Lenovo Continues Improving Their Linux Support Down To The Hardware Sensors

[Guest]

This is by design, some users have 1 huge or multiple external monitors connected to the dock, so they don't need / use the laptop-panel as an extra screen and thus typically leave the lid closed while docked; and we don't want to suspend in that case.

On most modern distros this behavior is controlled by systemd-logind and you can enable suspend-on-lid-close even when docked by editing: "/etc/systemd/logind.conf" and then uncommenting the

#HandleLidSwitchDocked=ignore

line and changing it to

HandleLidSwitchDocked=suspend

. You need to reboot your machine after this because restarting systemd-logind will cause your GUI session to crash.

Yeah, I noticed those options and appreciated the level of detail there. Would be nice if GNOME/KDE and others read those settings and offered a GUI to manipulate them, although it might result in a mess of config files instead.

[vegabook]

Elephant in the room is that neither Lenovo, nor any of its competitors, have an answer to the amazing M1 "Apple Silicon" even in an outright comparison, and when you factor in price it's even worse for x86. I was going to buy a Thinkpad this year but I cannot ignore the Macbooks' simply generation-ahead hardware advantage. Really tough call because I want to stay on LInux.

[YamashitaRen]

Elephant in the room is that neither Lenovo, nor any of its competitors, have an answer to the amazing M1 "Apple Silicon" even in an outright comparison, and when you factor in price it's even worse for x86. I was going to buy a Thinkpad this year but I cannot ignore the Macbooks' simply generation-ahead hardware advantage. Really tough call because I want to stay on LInux.

I don't believe you.
Apple being cheaper than generic x86 ? And on top of this, on ARM which has known shortcomings ? Okay ARM is fun but it would have to be really really over the competition for me to invest in an ARM laptop.
Please prove me wrong.

[skeevy420]

As much as I dislike Dell, I would say I've had the best out-of-box experiences with them, even when they don't have official support. My experiences with Lenovo have ranged from "works even better than Windows" to deliberately Linux-unfriendly. Not sure about HP but I'm guessing it's a similar situation to Dell, except their laptops are less crappy IMO. For whatever it's worth, my experiences with Asus have been consistently terrible.

As others have pointed out, if you want the best support, you should go for the companies that are Linux-first.

In regards to consumer grade stuff, I've had great experiences with Dell. Not so much with HP. Granted, I last used HP in the yearly-mid 00s so, yeah...take that HP comment with a grain of salt.

I've been happy with Asus and Gigabyte motherboards on Linux. I've only ever bought two motherboards so, again, salt. But that Asus board worked great with the Q6600 FSB hack until lightning killed 3/4 of my household electronics one night way back when. Anyone else here rock that hack? I used tape. I wish I'd have thought about YouTubing that back in 2008....

[vegabook]

I don't believe you.
Apple being cheaper than generic x86 ? And on top of this, on ARM which has known shortcomings ? Okay ARM is fun but it would have to be really really over the competition for me to invest in an ARM laptop.
Please prove me wrong.

hidpi screens, 50% longer battery, i7 rivalling performance, super thin and light. You get this at 1.5-2grand from Lenovo and Dell. Not 1 grand as per from Apple. But don't trust me, just watch this x86 guy agonizing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztTY788z9NE

[skeevy420]

Yeah, I noticed those options and appreciated the level of detail there. Would be nice if GNOME/KDE and others read those settings and offered a GUI to manipulate them, although it might result in a mess of config files instead.

I wish systemd offered a GUI configuration tool, systemd-wysiwyg. AFAIK, this is the best one there is. While systemd is powerful and does a lot, damn is there a lot of man page reading involved in figuring it all out and setting things up.

[Go_Vulkan]

i7 rivalling performance

With realistic benchmarks, certainly not! You can get HiDPI screens everywhere, and Apples prices are just not competitive.

[arQon]

Another voice in the "everything Dell has worked great" crowd, but with caveats. My dad's VERY old Dell laptop works perfectly, but had bad wifi support for the first several years. (One of the notorious Broadcom chipsets).
My own Dell laptop (a more powerful "workstation-ish" unit) also had bad wifi support, to the point of being unusable. Again, Shitty Broadcom Chipsets were the root of the problem, and once I replaced it with an Intel wifi card it worked brilliantly.

Wifi aside though, both machines, plus a third unit received from an elderly neighbor who moved to an iPad, worked brilliantly. All the "laptop-y" things like brightness control keys etc just worked automagically without any configuration effort or needing random PPAs etc (all 3 machines run MATE); and aside from the wifi issues all ran far better than they had under the various generations of Windows that they'd been preinstalled with.

[edwaleni]

Elephant in the room is that neither Lenovo, nor any of its competitors, have an answer to the amazing M1 "Apple Silicon" even in an outright comparison, and when you factor in price it's even worse for x86. I was going to buy a Thinkpad this year but I cannot ignore the Macbooks' simply generation-ahead hardware advantage. Really tough call because I want to stay on LInux.

If the new Apple M1 meets your needs with its OS, then by all means you should go get it.

It's not really an elephant that Lenovo has to deal with. They can source a CPU from almost anyone that isn't Apple and do a complete soup to nuts engineering, build out and distribute it globally. They are going to sell what sells.

In other words, they aren't in an arms race with Apple for CPU supremacy. They are in it for the sales. If CPU supremacy drives sales, then they will sell it.

[M@GOid]

As for System76 and Tuxedo being "only" Clevo resellers, at last they sell you hardware that were tested on Linux before you buy. Dell, HP and Lenovo that weren't on a list of homologated hardware, are a gamble buy. It may work, it may not, and no one on their support lines will care for you. While on the Linux-first your complain had a real chance to reach ears that will listen.

And if you have real disgust for Clevo hardware, have some dignity and at least buy enterprise grade from the big 3. Otherwise you are just trading Clevo for something Clevo-like and that is not a smart move. If it is too rich for your blood, go after a used one. They tend to be built much better than their crap consumer lines.