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Linux on the Fujitsu Lifebook U729

2025-11-1515:19207167borretti.me

A short review and troubleshooting guide.

This post describes my experience using Linux on the Fujitsu Lifebook U729. The tl;dr is that it’s a delightful laptop, and Linux runs flawlessly, and all the hardware things I’ve needed run OOTB. The only difficulty I had was in disabling Secure Boot, but I figured out how to do it, which I explain below.

Contents

From early 2024 my daily driver was an M2 MacBook Air, until earlier this year I broke the screen, and the repair was quoted at almost 1000 AUD. Since I used it as a desktop most of the time, this didn’t affect me much. After some flip-flopping I decided to get an M4 Mac mini. Partly for the faster CPU and more RAM, but partly because I liked the idea of LARPing like it’s the 2000s, when computers, and by extension the Internet, where fixed in physical space, rather than following everyone around.

Of course this was a terrible idea. I had three working computers—a Linux+Windows desktop, a Mac Mini, and a MacBook Air that I could use as a desktop—and none of them were portable. When I went to RustForge 2025 I just brought my phone. If I wanted to travel, even within Sydney, to a demo night or math club or some such, I didn’t have a laptop to bring with me.

So I needed a new laptop. And the Tahoe release of macOS was so ugly (see e.g. 1, 2, 3) it made me boot up the old Linux desktop, and start playing around with NixOS again. And I fell in love with Linux again: with the tinkering and the experimentation and the freedom it affords you.

So, I wanted a Linux laptop. I had a ThinkPad X1 some years ago and it was terribly: flimsy plastic build and hardware that vastly underperformed its price. I looked around for old, refursbished workstation laptops, and, randomly, I ran into an eBay seller offering a refurbished Fujitsu laptop.

The specs/price ratio was pretty good: 16 GiB of RAM and 512GiB of SSD, all for 250 AUD. And it was 12in and 1.1kg, which I like: laptops should be small and lightweight. But the thing that got me, in all honesty, was the brand. “Fujitsu laptop” sounds like colour in a William Gibson novel: “crawling into the avionics bay, Case took out a battered Fujitsu refurb, and stuck a JTAG port in the flight computer—”. I already use NixOS and a trackball and a mechanical keyboard, so a laptop that’s even more obscure than a ThinkPad is perfect for me. And it was only 250 AUD. So I got it.

A photograph of the laptop.

The only problem I had was disabling Secure Boot in order to install Linux. Otherwise: I love it. It’s small and lightweight, feels solid, the keyboard is good, all the hardware works out of the box with NixOS, and the battery life is pretty good.

Troubleshooting

This section describes the problems I encountered.

Secure Boot

I tried to install Linux the usual way, when I was greeted by this:

A photograph of the laptop screen showing an error message, red text on white: 'secure boot is failed **access denied**'.

Going into the BIOS, the option to disable Secure Boot was greyed out. I tried a bunch of random bullshit: wiping the TPM, disabling the TPM. That didn’t work.

What did work was this:

First, install Windows 11. This came with the laptop. And the installation makes installing Linux feel easy: I had to do so many weird tricks to avoid having to create an account with Microsoft during the installation.

Once Windows is installed, go into Windows Update. Under “Advanced Options > Optional Updates”, there should be an option to install Fujitsu-specific drivers. Install those. And for good measure, do a general Windows update.

There should be a program called DeskUpdate on the Desktop. This is the Fujitsu BIOS update tool. Run this and go through the instructions: this should update the BIOS (the ordering seems to be important: first update the Fujitsu firmware through Windows Update, then the BIOS through DeskUpdate).

Reboot and go into the BIOS (F2). You should have a new BIOS version. In my case, I went from BIOS 2.17 to 2.31 which was released on 2025-03-28:

A photograph of the laptop, showing the NixOS installer.

Spyware

The laptop comes with this corporate spyware thing called Absolute Persistence. It’s some anti-theft tracking device. Since the Lifebook is typically an enterprise laptop, it makes sense that it comes with this type of thing.

