Lenovo ThinkPad P14s Laptops?

[xwraith]

Well it looks like my old 2013 Macbook Pro may have finally died on me so I’m starting to look at laptops again. Really need to be able to run VMs and I’d like to give Ryzen a try on the laptop side as well.

Digging around I see this Lenovo P14s Laptop that seems to be a configuration for me. Lots of ram, 8 cores.

Anybody have any experience with them?

[Mastic_Warrior]

I don’t. There are are some members that have the some of the other Ryzen Lenovo laptops.
May be able to chime in if you actually state what you are looking to be answered.

[xwraith]

Just was looking for some basic experiences people had running linux on a Lenovo with a Ryzen CPU and at the same time also running VMs. Ideally I would be running something like Arch/Manjaro and using Libvirt with QEMU. Not sure if anybody runs the linux version of VMWare Workstation at all. VFIO GPU passthrough would be great, but from what I’ve seen over time doesn’t appear to actually be an option.

[Mastic_Warrior]

I don’t know if you tried to use the search function on the forvm, but below are some dated reviews based on the first gen Ryzen Mobile. subsequent releases have been much better but maybe you can get a feel for how GNU/Linux runs on Ryzen first. If it cannot do what you need as far as usability, then it may not deliver on your additional points.

In general, you should not have any issues as long as you are on kernel 5.6 or newer. People seem to have success with Pop_OS (made by System76) but You should be able to get the most out any disto on an LTS or recent kernel.

Lenovo E595 Ryzen 3700U Review and Linux

So as a fresh high school graduate going to college for a computer science program very soon, I like many others thought that now would be a very good time to purchase a laptop. My requirements aren’t too heavy. Since I want to run Linux and also run a windows vm in case the school needs me to run any windows only programs, I would need something with at least 2 cores. Fortunately both Intel and AMD have quad cores available in many laptops. I don’t play much games but it would nice for my laptop to be able to run some light games. Since I am running linux, I need something with decent integrated graphics as switchable graphics is not supported well under linux which means a laptop with a ryzen apu would be best. I decided to purchase an Lenovo E595 since Lenovo had just released this new model with the new refreshed Ryzen 3000 APUs. I bought the laptop with only the top APU and 1080p IPS display and cheaped out on everything else since I could save a few hundreds of dollars by upgrading the other parts myself and more with a coupon. I will refer to the out of box configuration as the ‘stock’ configuration and the configuration with the added parts as the ‘upgraded’ configuration. Also I must thank r/sacabonos from reddit for the tip to fix nvme more on that latter. [emrm2tsa7y331] TL;DR This is an amazing laptop. Much better than my old one. Lenovo fixed the Linux issues from the previous E4/585 but Linux setup needs kernel parameter to work with my nvme ssd. WiFi and BT just works. Also make sure you use dual channel RAM. ‘Stock’ configuration as purchased: APU: AMD Ryzen 3700U with Vega 10 Mobile graphics RAM: 1x4GB Samsung 2666 cl17 Storage: 1TB 5400RPM Hard Drive Display: 1080P IPS 250 Nits ‘Upgraded’ configuration: RAM: 2x8GB HyperX impact 2400 cl14 Storage: 1TB Adata SX8200 pro. Subtotal was about $800 but I used the coupon THINKPADSAV20 which saves me 20% so my total without tax was around ~$650. An awesome deal! Along with it I bought an Adata …

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

2019/03/11 - LINUX USERS: If you ever want a stable, smooth experience on this device, please do your part to help and contact Lenovo. The kernel is doing well, but Lenovo’s bios is a mess. A few of us are working hard to get issues resolved (IOMMU issues, bluetooth not working, suspend/wake problems), but we need help. Lenovo doesn’t officially support Linux on this laptop and we may never get help, but we have to keep trying. We have an ongoing thread on the Lenovo forums (HERE) that you should follow. Lenovo’s Twitter support is actually pretty good (HERE). Please be friendly. If they tell you Linux isn’t supported, politely ask them to forward your comments higher up (when I asked, they obliged). If we make enough noise, someone might listen. Thanks. Original post below. Hey all. I picked up the ThinkPad E585, thought I would do a mini review of the laptop now that I’ve had some time to play around with it. This will not be a thorough review, just some general thoughts and info. I intend to edit it as I continue tinkering with it. Specs: Ryzen 5 2500U with Vega 8 Mobile graphics 16GB (8+8 dual channel) DDR4 2400 256GB m.2 NVMe SSD (mod) 500GB SSD for dual booting 1080P IPS TL;DR: I like the laptop. Good build quality, decent display, good performance. Battery life isn’t great… around 4-4.5 hours give or take. Linux is working OK, but it has some issues. See below for more notes. Full lshw output here: http://paste.ubuntu.com/p/6WVhFQygKn/ Full lspci -vvv output here: http://paste.ubuntu.com/p/g7FP5nN9JX/ [image] [image] [image] [image] [image] [image] [image] [image] N…

Pop!_OS 20.04 on Ryzen 4500U: What Kernel?

