wallet/actions where their mouth is.
|
| My comment was however mostly a harsh criticism of the
| endless echo chamber that HN can be. Almost nobody cares what
| we here think though.
|
| I agree that I painted this with a broad brush. It's
| something that's ticking me off and it gets really sad and
| frustrating seeing people just yammering their mouth
| endlessly. :| But sure, that's only my problem, I can easily
| concede that.
| noirbot wrote:
| I appreciate the honesty - I guess from my side of this, I
| have an similar annoyance of people who have lengthy rants
| against corporations that boil down to "why won't someone
| else do something about this".
|
| Which isn't to say that I think you're not well-
| intentioned, or not doing anything yourself, but that
| there's a streak on HN and in general of "why won't the
| government pass a law to fix X" or "why isn't everyone at
| (insert unethical company here) doing something about their
| employer".
|
| Ultimately, the problem is a combination of things - some
| portion of devs just don't agree with you that this is a
| problem, another portion is radical to the point of only
| investing in a solution so pure as to be unworkable, and
| the remaining portion that may agree with you (myself
| included) isn't enough of the population to matter outside
| of doing something drastic like quitting their jobs en
| masse.
|
| I recently purchased a Framework laptop. I'd imagine the
| overlap of people who own S76 or Framework computers and
| people who are on HN is pretty high. You're already
| grousing at a group of people who's most likely to be doing
| everything you think they should be doing, and it hasn't
| made things better, so out of frustration, we're all
| ranting to anyone who will listen about how we've done what
| we can and it's still not better.
| pdimitar wrote:
| > _I have an similar annoyance of people who have lengthy
| rants against corporations that boil down to "why won't
| someone else do something about this"._
|
| That's completely fair and I get where you are coming
| from.
|
| > _Ultimately, the problem is a combination of things..._
|
| Sadly you are correct and that's one of the things I just
| can't make peace with -- a lot of liberties are not only
| at stake here, but they are being relentlessly attacked
| every day, yet people still choose to divide in camps and
| scream at each other, while the common enemy grows
| stronger every month... :(
|
| > _You 're already grousing at a group of people who's
| most likely to be doing everything you think they should
| be doing..._
|
| Yes and no. I realize what you say about the hardware
| that some HN users are using might be true and I'll
| concede it immediately. There's another group though,
| same ones I kept talking about -- those that have the
| free time and energy, maybe even the resources, to try
| and improve things for everybody else, yet they chose not
| to do so.
|
| As a guy with a streak of super sh_tty luck in the last
| ~18 months or so (changed several employers; of course
| not only their fault, mine too) who is just _dreaming_ of
| having that free time and energy, it 's honestly
| infuriating for me to sit helplessly on the side and
| fight furiously for stabilizing my life almost every day,
| while a lot of these (likely) hedonists just parrot ideal
| theories on a forum...
|
| Sorry. As you can see, I am very jaded. Still, I prefer
| to express myself openly. I know it's offensive to some
| but I choose to believe that people can and will see
| through my being jaded and find my true motives and
| goals. Like you did.
| LegitShady wrote:
| She could buy a vinyl skin for many models of laptop and get
| probably a better laptop andamy different colours and textures.
| pdimitar wrote:
| That's what I would recommend but nowadays I am worried this
| will impact thermals negatively, since many new laptops very
| heavily rely on chassis passive cooling and not only on the
| dedicated fans.
|
| So I didn't tell her because I didn't want the poor girl to
| invest a month of income on a laptop, put a skin on it, and
| have it burn out promptly in 3-6 months.
| LegitShady wrote:
| I don't put them on the bottom or near the keyboard, I
| don't think being on the screen really matters. Maybe if
| your laptop can do 1000 nits or something.
|
| But I don't know for sure. never had a problem.
| pdimitar wrote:
| And uninformed anonymous downvotes is what will make me leave
| HN one day. Sure, stay in your filter bubble and downvote
| opinions you don't like.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| _Please don 't comment about the voting on comments. It never
| does any good, and it makes boring reading._
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| rejectfinite wrote:
| >A good chunk of you (especially Americans) are privileged
| beyond what like 80% of us here will ever have, in terms of
| income and job security.
|
| Stay mad pajeet
| shadowgovt wrote:
| I've been using a ThinkPad X1-Carbon that came with Linux pre-
| installed straight from Lenovo, and I've really had no major
| issues with it. If someone's looking for a solid Linux laptop
| experience, that's where I'd steer them these days.
|
| Author appears to be complaining (among many other things) that
| attempting to retrofit machines that came pre-installed with
| Windows to run GNU/Linux doesn't work well, and... It never has.