I only noticed this because I was searching the BIOS thoroughly for a way to disable Secure Boot. The good news is disabling it is pretty straightforward: you just disable it in the BIOS.

A photograph of the BIOS screen showing the Absolute Persistence options.

As I understand it, Absolute Persistence requires an agent running in the OS, so the BIOS support, by itself, doesn’t do anything once disabled.

Non-Problems

The following work flawlessly OOTB:

  • WiFi
  • Bluetooth
  • Sound (using PipeWire)
  • Display brightness control (using brightnessctl)
  • Touchscreen (I didn’t realize the screen was actually a touchscreen until I touched it by accident and saw the mouse move)
  • Webcam (not winning any awards on quality, but it works)

Things I have not tested:

  • Microphone
  • Fingerprint sensor

To enter the BIOS: smash F2 until you hear the beep. No need to hold down the Fn key.

To enter the boot menu: as above but with F12.


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Comments

  • By jjice 2025-11-1515:469 reply

    Tossing Linux on used enterprise laptops is maybe the best bang for your buck machine you can get. They're often time a great value and within three years old. Used multiple Thinkpads and Dells over the years that were fantastic and gotten sub $400.

    Things I learned to look out for:

    - Locked BIOS

    - Look into the manufacturer's repairability reputation. I replaced the entire keyboard on my ThinkPad X1 Carbon and it was perfectly fine. It was a pain to get to, but no problems. On a Dell Latitude, it refused to charge my non-OEM battery replacement. My fault - I should've done some research.

    In my experience, Dell and Lenovo have excellent Linux hardware support. I don't know about other manufacturers, but I hope that that's also the case now too.

    • By bArray 2025-11-1517:064 reply

      Can back this. Many years ago I purchased a Dell Latitude from eBay. After messing around with a 3D printer, there was a short of mains voltage onto the USB line, frying the laptop and tripping the house electrics. I contacted Dell asking for a schematic of the PCBs thinking that I had blown some components, but they informed me that the laptop was still under warranty thanks to the original business purchaser (by just a few weeks).

      They shipped a box and allowed me to swap out a hard drive for a spare (I had study data on there), I then used the box to ship the laptop to them. A few weeks later the laptop gets shipped back with a parts replacement list, which was essentially every single PCB in the laptop and I asked them to replace the keyboard too because one key was sticking. Brand new parts in a slightly cracked chassis.

      If Dell still has customer service like that, it's double thumbs up from me.

      I'm currently using a Lenovo laptop which has been solid so far. I do want my next laptop to be open to repairability (even if I have to create it myself).

      • By ssl-3 2025-11-1521:082 reply

        Dell customer service is whatever someone wants to pay for.

        I bought a new Dell laptop 20-ish years ago along with whatever the super-duper coverage was called at that time (Complete Care, maybe?). IIRC, it only excluded deliberate damage (and "hammer marks" was used as an example).

        But they had no trouble sending me parts. Power brick soaked in a flood? No big deal; a new one is on the way. Dropped a screwdriver on the screen at work? They sent a whole person over to replace it.

        It was very expensive coverage -- it cost more by itself than the used/refurb laptops we're discussing. It was sold separately. It did not, by my estimation around that time, ultimately pay for itself.

        But if you score it for "free" with a used machine, then sure! Bargain!

        (A person can check the warranty/service status of an unmolested Dell machine here: https://www.dell.com/support/contractservices/en-us )

        • By buildbot 2025-11-160:43

          It's probably worth it for university though. Back in the day working as a Student Employee for the CSE helpdesk, we ordered overnight replacements for so many laptops and servers an it was super slick and automated, replacement parts showed up and we swapped them in. Very little downtime.

        • By sam345 2025-11-162:42

          Dell and HP still offer reasonable accidental next business day on site 3-4year warranties much more reasonable in my opinion than AppleCare

      • By plantain 2025-11-163:33

        I had the motherboard fail on a Dell XPS while at a conference in Tasmania, staying in a student residency that was inaccessible by car for the last ~1km. Within 24 hours a man arrived, to my room, to change the motherboard.