Just picked up a Lenovo Flex 14 with Ryzen 4500U. (loving the laptop btw!) Almost all hardware is working straight out of the box. There is no external GPU. Exceptions: Fingerprint reader (vendor says they are working on linux support for later in 2020) Bluetooth wont find my Logitech or Microsoft mice, but will find and pair with my speakers. No HDMI output. #3 is the only major bummer. I want to hook up to my 4k monitor for work. Nothing happens when in linux. Monitoring dmesg and syslog, there are no messages when plugging in or out the monitor. gpu-maganer.log indicates no kernel module is being loaded for the gpu. My question: What is the best option to get an amd driver loaded? Newer mainline kernel? Is there a Pop kernel that has support for the built in gpu? I don’t want to lose support for everything that is already working…

Pop_OS on Ryzen 4500U laptop

So I recently got a Lenovo L14 G1 with a Ryzen 4500U with Radeon graphics. I want to run Pop_OS but I cannot get the graphics drivers to work. I am currently running kernel version 5.8.14. lspci -e outputs the following information: 06:00.0 VGA compatible controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] Renoir (rev c3) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller]) Subsystem: Lenovo Renoir Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 255 Memory at 460000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=256M] Memory at 470000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=2M] I/O ports at 1000 [disabled] [size=256] Memory at fd300000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=512K] Capabilities: <access denied> Kernel modules: amdgpu When I boot it gets stuck on fb0: switching to amdgpudrmfb from EFI VGA and nothing happens. I have gotten it to boot on kernel version 5.4.0. But the GPU still doesn’t work and the experience is awful with extremely high CPU usage. I have tried to use third party drivers, like oibaf/graphics-drivers and tried to boot using kernel flags to use amdgpu. Is there something I am completely missing here? Or do I have just wait until the next Pop_OS upgrade like other posts suggest?

Lenovo E595 Ryzen 3700U Review and Linux

So as a fresh high school graduate going to college for a computer science program very soon, I like many others thought that now would be a very good time to purchase a laptop. My requirements aren’t too heavy. Since I want to run Linux and also run a windows vm in case the school needs me to run any windows only programs, I would need something with at least 2 cores. Fortunately both Intel and AMD have quad cores available in many laptops. I don’t play much games but it would nice for my laptop to be able to run some light games. Since I am running linux, I need something with decent integrated graphics as switchable graphics is not supported well under linux which means a laptop with a ryzen apu would be best. I decided to purchase an Lenovo E595 since Lenovo had just released this new model with the new refreshed Ryzen 3000 APUs. I bought the laptop with only the top APU and 1080p IPS display and cheaped out on everything else since I could save a few hundreds of dollars by upgrading the other parts myself and more with a coupon. I will refer to the out of box configuration as the ‘stock’ configuration and the configuration with the added parts as the ‘upgraded’ configuration. Also I must thank r/sacabonos from reddit for the tip to fix nvme more on that latter. [emrm2tsa7y331] TL;DR This is an amazing laptop. Much better than my old one. Lenovo fixed the Linux issues from the previous E4/585 but Linux setup needs kernel parameter to work with my nvme ssd. WiFi and BT just works. Also make sure you use dual channel RAM. ‘Stock’ configuration as purchased: APU: AMD Ryzen 3700U with Vega 10 Mobile graphics RAM: 1x4GB Samsung 2666 cl17 Storage: 1TB 5400RPM Hard Drive Display: 1080P IPS 250 Nits ‘Upgraded’ configuration: RAM: 2x8GB HyperX impact 2400 cl14 Storage: 1TB Adata SX8200 pro. Subtotal was about $800 but I used the coupon THINKPADSAV20 which saves me 20% so my total without tax was around ~$650. An awesome deal! Along with it I bought an Adata …

Lenovo A485 (Ryzen 7 Pro) Throttling (SMU)

Hey Guys, Does anyone have any deep insight into how AMD’s SMU is Configured? STAPM is AMD’s equivalent of Intel’s DPTF, it dynamically scales CPU Clock up and Down based on Temperature. We know it’s a Co-Processor (LatticeMico32) within the CPU, UEFI Configures it during boot(?). However there are registers exposed to the Linux Kernel, and it’s possible to dump RAM and ROM (https://github.com/zamaudio/smutool) Even if UEFI Configures it on boot, I have a feeling it’d expose registers that can used to force all cores to boost clock for example, or undervolt.

[xwraith]

Thanks for finding those!

I was poking around but not sure how applicable those were if you go up to the P series. They would all be using the same chipsets I would imagine so my guess would be yes.

[bmars1]

ThinkPad’s are my go to for a decade (more?). They have great build quality, great support and are usually very easy to get linux on. Had a minor issue on a T480 where wireless was finiky on bleeding edge kernels. Never an issue on LTS releases.

Haven’t had the P14s at all, but similar models that have worked great.

Only thing that goes wrong eventually is the battery. The 3rd party market is great with old models of battery, but I like first party. If you ahve a chance during check out, order a 2nd battery and a 2nd charging cable. Both are great nice to have’s long term.

[jdfthetech]

@xwraith

was poking around but not sure how applicable those were if you go up to the P series.

In short, they are not applicable. The older threads reference bios issues with the E595 / E585 series. I know this because I bought one and returned it to Lenovo after encountering said errors.

These issues are not relevant to the T14s and P14s. In fact, Lenovo offers a T14s with fedora now.

[Mastic_Warrior]

@jdfthetech

In fact, Lenovo offers a T14s with fedora now.

Good call. I meant to mention that GNU/Linux is now a first class citizen in the Lenovo ecosystem now.

[xwraith]

Thanks everyone for your feedback! I think I’m going to go Lenovo but I want to see if there is CPU refresh that I should wait for. 8 Core “Cezanne” sounds really nice.

[xwraith]

Ordered a custom P14s Gen 2 with a 5850U – they say three plus months to get here. But maybe I’ll be lucky (and kernel 5.15 should be out by then). Price wasn’t too bad either < US 2K.