Lenovo ThinkPad E585 - Ryzen 2500U/Vega 8 - Review, Impressions, Linux, etc

when u install mint, did u disable secure boot prior?

No, I disabled it afterwards when working out why the wifi wasn’t working. It installs fine with secure boot on. Wired ethernet works out of the box.

im still facing a black screen even after following evilazrael method. not sure if i got it wrong but i added the two lines straight at the end of the LINUX command and then ctrl x to boot
did i miss something? very new at using grub

Mine only stopped black screening after appending “spec_store_bypass_disable=prctl”

as well as previously, “ivrs_ioapic[32]=00:14.0”

make sure to keep a space between each parameter

I didn’t do any updating out of the box other than running windows updates.

im still cant get past the blank screen after keying in the lines, am i doing this right?

i managed to get into the installation menu and then i get a Errno5 Input Output Error
but im using a usb?

got it resolved. had to change to another usb drive

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Laptop looks great for it’s price, but i think there is some wasted space, instead of having the HDD horizontally (like the pic) it could have been placed vertically so a bigger battery could fit

Try pcie_aspm=off for the NVMe errors, my Dell Inspiron 5495 had probably the same issue. And I recommend to set the second IVRS override parameter. No idea why people copy only the first paramter.

got mine. the acpi line to get it to boot. stock 18.10 and bluetooth works fine, didn’t do anything.
might just be me but brightness levels seem fine. im leaving it at around 60%.

Getting some freezes on Mint sometimes while browsing Firefox. Unfortunate, probably an unpatched kernel issue.

Thinking about this one for my next laptop. My concern is the compatibility and performance with Linux. How is performance with Linux? will I be able to get it going right away or a lot of tweaking? also, is their markup on memory and drives not worth it? meaning, get it on the side?

cheers

The laptop is pretty decent for the price in my opinion. I have 2 of this (one for my wife one for me). I would propose you to buy it with the cheapest configuration and upgrade everything you want on your own. It’s so easy to upgrade this one you can basically exchange everything (m.2 slot for ssd, m.2 slot for wifi, 2.5" sata, ram up to 32gb in dual channel).
I put in mine a 512GB Samsung 970 Pro and an additional 8GB of RAM (you can get the same much cheaper out there than configuring it). This thing runs like hell :wink:

Concerning Linux, I installed Kubuntu 18.10 on it with the command line parameters mentioned above. Works fine, and the performance is good. But if you don’t want to mess around with boot parameters, I would propose you to wait for a future distribution which comes with the 4.20 Kernel or above, because the problem with booting should be solved there (see: https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Linux-4.20-AMD-MCE-Fix )
Additionally there have beend a lot of additional fixes and improvements introduced in the recent kernel versions for the raven ridge apus (especially graphics drivers).
4.20 will be release by end of this week, I will give it a try

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¿Do you have details about the installed hardware? I’m looking into this product. Planning to go along with the factory installed M.2 256GB. Not sure which branding is used underneath (¿WesternDigital?). I assume RAM would be Samsung, and the optional SATA 2.5" HDD: HGST or Seagate.

Maybe I follow your advise, get the minimum. And later on replace with my preferred hardware configuration. I might wait till I see full Ryzen APU support. Without tips and tricks.

Thanks for sharing your take on it!

I almost want to wait out this generation of Mobile APUs for the ones based on Zen+, for higher IPC in a mobile form factor. Hopefully Lenovo has some laptops planned with the 3700U.

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The next gen apus are coming out q4 of 2019 I thought. So no new apu in laptop until 2020.

The official announcement is in January, so if they announce the release date for that at CES, I can gauge whether to purchase now or wait. Latest I would wait is May next year.

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I believe you are right. It it easy to get confused. There is a planned Zen+ APU refresh. The models released at the end of 2019 are the new Desktop APU, with Navi GPU, that should replace 2200G and 2400G.

So it is wise to wait a little bit. Just to see if the new models 3500U and 3700U are rapidly released into existing products. Or there is the need to wait a lot of months. I’m waiting 6 months to get Ryzen APU. I might wait even more to get the latest Zen 3000U.

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Today I checked on a street shop, to ask and see options to get one Thinkpad. The shop owner and the technician told me about a bad story related to Lenovo. So I thought about sharing it here.

The shop noticed that the warranty service in Spain is not as good as it should be. They do not blame the company (Lenovo). Usually the hardware works fine, and there are electronic parts to fix the motherboard if necessary (when warranty is over). They blame the people/company responsible to handle customer service to deal with warranty issues and repairs in Spain.

The story: in Christmas 2017 they sold one laptop that within 15 days stopped working. The technician (expert in electronics) checked and it was indeed dead. The warranty worked (to replace or fix the laptop). But the whole process took 4 months. A time enough for the end user (the real customer) to get frenzy about how that company can take so long to see it does not work and return a new one (the unit had only 15 days!).

I know one bad story within Spain is not enough to flip me over. But now I’m thinking about warranty options. As I remember a good experience in which a DELL laptop (3 years and 9 months old), got repaired in the customer office (in situ) by a technician. Few months before the warranty was over (4 years).

I thought it was nice to share this idea about the warranty. To place it on the mix of concepts to take into consideration before buying a laptop. Although I am aware that every country is different. So the customer experience could differ a lot.

Thanks! This is exactly the information I needed. I am waiting for the laptop. I will wait on linux which is going to be hard but what the heck.