        Extremely impressive logistics. I guess they reuse the same network as for emergency server parts/repairs.

      • By kstrauser 2025-11-163:191 reply

        It’s hit or miss with them. I bought a brand new Dell monitor from Amazon, through their Dell store, fulfilled by Dell. The HDMI input stopped working a couple months later, as verified with multiple known working devices connected to it with multiple known working cables. Then Dell’s support absolutely refused to honor their warranty because their database showed that someone else but me owned it. Remember, I bought it through the Dell store inside Amazon, and received straight from Dell via their own warehouse. Amazon’s support got righteously indignant on my behalf and refunded the purchase to me when Dell wouldn’t.

        It felt very satisfying to tell the Dell rep who cold called me to sell my employer hardware why I’d make sure we’d never give them a dime.

        And yet other people have wonderful luck with them, apparently! Go figure.

        • By vladvasiliu 2025-11-1713:39

          Never had to call Dell support, but I've had a similar experience with a Logitech mouse bought through Amazon (although it was sold and shipped by Amazon).

          Since Amazon honored the warranty in less time than it took me to look up how to contact Logitech and go through their ridiculous process, that mouse was replaced with another Logitech one bought through Amazon. Wouldn't buy anything directly from the Logitech store, though.

      • By nullbyte808 2025-11-1521:522 reply

        I really don't care for repairability as I average maybe 2 years before getting a new laptop.

        • By thisisabore 2025-11-1522:493 reply

          In terms of strain on natural resources, that's insane.

          • By vondur 2025-11-160:43

            This is how people get their used laptops

          • By zetalyrae 2025-11-161:40

            [flagged]

          • By bbarnett 2025-11-1522:56

            Only if they throw it away. If someone else uses it, what's the issue?

            Or do you not want people of less means, having used laptops?

        • By The_President 2025-11-1618:10

          [dead]

    • By Avamander 2025-11-1516:117 reply

      > Things I learned to look out for:

      Don't buy any recent Intels. Some Intel ThinkPads have accelerometers built-in just to throttle your PC to oblivion when it moves. Basically unusable in any moving vehicle such as a train. It's basically anti-portability baked-in.

      When it doesn't throttle, it just has abysmal battery life compared to AMD Ryzen ThinkPads of the same generation. Both lose horribly to Apple's ARM chips though.

      They also tend to have soldered WiFi modules, making it impossible to upgrade later when newer and better WiFi iterations come out. If that had been the case with a few of the older models I still have, they would be unusable at this point.

      There are plenty of firmware bugs as well. For example plenty of Lenovo (especially Intel as far as I've seen) models have stuttery and freezing touchpads. Though the touchpads tend to be horrible anyways.

      I'd say the older (5+ years old) generations might have had slightly better driver support or they're finally fixed at this point. But there's nothing I'd spend my money on if I can just as well install Asahi on an M-series laptop.

      • By bitwize 2025-11-1518:471 reply

        ThinkPads used to have accelerometers to protect the hard drives, so if you dropped the machine or treated it roughly, it could park the drive, protecting it from data loss.

        People used to write Linux utilities that read these accelerometers, allowing for example to switch virtual desktops by physically smacking the machine on either side.

      • By 60Vhipx7b4JL 2025-11-1522:011 reply

        Maybe what you are noticing is the "laptop on lap" detection? Check the bios, there was a "cool when on lap detected" mode on mine. Turn that off and re-test.

        • By Avamander 2025-11-1614:20

          Yes, that's it, but there's no toggle to turn it off. Maybe it can be patched, but I don't want to fight my hardware like that.

      • By teo_zero 2025-11-1522:39

        > there's nothing I'd spend my money on if I can just as well install Asahi on an M-series laptop.