| Not once. I can name zero experiences in my lifetime doing that
| where it was relatively painless. I perceive this to be not a
| "machines aren't flexible" problem, but a "machines come out of
| the factory with ten thousand complex configurations tuned to
| work correctly with each other, and when you rip out a piece as
| large as 'the operating system,' half those configurations are
| now tuned wrong (and the OS was holding another half of them)"
| problem.
|
| On this ThinkPad, the only time I've run into issues is when I
| switched out the window manager. Turns out, the WM's
| configuration is implicitly tied to a half-dozen features (audio
| selection power management, etc.) that don't "just keep working"
| if you replace it. Should I be _blaming_ Ubuntu for that, or
| should I accept that some pieces of the OS are big enough to be
| disruptive if you swap them out?
|
| Nobody is optimizing for the "get some hardware and retrofit an
| entirely new OS into it" use case; that way will forever be a
| gravel-strewn road. If you want a smooth road, get the OS you
| want from the factory.
| symlinkk wrote:
| Exactly. Would you install macOS on a Lenovo and expect it to
| work? No? Then why are you doing the same with Linux? Buy
| hardware that your software supports.
| [deleted]
| southerntofu wrote:
| > Buy hardware that your software supports
|
| That was the author's point. Hardware manufacturers should
| sell hardware and provide detailed specs. If they're not
| providing specs, they're failing their mission and just
| releasing crappy binary drivers for Windows which may or may
| not work in the future, and require reverse engineering for
| other systems to support.
|
| Just respect standards and/or publish your datasheets. That
| should be a requirement to sell any kind of hardware. I can't
| believe it's legal for a company to sell a washing machine
| without schematics, even less so an entire computer!
|
| If the hardware manufacturers don't publish docs/schematics,
| then systems can't support the hardware and we end up in this
| special hell-hole that IT hardware industry has been stuck in
| for about two decades now.
| mmu_man wrote:
| Ah, thanks so much! I was under the impression nobody got
| my point. Maybe because it was written under stress and
| emotion, or it's missing some arguments, I don't know.
| bluedays wrote:
| Yes, I've done it.
| kovac wrote:
| Just a few days ago I installed Arch Linux on a ThinkPad P15
| Gen 1 with X Server and i3wm for wm, disk encryption, multiple
| displays and it works very well. Heck, even the touch screen is
| working OOB without any special configuration. I've always been
| installing Arch Linux on ThinkPads that came with Windows pre
| installed. There are minor issues at times with backlight
| control or sound system which is mostly due to my minimal setup
| but overall I don't feel that ThinkPads don't play well with
| Linux.
| pimeys wrote:
| Running NixOS unstable on a ThinkPad X1 Carbon 7th gen. Sway
| tiling wm, Wayland, fractional scaling, damn long battery
| life, hardware acceleration on Firefox, fingerprint reader
| all work 100%.
|
| I'm surprised how good this is, and I've been using ThinkPads
| for a long time. This model works way better even compared to
| the mighty X230 I still love and adore as a great product
| from the past.
|
| Config: https://github.com/pimeys/nixos
| guerrilla wrote:
| > GNU/Linux doesn't work well, and... It never has. Not once.
|
| Those from the past didn't fall under a Linux certification
| program though. That seems to be a main point of the rant:
|
| > And you take risks too. When you sell "certified" ThinkPads
| with Linux, do you understand you are actually certifying that
| this machine will run correctly with drivers written by people
| who had to guess how the hardware should be used because
| vendors like you didn't properly document it in the first
| place? Isn't this mind-boggling?
| shadowgovt wrote:
| Are the ones that come out of the factory with Windows pre-
| installed also certified? I'm unclear on that aspect.
| guerrilla wrote:
| I'm not sure, it seems like only a certain series is
| certified and some on that series do come with Windows.
| vladvasiliu wrote:
| > Author appears to be complaining (among many other things)
| that attempting to retrofit machines that came pre-installed
| with Windows to run GNU/Linux doesn't work well, and... It
| never has. Not once. I can name zero experiences in my lifetime
| doing that where it was relatively painless.
|
| As usual, YMMV, but I've been running Linux with almost no
| issues on an HP ProBook. The only thing that doesn't work is
| the fingerprint reader. Bluetooth, custom secure boot keys, Wi-
| Fi, great battery life [0], sleep, hibernation, etc. worked
| without any fiddling on Arch Linux.
|
| As far as I know HP doesn't offer these computers with Linux.
| I'm not even sure you can get them without Windows.
|
| ---
|
| [0] Great as in "comparable to what Windows gets on the same
| hardware".
