LWN: Comments on "Coming soon: Fedora on Lenovo laptops (Fedora Magazine)"

Coming soon: Fedora on Lenovo laptops (Fedora Magazine)

pabs — Fri, 01 May 2020 13:38:41 +0000

I wonder what proportion of these WWAN cards run Linux internally and how GPL compliant they are. Some of them definitely do:

https://osmocom.org/projects/quectel-modems/

Coming soon: Fedora on Lenovo laptops (Fedora Magazine)

mcatanzaro — Fri, 01 May 2020 13:02:42 +0000

Looks like the answer is "no": https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@lists...

Coming soon: Fedora on Lenovo laptops (Fedora Magazine)

mgedmin — Fri, 01 May 2020 09:57:31 +0000

> until Intel figured out how they could cheat the system

What did Intel do?

Coming soon: Fedora on Lenovo laptops (Fedora Magazine)

mpearson — Tue, 28 Apr 2020 13:32:20 +0000

Hi - I work for Lenovo as part of the Linux team
All the 2020 Linux supported platforms will have the firmware that addresses thermal throttling (similar to what was released on the X1Carbon7, T490 and X1Yoga4 last year).
We do have a few more of the 2019 platforms that are getting the update very soon (they won't let me share which platforms or dates publicly, but it's in the final stages of testing).

Coming soon: Fedora on Lenovo laptops (Fedora Magazine)

mtaht — Mon, 27 Apr 2020 23:41:36 +0000

https://forum.openwrt.org/t/aql-and-the-ath10k-is-lovely/ is progressing. Worth testing openwrt head now tho...

ax200 is up next but low on beer money. https://www.patreon.com/dtaht

Coming soon: Fedora on Lenovo laptops (Fedora Magazine)

bmork — Mon, 27 Apr 2020 22:28:12 +0000

The slow resume is because they cut power to the modem slot. This is very annoying. You could actually have put the modem in a very low power mode, shutting down the USB device controller and other unnecessary parts, without disconnecting. This would have allowed you to keep a session over suspend.

I have done this with modems connected to the external USB ports. But it can't be done with the built-in modem due to the power cut. I wish they will make that optional some day. There are so many useful things you can do with a network connection while the laptop is sleeping. And I would love instantly connected with surviving tcp sessions. Technically simple to do. All you need is that power.

Coming soon: Fedora on Lenovo laptops (Fedora Magazine)

bmork — Mon, 27 Apr 2020 22:17:32 +0000

The main problem with Lenovo all the time has been the BIOS whitelisting of both wwan and wlan, which means that you cannot fix it if their chosen module doesn't work for you. This is probably not going away.

We can wish for a Qualcomm based modem again. That's going to have much better chance of being supported than anything else.

But anything USB connected (that is bus - the physical connection is obviously m.2) should just work. Microsoft did as all a great favour many years ago when they made MBIM mandatory for Windows 8 certification. We've had the same class driver supporting every laptop modem since then, until Intel figured out how they could cheat the system.

Coming soon: Fedora on Lenovo laptops (Fedora Magazine)

ibukanov — Mon, 27 Apr 2020 08:22:10 +0000

On my Thinkpad x280 WWAN on Fedora 31 worked out-of-the-box. I inserted a nano-sim and got a popup to configure mobile broadband in Gnome with a list of countries and providers. My provider in Norway was not on the list (other provider from the country did have pre-configured settings), but manually typing the access point name was enough to get the connection.

The only annoyance is that after a suspend it takes up to a minute before the connection resumes. Otherwise the connection is stable and most of the time up to the advertised speed.

Coming soon: Fedora on Lenovo laptops (Fedora Magazine)

joib — Sun, 26 Apr 2020 06:53:03 +0000

I have a P1 Gen2, it runs the iwlwifi driver.

(I recently replaced my trusty old ath9k router with an ath10k one, both running openwrt. Thanks for all your bufferbloat & WiFi work. Is there some up to date list of WiFi status (bufferbloat, airtime fairness etc. ) for the various drivers somewhere?)

Coming soon: Fedora on Lenovo laptops (Fedora Magazine)

karkhaz — Sun, 26 Apr 2020 03:09:39 +0000

Yes, cellular modems can have a mini-PCIe interface. Many ThinkPads have both an externally accessible SIM card slot, and an internal mini-PCIe slot that is meant to hold a cell modem. (On some models you can configure the laptop to have the cell modem preinstalled when buying it from Lenovo).

ThinkWiki is a good resource for cell modem (and other hardware) compatibility for ThinkPads. There are pages both on the modems themselves (e.g. [1]), as well as pages for specific laptops that describe what modem comes installed in that model and whether there are any compatibility issues with Linux. I've used a 3G SIM card in my ThinkPad X260 and my old X230, and I consider it a vital feature, I really miss having a cellular connection when using a MacBook Pro for work. (I guess I could try using a USB 3G dongle, but it's just so cool to have the SIM card inside the laptop chassis). NetworkManager works flawlessly, it connects to the cellular network automatically but only uses data if neither Ethernet nor WiFi is connected.

I've always bought ThinkPads second-hand. I have no idea if the kernel and NetworkManager would always have immediate support for new modems that Lenovo put in their latest laptops. So it's worth checking the wiki for compatibility if you plan to buy a new ThinkPad.

[1] https://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Sierra_Wireless_HSDPA_WWAN
[2] https://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Category:X260

Coming soon: Fedora on Lenovo laptops (Fedora Magazine)

mtaht — Sat, 25 Apr 2020 23:18:02 +0000

https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/thinkpad/thinkpad-p/...

it's an ax200. this chip only sorta started to work in 5.6 and it still needs fq_codel hooked up. If anybody is working on improving it also, please join us on the make-wifi-fast mailing list.