        But such laptops don't work 100% with Asahi. Speakers and mic, external displays, fingerprint reader, suspend are the sore points I've read about, and shorter battery life compared to when they run Apple's SO.

      • By gear54rus 2025-11-1516:392 reply

        > Some Intel ThinkPads have accelerometers built-in just to throttle your PC to oblivion when it moves

        Wtf? That sounds crazy, any sources?

        • By swinglock 2025-11-1517:00

          This used to be a feature to protect spinning hard drives. Why this would exist today and why it would throttle anything is bizarre.

        • By ajsnigrutin 2025-11-1516:591 reply

          They don't want you to burn your testicles when keeping it in your lap.

          https://download.lenovo.com/pccbbs/pubs/x1e_p1_gen5/html/htm...

          > The Cool and Quiet on lap feature helps cool down your computer when it becomes hot. Any extended contact with your body, even through clothing, could cause discomfort. If you prefer using your computer on the lap, it is recommended that you enable the Cool and Quiet on lap feature in UEFI BIOS:

          (it can be disabled on this laptop)

          more: https://askubuntu.com/questions/1416567/disable-lap-mode-on-...

          • By VBprogrammer 2025-11-1518:30

            Honestly, I wasn't to say this is ridiculous but I've got a i7 13" laptop which I bought to do practically everything (personal coding projects, a bit of gaming, video editing, 3d modeling etc). I do find the heat of it is quite uncomfortable after a short period of time on my lap. I was thinking about getting a M series MacBook for messing around on the couch and building a desktop for many of those other tasks.

            My work MacBook Pro on the other hand could do with the opposite some times. Burn a bit of battery to heat up the aluminium case please!

      • By ofalkaed 2025-11-1522:01

        In my experience Intel and AMD Thinkpads of that era are about the same for battery life but Intel always needs some kernel parameters set. Where I notice the biggest difference is Intel's integrated graphics gets you better battery life over anything AMD if your GPU needs are modest enough to be handled by Intel's integrated graphics

      • By eptcyka 2025-11-1516:211 reply

        M1 and M2. But those are in an entirely different price bracket. I’d go so far as to say those are not comparable.

        • By doublepg23 2025-11-1517:512 reply

          You can buy refurb M1s for $379 at Walmart.

          • By bigyabai 2025-11-1518:302 reply

            Has a proprietary bootloader that Apple can lock in an OTA update. Also doesn't support Linux as well as Intel or AMD chipsets, unfortunately.

            • By Forgeties79 2025-11-1519:191 reply

              Last I heard asahi ran pretty well on M1/M2. Is that not the case?

              • By SirHumphrey 2025-11-1521:171 reply

                It runs well but battery life is quite a bit worse than on macos.

                • By Forgeties79 2025-11-161:031 reply

                  That’s not particularly surprising to be honest. A lot of what makes Apple tech what it is is the concert between their hardware and software. Not trying to put it too poetically here, but that’s what it’s always seemed like to me.

                  In general when I install Linux on an Apple device I just assume there isn’t the same level of performance. I remember installing mint on a 2016 intel MBpro and the limitations/cons didn’t surprise me at all because I just kind of expected it to perform at 70% of what I expected from macOS but with far more free freedom/control. It ran very smoothly but you definitely lose a lot of functionality.

                  • By bigyabai 2025-11-1618:061 reply

                    > A lot of what makes Apple tech what it is is the concert between their hardware and software.

                    That's very cute, but it's not why Apple laptops run Linux poorly.

                    Apple Silicon has terrible and inefficient support because Apple released no documentation of their hardware. The driver efforts are all reverse-engineered and likely crippled by Apple's hidden trade secrets. This is why even Qualcomm chips run Linux better than Apple Silicon; they release documentation. Apple refuses, because then they can smugly pride themselves on "integration" and other plainly false catchisms.

                    And on Intel/AMD, Apple was well known for up-tuning their ACPI tables to prevent thermal throttling before the junction temp. This was an absolutely terrible decision on Apple's behalf, and led to other OSes misbehaving alongside constant overheating on macOS - my Intel Macs were regularly idling ~10-20c hotter than my other Intel machines.

