I installed Linux on about 15 laptops, only one failed: a Lenovo. While this looks like an attention seeking headline, it's true.
The first laptop I installed Linux on was about 15 odd years ago - while I had some trouble I got it going eventually. Most follow up laptops where from a variety of suppliers (dell, toshiba, acer etc) and I never had a problem to get any of the hardware working.
The last two laptops are two rather new laptops, both with UEFI/LEGACY, both with AHCI, both with INTEL hardware and all INTEL hardware known to work.
One is a Lenovo Yoga, the other one is a Dell XPS 12.
It took me about 1 hour to get it to go on the Dell, I did that in a number of steps. I first made some space at the end of the drive creating a 30GB space, then tried Fedora 23 without UEFI in Legacy mode - it worked first go. I then wiped that partition again, changed back to full UEFI, installed Fedora 23 with full UEFI enabled. Grub has taken over and I can easily switch between Linux and Windows 10, all hardware working albeit the touch pad being touchy - but that's the case too in Win10.
Not so the Lenovo - I tried everything for a week. I did RTFM, I read so many articles on the web, I followed every trick of the trade I have learned with myriads of kernel switches, debugging - you name it. I tried.
I have given up, my first failure to ever get a computer to work with Linux.
Power management, mobile and firmware developer on Linux. Security developer at Aurora. Ex-biologist. mjg59 on Twitter. Content here should not be interpreted as the opinion of my employer. Also on Mastodon.
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installed Linux on about 15 laptops, only one failed: a Lenovo
Date: 2016-09-23 07:26 am (UTC)The first laptop I installed Linux on was about 15 odd years ago - while I had some trouble I got it going eventually. Most follow up laptops where from a variety of suppliers (dell, toshiba, acer etc) and I never had a problem to get any of the hardware working.
The last two laptops are two rather new laptops, both with UEFI/LEGACY, both with AHCI, both with INTEL hardware and all INTEL hardware known to work.
One is a Lenovo Yoga, the other one is a Dell XPS 12.
It took me about 1 hour to get it to go on the Dell, I did that in a number of steps. I first made some space at the end of the drive creating a 30GB space, then tried Fedora 23 without UEFI in Legacy mode - it worked first go.
I then wiped that partition again, changed back to full UEFI, installed Fedora 23 with full UEFI enabled. Grub has taken over and I can easily switch between Linux and Windows 10, all hardware working albeit the touch pad being touchy - but that's the case too in Win10.
Not so the Lenovo - I tried everything for a week. I did RTFM, I read so many articles on the web, I followed every trick of the trade I have learned with myriads of kernel switches, debugging - you name it. I tried.
I have given up, my first failure to ever get a computer to work with Linux.
Luckily there is VmWare and Kali Linux.
Sorry, Lenovo sucks.