| yuuu wrote:
| So this is a little funny, but I just got my Thinkpad X1 Carbon
| a few days ago with Fedora preinstalled. I booted it up to the
| Fedora installation, then the machine rebooted. After it
| rebooted, a Windows loading screen appeared, followed by a pop-
| up DOS prompt that entered some commands, followed by another
| reboot into the Fedora installation.
|
| I haven't seen any evidence of Windows since, but that creeped
| me out. Can anyone explain what was going on, there?
|
| Also, of course, I had to completely wipe the hard drive and
| install my own version of Fedora to be totally comfortable
| after that.
| einpoklum wrote:
| It was painless for me on an X201. True, I never got the
| resolution switch function keys to work properly, but an
| Lubuntu installation went just fine (my first one was in 2015
| IIANM).
| mythrwy wrote:
| I haven't had any issues installing Ubuntu based Linux on
| Thinkpads that came with Windows and I've been doing it for
| over a decade.
|
| Maybe the fingerprint scanners didn't work, I never tried
| those. But otherwise seamless near as I can tell.
|
| Granted it's mostly older Thinkpads but still. 0 problems.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| The most common problem I run into is power management. About
| 50% of the laptops I've installed Ubuntu on that were
| originally configured for Windows will correctly sleep or
| suspend when the lid is closed.
|
| Of the distros I've used, Ubuntu is the one that works most
| reliably if I throw it on random PCs.
| zibzab wrote:
| The fingerprint scanner almost never work in Windows either.
|
| A recent win10 update for some reason removed fingerprint
| drivers for me and I didn't even notice it.
| kiwijamo wrote:
| I bought a ThinkPad X1 that came with Windows. Had no trouble
| changing that to a dual boot arrangement with Debian. Kept
| that for a few months until I realized I was going weeks
| without booting into Windows. Ended up making the switch to a
| full Arch Linux installation with no Windows. Has worked
| well. I have a fingerprint scanner but haven't bothered with
| it--that worked poorly under Windows anyway so never used
| even under Windows.
| arendtio wrote:
| A few day ago, I wondered if it would be possible to build a good
| Laptop around a Raspberry Pi? Not the best performance but
| modular, upgradable and well supported by the Linux kernel.
| folmar wrote:
| You can just get the PineBook Pro. It's not exactly Raspberry
| but the support and modularity is as good and the board has far
| fewer problems (and there is a ready laptop).
|
| There are a few tablet designs with PI3 CM but the performance
| is way below PI4.
| kiwijamo wrote:
| I have a Raspberry Pi 4. If you use the official distro, which
| includes all the hacks to make the hardware function, it works
| well yes but only barely. Try any other distro and it does not
| work very well since Linux itself doesn't actually have a lot
| of suppprt upstreamed. I have to use binary blobs, tweak lots
| of knobs etc to make simple things like video playback work.
| Some (all?) distros still recommend 32-bits due to limited
| support for 64-bits still.
|
| Quite eye opening for me as i always thought support for
| Raspberry Pi was of a high standard. The reality couldnt be
| further than the truth. Ironically I have a Lenovo which works
| well out of the box with no blobs or weird hacks on Arch or
| Debian (despite no official support for my particular model
| that I know of). The latter is what I would describe as "well
| supported by the Linux kernel". Certaintly not Raspberry Pi.
| tomcooks wrote:
| Pi top is a real product
| 5e92cb50239222b wrote:
| It's all been done before (story of my life).
|
| https://magpi.raspberrypi.com/articles/the-best-raspberry-pi...
|
| https://all3dp.com/2/best-raspberry-pi-laptop-kits-projects/
| sprash wrote:
| None of those projects support the new compute module which
| is the only viable option for day to day desktop use.
|
| The only attractive looking device from Waveshare has a
| _fake_ touchpad and can 't be used for anything serious
| either.
|
| There is a real niche for RaspPi CM4 compatible Laptops which
| is not yet filled. (And all other options are useless
| children's toys for "tinkering".)
| einpoklum wrote:
| Lenovo is a for-profit corporation which believes it will make
| more money by not supporting non-Windows OSes, particularly
| Linux-kernel-based operating systems, properly. "We need to talk"
| suggests Lenovo is somehow answerable to its users/customers;
| this is fundamentally not the case.
|
| Anyway, the thing that annoys me the most is the terrible
| keyboards we've been getting, especially since X240. Keys need
| travel distance, and should not be ruined in order to make the
| laptop thinner. We use those things to work on, not to show off.
| ... and here I go myself, ranting as though Lenovo cares.
| nomay wrote:
| If laptops came with non-Windows OSes are cheaper, I think it
| will have its market share. In some markets, people just don't
| consider paying for Windows a thing.
| siva7 wrote:
| A double negation is pretty hard to read.
| xanaxagoras wrote:
| There's a reason I went with an overpriced Clevo from System76.