                    • By Forgeties79 2025-11-1618:091 reply

                      >That's very cute, but it's not why Apple laptops run Linux poorly.

                      I have no doubt you have good information after this, but this sentence makes me not want to read any further.

                      • By bigyabai 2025-11-1718:44

                        Okay, that's your call. You can't phone Craig Federighi for the straight dope, so you're stuck hearing it from internet douches or product leads on prescription SSRIs.

                        And yes, your statement was a cutesy catechism with no actual evidence provided. A big reason why Apple tech doesn't work like a normal computer is Apple's rejection of standards that put hardware and software in-concert. ACPI is one such technology, per my last comment.

            • By throawayonthe 2025-11-1519:341 reply

              i don't think either of those is really true?

              https://asahilinux.org/docs/platform/open-os-interop/

              • By bigyabai 2025-11-1520:561 reply

                Literally the first step of the boot overview depends on a proprietary and irreplaceable Apple-controlled blob:

                  iBoot2 loads the custom kernel, which is a build of m1n1
                Apple decides whether or not m1n1 ever loads.

                • By oneplane 2025-11-1615:161 reply

                  Only if you boot into macOS and connect it to the internet. iBoot2 never changes by itself, you, the user, decides if you want to boot into recovery or macOS and run an update.

                  So can Apple stop signing new iBoot2 versions? Sure! And that sucks. But it's a bit of FUD to claim that Apple at arbitrary points in time is going to brick your laptop with no option for you to prevent that.

                  Granted, if you boot both macOS and Asahi, then yes, you are in this predicament, but again, that is a choice. You can never connect macOS or recovery to the internet, or never boot them.

                  • By bigyabai 2025-11-1618:012 reply

                    > You can never connect macOS or recovery to the internet, or never boot them

                    In other words, you're completely fucked if you brick your install. I consider iBoot a direct user-hostile downgrade from UEFI for this reason.

                    YMMV, but I would never trust my day-to-day on an iBoot machine. UEFI has no such limitations, and Apple is well-known for making controversial choices in OTA updates that users have no alternative to.

                    • By oneplane 2025-11-1619:271 reply

                      > In other words, you're completely fucked if you brick your install. I consider iBoot a direct user-hostile downgrade from UEFI for this reason.

                      That's a bit of a creative perspective, isn't it? You have no control over the UEFI implementation of your vendor, same can be said for AGESA and ME, as well as any FSP/BSP/BUP packages, BROM signatures or eFused CPUs. And on top of that, you'll have preloaded certificates (usually from Microsoft) that will expire at some point, and when they do and the vendor doesn't replace them, the machine might never boot again (in a UEFI configuration where SecureBoot cannot be disabled as was the case in this Fujitsu - that took a firmware upgrade that the vendor had to supply, which is the exception rather than the rule). For DIY builds this tends to be better, Framework also makes this a tad more reliable.

                      If anything, most OEM UEFI implementations come with a (x509) timer that when expires, bricks your machine. iBoot2 is just a bunch of files (including the signed boot policy) you can copy and keep around, forever, no lifetimer.

                      Now, if we wanted to escape all this, your only option is to either get really old hardware, or get non-x86 hardware that isn't Apple M-series or IBM. That means you're pretty much stuck with low-end ARM and lower-end RISC-V, unless you accept AGESA or Intel ME at which point coreboot becomes viable.

                      • By bigyabai 2025-11-1718:411 reply

                        Basically your counterpoint is that I'm absolutely right to be concerned, but I'm wrong because UEFI can also be implemented with the same objectionable backdoors that Apple implements.

                        We're done here, have a nice day.

                        • By oneplane 2025-11-1914:39

                          It's not a counterpoint, it's a display of your factually incorrect statement.