Coming soon: Fedora on Lenovo laptops (Fedora Magazine)

mtaht — Sat, 25 Apr 2020 23:12:47 +0000

what is the wifi chip?

only the ath10k, ath9k and mt76 are debloated at the moment. iwl "work"s, and the ax200 sorta just started to work, but...

if the need any help on making the wifi rock, I'm available.

Coming soon: Fedora on Lenovo laptops (Fedora Magazine)

rahulsundaram — Sat, 25 Apr 2020 20:52:07 +0000

> Um... laptops can do this...? OK... no clue about that.

Yes, if it is a workstation, this can be quite a handy feature and often important for connectivity

Coming soon: Fedora on Lenovo laptops (Fedora Magazine)

lisandropm — Sat, 25 Apr 2020 18:35:59 +0000

Exactly, and if buying one of this help $distro in the meantime, if only in engrossing sales figures fro laptop with FLOSS, the better.

Coming soon: Fedora on Lenovo laptops (Fedora Magazine)

zdzichu — Sat, 25 Apr 2020 17:24:53 +0000

That's sensible idea. Fedora policy is "upstream first". If hardware with Fedora preinstalled works fine, that's because all support is in upstream kernel and libraries. There won't be any proprietary addons only available for one distribution. If it works with Fedora, it will work with any distro (provided recent enough software version).

Coming soon: Fedora on Lenovo laptops (Fedora Magazine)

zdzichu — Sat, 25 Apr 2020 17:20:26 +0000

They do, more often than not. The WWAN modem in my T480s(*) works perfectly with NetworkManager in Fedora, although OP's comments implies there are problems sometimes. I guess the laptops Lenovo will sell with Fedora, will have the best supported modem models.

* % mmcli -L
/org/freedesktop/ModemManager1/Modem/30 [FIBOCOM] L830-EB-00

Coming soon: Fedora on Lenovo laptops (Fedora Magazine)

mcatanzaro — Sat, 25 Apr 2020 16:50:02 +0000

Um... laptops can do this...? OK... no clue about that.

Coming soon: Fedora on Lenovo laptops (Fedora Magazine)

nilsmeyer — Sat, 25 Apr 2020 15:36:13 +0000

I think WWAN refers to cellular networks (LTE and the like).

Coming soon: Fedora on Lenovo laptops (Fedora Magazine)

mcatanzaro — Sat, 25 Apr 2020 13:30:10 +0000

The models that ship with Fedora Workstation will certainly work out of the box. Lenovo is not going to ship laptops without working wi-fi.

Coming soon: Fedora on Lenovo laptops (Fedora Magazine)

lisandropm — Sat, 25 Apr 2020 13:06:54 +0000

If I had the money (I don't) I'll certainly see to buy one of this, even if a few minutes after turning it on I would be installing Debian on them. The fact that ships with FLOSS is definitely a great thing.

Coming soon: Fedora on Lenovo laptops (Fedora Magazine)

josh — Fri, 24 Apr 2020 20:52:39 +0000

I hope this means those laptops will use WWAN cards (and other hardware) that actually work under Linux without requiring some special driver. The X1 Gen7 had an unusual modem that didn't work out of the box, and while there's some ongoing work to develop a driver, I'd much rather have something that Just Works.

Coming soon: Fedora on Lenovo laptops (Fedora Magazine)

leromarinvit — Fri, 24 Apr 2020 20:19:27 +0000

It might be bulky compared to other modern laptops, but "starting at 5.51 lbs (2.5 kg)" and 24.5mm thick is lighter and thinner than the old T61 lying around here. And back in its day, that was certainly considered a notebook.

Nice to see them offer Fedora preinstalled!

Still sad that they "broke" the X series (for me, anyway) with the X280. Ethernet I can live without (most of the time, and dock or USB are ok compromises for when I can't), but I refuse to buy a laptop with soldered RAM. So the used X270 I just bought will have to suffice for a while - and if no spiritual successor comes along, my next one will be from 51nb. Let's hope they're still around then!

Coming soon: Fedora on Lenovo laptops (Fedora Magazine)

mjg59 — Fri, 24 Apr 2020 19:55:32 +0000

https://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/54923.html (entirely unrelated to this effort)

Coming soon: Fedora on Lenovo laptops (Fedora Magazine)

janc — Fri, 24 Apr 2020 19:36:50 +0000

Did they fix cpu throttling yet?

Coming soon: Fedora on Lenovo laptops (Fedora Magazine)

zlynx — Fri, 24 Apr 2020 17:57:20 +0000

Heh. I don't think I would call a P53 a "notebook." Lenovo calls it a "mobile workstation" and that's about right. It ought to stay on a desk.

I would love to trade in my work T580 for a P53. A 15W CPU is not really the greatest thing for C++ development.

Coming soon: Fedora on Lenovo laptops (Fedora Magazine)

yingw787 — Fri, 24 Apr 2020 17:54:58 +0000

Very cool. Matthew Miller mentioned in that article's comments how Lenovo is working to get firmware support for the fingerprint reader up and running. Standard Fedora distribution too, no OEM stuff. Looking forward to seeing this shipped and in people's hands.

Coming soon: Fedora on Lenovo laptops (Fedora Magazine)

hmh — Fri, 24 Apr 2020 16:29:47 +0000

The models are: ThinkPad P1 Gen2, ThinkPad P53, and ThinkPad X1 Gen8.

Barring any specific issues with manufacturing, they should be very solid, very nice high-end notebooks.