| It has it's warts and the build quality really isn't there for
| how much I paid. But I turn it on, and everything works. I
| enjoyed compiling the kernel and chasing down little problems on
| desktop linux machines when I was a lot younger, but now I just
| want a laptop I can rely on and get things done with. Without
| knowing any specifics and not really caring, it was easy to glean
| that Lenovo had burned the ThinkPad's reputation some time ago
| when I was planning my last purchase... I'm having a hard time
| sympathizing with the author.
|
| > The LCD. Ok, 3k was a bad idea, I hate not seeing individual
| pixels
|
| This is sort of representative of TFA for me. He's whining too
| much.
| jwildeboer wrote:
| Disclaimer: I am a Red Hatter. We get Thinkpads/Lenovos since
| years, we install RHEL (Red Hat Enterprise Linux) or Fedora on
| them. I started back a long time ago with a X31, after that a
| X40, an X220, a X230, X1 2nd gen and am now on a X1 carbon 7th
| gen. They have been rock solid for me, except the x220 which
| loved to bork the hard drive for unknown reasons every 4-6
| months.
|
| Lenovo has listened and acted on our requests in a very good way,
| the Linux support has become better and better over the years,
| IMHO and experience.
|
| So no, this rant does notbresonate with me and my 16 years
| experience at all.
|
| No offence. Just a different experience.
| southerntofu wrote:
| Thanks for sharing your experience. As a distro maintainer, do
| you have access to the complete datasheets of the entire laptop
| in order to provide decent drivers? Maybe even the source code
| of the reference Windows drivers?
|
| If so, maybe you could "pressure" your contacts over at Lenovo
| to get them published once and for all so systems/distros can
| provide decent support?
| jwildeboer wrote:
| Most drivers are upstreamed anyways, nowadays. We get some
| early access and work with that, but the resulting code is
| _always_ upstreamed and open source, so feel free to use that
| code at any time.
| jessikat wrote:
| There's a difference between drivers being upstreamed to
| the Linux kernel, and a datasheet being available. The
| source code is not the datasheet, and if there are bugs in
| the driver, where is the datasheet to compare the
| implementation to?
|
| When it comes to hardware, source code availability is not
| sufficient.
|
| Other OS platforms can have different driver architectures,
| different kernel ABIs and other platform quirks in
| comparison to Linux, and having to reverse engineer a
| driver for another platform from a Linux kernel driver is
| not very open. And then there are licensing considerations
| to be taken into account as well.
|
| Linux is not the only opensource operating system in
| existence :-/ And for a project like Haiku, we don't have
| the people-power to reverse engineer Linux drivers, and
| again, the question of the GPL also applies when our kernel
| & drivers are MIT licensed.
| southerntofu wrote:
| > the resulting code is always upstreamed and open source
|
| Are you saying there is 0 binary blobs involved in running
| a modern Thinkpad? I find that hard to believe (although i
| would love it). I'm guessing there's a few blobs in the
| kernel tree itself, and even more firmware blobs the kernel
| doesn't even know about.
|
| On the topic of how Linux deals _very little_ with actual
| hardware on modern machines, i really enjoyed this talk
| called "It's time for operating systems to rediscover
| hardware" [0]
|
| [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=36myc8wQhLo
| kiwijamo wrote:
| I think it is quite possible there is few if any binary
| blobs. I have a Lenovo X1 and everything pretty much
| works out of the box on base Arch Linux (and Debian
| before that). I think it also helps that my X1 has Intel
| graphics, Intel Wi-Fi, etc which has very good support
| which I know is not a given for others (e.g. Broadcom Wi-
| Fi, Nvidia graphics, et al). It is easily the best Linux
| experience I've ever had.
| southerntofu wrote:
| > I have a Lenovo X1 and everything pretty much works out
| of the box on base Arch Linux
|
| I'd be curious to know if it actually works well with
| linux-libre (Linux without the binary blobs). It's
| apparently not maintained as a distro package but is
| available on the AUR.
|
| Moreover, I'm still curious if all hardware functions
| without its own binary blobs. For example, is the
| networking firmware really free and replaceable, or is
| the proprietary firmware interoperable with a FLOSS
| driver? Likewise, is the entire system libreboot-able?
|
| Sorry for nitpicking, i'm just looking for precise answer
| to a topic that's not widely questioned/debated to my
| knowledge.
| rincebrain wrote:
| I believe none of the major wireless NIC vendors these
| days ship cards that will do anything useful without a
| nonfree firmware blob, for example.
| jwildeboer wrote:
| No. I specifically said drivers, not firmware blobs. As
| long as these blobs are freely redistributable, I
| _personally_ have no problems with them. I understand
| some people do and that is understandable, but I don't
| subscribe to that. This started at a time where non-
| volatile memory for firmware became a cost factor and
| companies decided to save a few bucks on the BoM and
| upload the blob as part of the initialisation /boot
| process. Which is fine with me.
| formerly_proven wrote:
| GP is talking about drivers, you seem to be talking about
| firmware.
| southerntofu wrote:
| Correct, i'm slightly abusing semantics. I'm mixing them
| both under the category of "software that should be under
| user control", and interested about the FLOSS support for
| both.
| jwildeboer wrote:
| When firmware was stored in ROM/EEPROM, most FOSS folks
| had no problem with it. It was considered part of the
| hardware, so not that relevant. But when these were moved
| out of non-volatile memory (mostly for cost reasons),
| that changed the picture for some. While the result,
| after booting, is effectively the same. So no, I am not
| on the side that sees firmware blobs as something that
| MUST be made open. It would be good if it were,
| definitely. But it's not a deal breaker for me, as long
| as the blobs are freely redistributable, for example via
| fwupd. Again, that's my _personal_ opinion.
| p_l wrote:
| Lenovo bought the x86 line, including all facilities and staff,
| from IBM, and produced last few generations of IBM branded
| devices.
|
| The Thinkpad design team is still operating from the same ex-
| IBM facilities in Japan, iirc, even keeping some place-related
| naming in the internal codenames (X220/X230 and related
| T420/T430 were "Nozomi", iirc based on my spelunking in
| firmware)
| jwildeboer wrote:
| Oh, FTR, none of my laptops had nVidia graphics. Intel graphics
| has always been Good Enough(tm) for my use case (travelling
| evangelist who presents at conferences and wants enough oomph
| for some demos on the laptop itself with virtualisation and/or
| containers).
|
| Nvidia graphics causing problems on laptops is a known issue
| that only Nvidia can fix by opening up more.
| kiryin wrote:
| This has largely been my experience as well, also using Fedora
| but I doubt that matters much. I rarely have issues, in
| comparison to the endless stream of ACPI and other hurdles
| other people seem to be going through with their laptops. Also
| LVFS is a godsend, I wish every vendor ever participated. I get
| updates even for my thunderbolt dock.
| nextos wrote:
| Lenovo is very nice hardware to run Linux. As you say, they
| even care about updating firmware.
|
| However, there are a few things that IMHO are holding them
| back:
|
| * In EU, sales and support are outsourced (to Digital River
| Ireland Ltd). Support is a disgrace. Sales are also bad, as
| pricing is ridiculous compared to the US (often 1.5-2x more
| expensive than Apple) and most models are released late.
| Besides, they often sell open-box machines as brand new. If
| the want to compare to Apple, Lenovo should try to have
| unified global sales and guarantee.
|
| * They sell way too many Thinkpad variants, so they often
| release some that are unpolished. Lenovo should consolidate
| their lineup into fewer models.
|
| * They are lagging back with processor updates, compared to
| other PC manufacturers or non-Thinkpad Lenovos. Thinkpads are
| often sold with previous generation Intel CPUs. Models with
| AMD variants are seldomly available.
| throwawayswede wrote:
| Same. I haven't tried that many different vendors, but Linux on
| Lenovo's is by far the most supported of all the Asus, HP,
| Sony, and random others I've tried. At least with onsite
| support the technical person understand and knows what they're
| working with.
| Loic wrote:
| My first Thinkpad was a T41P, in between a series from the Xs,
| then back to T now that the Ts are so easy to carry. I never
| used Windows on them, first a mix of different distros, then
| when Ubuntu was released, Ubuntu.
|
| I never had any issues, only on the X220, the SD flash reader
| was borking my cards and I had to get an external flash reader.
|
| I cannot imagine using something different. So my experience is
| a bit like yours, this for 20+ years.
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| Trying to cut through all the right to repair stuff to get to the
| actual ThinkPad issue... it seems that the GPU has Linux support
| issues because it uses PCIe in a way the Linux driver doesn't
| expect. But isn't that an Nvidia problem? Is Lenovo really going
| to work with Nvidia to make sure they have a working driver for
| Linux? That's asking a lot for a very small segment of thinkpad
| users.
| forgotpwd16 wrote:
| >Is Lenovo really going to work with Nvidia to make sure they
| have a working driver for Linux?
|
| If they say they provide Linux support, they have to. Else
| they're misleading potential buyers.
| syshum wrote:
| They do have ThinkPads that are certified to work with Linux,
| ship with linux, and have Nivida Graphics
|
| The W541 is not one of those models...
|
| Lenovo has one of the best websites for looking up their
| models, and configuration. I am not aware of any other vendor
| that has anything like it. Pick a model, then filter by OS. The
| T15 as an example has plenty of models with Linux Support
|
| https://psref.lenovo.com/
| mikro2nd wrote:
| "ORIX Atmos... 1989... _and it 's still working_"
|
| Heed this and weep.
| 0x_rs wrote:
| I share the author's frustration with making graphics work on
| older machines with nvidia dGPUs. My Sandy Bridge thinkpad
| absolutely cannot boot without hanging and perpetually writing to
| disk since their major "additions" in 5.12 and later, no matter
| the dozen hours spent and configurations, kernel parameters
| setup; I've reached the conclusion it's impossible and put the
| problem to rest for now with an older version. Alas, this an
| industry problem, not limited to nu-lenovo by any means, from
| poor designing of the devices in question (on the Optimus
| implementation above: it's absolutely terrible and prone to all
| sorts of issues, because you can't just rip the damn nvidia chip
| off) to cutting corners. When producing these devices, do
| manufacturers often think, let alone care, if they will be used
| in the future after a decade or more? There's no stimuli to do
| so, after all, no gain from it.
| bitcraft wrote:
| I never understood how some people seem to not know that Lenovo
| and IBM are not the same company. When Lenovo, a completely
| different company, bought the rights to manufacture IBM products
| in 2005, the Think* brand was no longer IBM. The author states,
| eventually, his point being that Lenovo lost it's mojo, but it
| never had any. The Thinkpads people remember with mojo were the
| IBM ones, and _some_ Lenovo branded ones after the handoff, but
| that's really just residual "mojo" from the old teams and
| processes. Lenovo was never good, and really isn't now, and has a
| long record of bad behavior.
| iforgotpassword wrote:
| This is oversimplified if not wrong. You make it sound
| something like Lenovo bought the ThinkPad brand long after IBM
| stopped making them.
|
| They bought all the know how, engineers, a full rnd lab iirc.
| The first couple generations of Lenovo ThinkPads were very
| similar if not indistinguishable from the IBM ones, and I agree
| with most people here that even current models are still among
| the best laptops you can get.
| kmlx wrote:
| i think the fact that people associate Lenovo "thinkpads" with
| quality products says a lot about how much "mojo" the ibm
| "thinkpad" brand had. and in hindsight that ibm > lenovo deal
| was a bad deal for ibm.
| Izkata wrote:
| I think it's an indicator of how bad other brands are. I
| bought my first Thinkpad in 2019 and (with the exception that
| its battery is internal) like it way more than my previous HP
| (1), Dell (1 personal/3 work), and Asus (2) laptops.
| agumonkey wrote:
| Also to a point Lenovo had one of the original ThinkPad labs.
| Don't know how much is still there tough but that's why
| Lenovo is not just Lenovo to me.
| bradleyjg wrote:
| Not necessarily. Just because people liked them doesn't mean
| they were profitable.
| toast0 wrote:
| > in hindsight that ibm > lenovo deal was a bad deal for ibm.
|
| IBM got out of an industry they didn't want to be in, but
| they still have a lot of positive brand feelings, and a large
| stake in Lenovo (not sure if they still hold that). Where's
| the bad for IBM?
|
| They sold off their PC server line to Lenovo about a decade
| later, so clearly the first deal wasn't too bad.
|
| IBM seems to want to focus on Enterprise, so getting rid of
| things that individuals use, while still having relationships
| to sell them (because individuals exist in the enterprise),
| seems to work for them. After IBM bought SoftLayer, Lenovo
| servers started showing up instead of SuperMicro.
| syshum wrote:
| I dont know I used both IBM Thinkpads, and Lenovo ThinkPad's
| including current gen.
|
| I do not find Lenovo ThinkPads to be any worse than the
| business offers from Dell, or HP. In some ways they are better,
| in some ways there are worse
|
| I would avoid the non-Think* lines, as just like with the
| Consumer lines of Dell they suck...
|
| They did introduce a Think branded L line recently, these I are
| approaching that consumer level branded as business line, but
| the T and P series are still very good IMO
| zibzab wrote:
| Agreed. Lenovo has some pretty crappy stuff right now, but
| they still make the best laptops in the market.
|
| And let's not forget the excellent Linux support on the
| thinkpad line (partially thanks to Ubuntu?).
| raffraffraff wrote:
| > And let's not forget the excellent Linux support on the
| thinkpad line
|
| ...Unless it has an Nvidia GPU
| collegeburner wrote:
| Fr I wish Lenovo used its position to push nvidia for
| better linux support and open drivers.
| 5e92cb50239222b wrote:
| > And let's not forget the excellent Linux support on the
| thinkpad line (partially thanks to Ubuntu?).
|
| From what I heard, mostly thanks to thankless employees at
| Red Hat who get these machines for work and batter them
| into submission (by reverse-engineering the hardware and
| writing device drivers). Lenovo only deserves the middle
| finger here.
|
| Edit: or maybe it does not. Read this:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28978330
| jwildeboer wrote:
| Well, actually ;)
|
| That relationship has become a lot better over the years.
| We get early access to new hardware, Lenovo did a lot to
| get fwupd integrated, etc.
|
| No OEM preload necessary on the business line machines.
| RHEL/Fedora installs just fine OOTB. Some problems
| remain, especially with Thunderbolt (docking stations)
| but that's not just Lenovos fault, IMHO.
|
| Disclaimer: Red Hatter since 2005
| syshum wrote:
| I am torn... Do I thank RedHat for Linux support on
| laptops, or do i hate RedHat for killing CentOS....
| sam_lowry_ wrote:
| ...for systemd, hate them for systemd!
| gtirloni wrote:
| Love and hate. That's the way of the Linux wizard.
| 5e92cb50239222b wrote:
| It's not a monolithic solid entity, is it? As I see it,
| those doing actual work deserve praise and respect (Red
| Hat does _a lot_ of kernel and low-level plumbing work),
| while management is... typical management. Same as
| Mozilla and some other companies.
| southerntofu wrote:
| > but the T and P series are still very good IMO
|
| Never had a P, but had my hands on recent Ts and Xs and
| they're definitely an order of magnitude worse than their
| respective ancestors. They're much harder to crack open and
| replace parts (some even have RAM soldered to the
| motherboard!), the shell is much more fragile, and there's so
| many tiny hardware failures that they're hard to list... my
| two favorites:
|
| - something with the internal speakers/cables preventing it
| from making sound in a pseudo-random way (some positioning of
| the computer reliably triggers it, but there's no reliable
| position to have sound)
|
| - lid detection sensor going crazy and putting systems to
| sleep because the screen has just moved a little... i can't
| explain to you how confused was the person who came to me
| with this problem that the laptop was going to sleep
| automatically and thought it was haunted or virused :) (and
| of course no BIOS option to disable the faulty sensor, we had
| to disable sleep mode on the OS)
|
| Even the modern Ts (professional series) don't have a CDROM
| drive anymore. Being able to replace it with a second SSD/HDD
| was definitely a cool feature.
| jwildeboer wrote:
| > Even the modern Ts (professional series) don't have a
| CDROM drive anymore.
|
| Missing a DVD drive I * might* be able to understand, but
| CD-ROM? That ship has sailed, latest with universal support
| for USB boot or booting via network, IMHO.
| arp242 wrote:
| Soldered RAM is smaller and cheaper. Optical drives are
| comparatively huge. These things are all reasonable trade-
| offs.
|
| Also, you can still use a second drive; I have the NVME
| drive and added a 3.5" SSD I had lying around. Not all
| models have that obviously, but not all models had the
| UltraBay either.
| syshum wrote:
| This is all true, however my comments was comparing them to
| modern competitors on the market today, not the older
| ThinkPad which IMO is an unfair comparion and it unlikely
| IBM would have continued or been any different in the
| modern market as customers are demanding lighter, thinner
| laptops and have generally not rejected non-repairable non-
| upgradable options
|
| Every major laptop vendor is going to the soldered ram,
| non-repairable, units. I dont like it, but to say "Lenovo
| is trash" because of that but then not acknowledge that
| Dell, HP,Apple, Microsoft, etc are all the same way is
| deceptive
| tomcooks wrote:
| Some of the beloved classics x230,x220, etc are full Lenovo,
| and people specifically look for those
| EamonnMR wrote:
| The nice thing about the x220 at least when I got mine was
| that they where retired fleet laptops so you could get them
| dirt cheap and throw a few new components in them. I dread
| the day that the CPU and graphics are finally truly
| obsolete...
| philliphaydon wrote:
| At this point I wouldn't buy any non-Lenovo laptop.
|
| I don't know any other brand (excluding framework) that has a
| web page where I can enter the model number of my laptop and
| buy any part and order it and repair the laptop myself.
| secondaryacct wrote:
| Yeah I dont get the first commenter, Lenovo is great !
| cowpig wrote:
| You might be interested this this then:
|
| https://frame.work
| GavinMcG wrote:
| ...they specifically mentioned that as the exception.
| cowpig wrote:
| hah I missed that
| hyproxia wrote:
| They still don't sell parts.
| ushakov wrote:
| they do
|
| https://frame.work/marketplace
| chias wrote:
| Not yet they don't.
|
| Currently the only internal parts actually for sale are
| RAM, a subset of the SSDs, and the heatsink. I can't wait
| until I can buy some replacement parts for my framework
| laptop from their marketplace, but that day is definitely
| not here yet.
| tln wrote:
| You already need replacements?
| chias wrote:
| Not yet, no (though I'd love a different keyboard). But
| the slightly paraphrased conversation I'm replying to is:
| "Framework laptop lets you buy parts" "They don't
| sell parts yet though" "Yes they do, see the
| marketplace"
|
| When in fact the marketplace is almost entirely populated
| with placeholders, and they do not yet sell replacements
| for the vast majority of parts (including the battery,
| which to me is the "killer feature").
| prox wrote:
| Sounds like a fun computer!
| yread wrote:
| HP also does it and they even have videos on youtube from hp
| support explaining how to replace each of the parts.
|
| Lenovo has lost a lot of the quality in comparison. Typos in
| documentation and invoices, all kinds of support service
| nightmares even for people with most expensive support
| policies, X1 Extreme G4 shitty heatsink, thermal throttling
| to 800MHz, just take a look at forums.lenovo.com
| nomdep wrote:
| You will be very happy with this new laptop then:
| https://frame.work/
|
| Every internal component has a QR code sticker on it pointing
| to a web page with the specs, replacements, etc.
|
| See: https://youtu.be/0rkTgPt3M4k
| BerislavLopac wrote:
| Is Framework available in a non-silver case? Ideally black
| or dark grey...
| LegitShady wrote:
| Not yet I don't think. They're very new and working with
| limited resources right now.
|
| You could potentially find some vinyl wraps for it.
| Dbrand sells them.
| dskloet wrote:
| I assume that's why they wrote "excluding framework".
| gbrown wrote:
| I've repaired numerous non-lenovo laptops, it just required
| googling rather than an official web-page.
| philliphaydon wrote:
| Sure, but for example, I was living in Singapore, prior to
| moving to Taiwan I sold my desktops and replaced them with
| laptops.
|
| My wife needs a Traditional Chinese, so I went on Lenovo
| website, entered the product number in found this page:
|
| https://pcsupport.lenovo.com/sg/en/products/laptops-and-
| netb...
|
| Got the part numbers:
|
| UpperCaseASM_TCL82JQSGw/RGBWRF Part Number: 5CB1C14972
|
| Then went to the Lenovo store and ordered the part, then
| replaced it.
|
| It's not about googling, its about the manufacturer having
| this itself. I don't know if Dell or HP do anything
| similar.
| tata71 wrote:
| That's pretty cool -- but not worth working with a vendor
| that's known to ship rootkits/malware.
| morganvachon wrote:
| I will only buy a Lenovo laptop if it comes with a BSD and
| Linux friendly WiFi chipset. Most of their laptops are
| whitelist-only when it comes to WiFi cards, and tracking down
| the correct brand and revision of a specific compatible
| module is not worth the time invested. I have a stack of
| older Lenovo laptops that I've acquired in an attempt to
| reverse-engineer the BIOS/UEFI whitelists. Smarter people
| than me have been able to make it work on certain models, but
| overall Lenovo seems to detest the idea of a power user
| daring to switch to a better/more compatible WiFi module,
| despite their reputation for being "hacker's laptops".
|
| It's for this reason the next, and probably last, laptop I
| buy will be the Framework.
| philliphaydon wrote:
| I've had 3 so far. All upgrades the wifi from 5 to 6e and
| had no issues with ubuntu, manjaro, or windows with
| changing between Realtek?, killer, and ONK. Tho all are
| supporting amd/intel and windows/linux. Some Brand's are
| intel only.
| southerntofu wrote:
| And yet you find very little information about the actual
| hardware in recent Lenovos. For example, i had the unpleasant
| surprise to discover that M.2 2242 in modern Thinkpads only
| supports wireless cards, and that i had just purchased a
| rare-to-find (in my area) 2242 SSD for nothing.
|
| Don't even get me started on how ** the hardware is now to
| open and replace parts, compared to my previous T60.
| (soldered RAM? really?)
|
| EDIT: I'm not at all claiming other mainstream vendors are
| any better. I've never found _any_ decent hardware besides
| old Thinkpads and Macs.
| philliphaydon wrote:
| E-Key is for wifi cards. B+M-Key are for the old SSD, most
| slots for nvme are M-Key.
|
| I'm not sure why this is a Lenovo issue...
| syshum wrote:
| Except you can use PSRef from lenovo and find out most of
| that info including if the model you bought has soldered
| memory or not...
| morning_gelato wrote:
| I think Dell and HP offer somewhat comparable sites.
|
| Dell: https://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/partsforyourdell/index
| HP: https://partsurfer.hp.com/search.aspx
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