                    • By throawayonthe 2025-11-1911:01

                      except apple silicon notebooks are notably unbrickable[0]? you can always do https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/fedora-asahi-remix/trou...

                      [0](through any user-accessible software action, obviously)

          • By eptcyka 2025-11-1519:181 reply

            M1 mac minis or macbooks?

      • By rootsudo 2025-11-167:16

        Accelerometers aren’t new, they were a feature 20yrs ago to suspend platter hard disks.

    • By Teknomadix 2025-11-1516:262 reply

      My daily driver for several years now has been an AMD Ryzen 7 powered ThinkPad t495. $120 used. After upgrading the RAM to 64gb it felt very snappy and usable. I run NixOS / Hyprland with rofi/waybar. When an accident happened and the first t495 was damaged, I bought a second for $80, swapped the parts and was back in business. I use it for coding, web research, and a bit of CAD design via FreeCAD. Very happy with the hardware!

      • By skydhash 2025-11-1519:072 reply

        I have a MBA M1 and it is everything you would wish in an hardware feature wise (except the keyboard as I like lot of travel). But the OS is abysmal, unless you like to use your device with only apps. Anything else out of the straight path is a pain. And the last years, it seems that the allowed path is closer to mobile OS than a computer to do work.

        So, my daily driver is an oldish dell latitude (8th gen intel) running openbsd. Not for the faint of heart, but for a tinkerer, it's a dream.

        • By mendigou 2025-11-1523:211 reply

          I keep hearing this thing about apps and I'm confused. I write code on my MBA M1, run orbital simulations, run a media server... All like I would on Linux. What am I missing on userland?

          I understand there is low level system stuff I can't control, but I've made my peace with that. When using Linux I hadn't touched its internals for years.

          • By skydhash 2025-11-1523:401 reply

            I have made my peace with that as well, but the ground keep sifting under. There was the Music.app stuff, the System settings, Apple Intelligence, and now the whole UI of the OS. Those are the things that you would interact with daily.

            It could be fine. I'm also OK with GNOME's strict approach to design. But with Apple, you wait the next release with dread because you never know what they will pull next.

            • By microtonal 2025-11-169:38

              To be honest, I have used macOS since OS X 10.4 and most of it is still very similar UI-wise? Finder, Spotlight, basic window management, etc. are still pretty much the same. If you had a time machine and took someone from 2006, they would still feel pretty much at home on macOS 26. For me the only larger breaking change was when they axed Spaces in 10.7 for Mission Control (Spaces was so much better).

              GNOME from 2006? Quite a different story.

              I agree on lower-level stuff. Nowadays you have to partially disable SIP to use DTrace, which is meh... (and it seems largely unmaintained) Instruments is quite great though.

        • By kroaton 2025-11-1520:25

          You can install Linux on an M1/M2. It's not perfect, but it does work pretty well.

      • By skaragianis 2025-11-1520:45

        Possibly 40gb, but not 64gb. The T495 has 8gb soldered and one DDR4 slot. Concur great hardware, particularly the keyboard.

    • By dcminter 2025-11-1517:001 reply

      I swapped the keyboard on my wife's X1 and man, they are so fiddly to get to these days. It used to be a 2 minute job but I think this took me nearly 2 hours! I had to remove practically everything to get to it.

      Still happy with the result and I agree that 2nd hand business machines give great bang-for-buck. I adore my beater Dell Latitude for example.

      • By jjice 2025-11-1714:431 reply

        Oh, it sucked haha - I totally agree. Glad I could do it though.

        I believe mine was a gen 3 and I I had to remove everything and the keyboard is the last part you remove before putting the new one on. I assume it was similar for you considering the time spent?

        The more traditional thinkpads have the dream situation where it just pops off, if I recall.

        I had to stop and go out to purchase a Dremel to cut a notch in a screw on the main board that was stripped before I had gotten it. Good times!

        • By dcminter 2025-11-1717:05

          Yes, exactly that, and some of the steps required removing kaptan (?) tape over rather fragile looking wires.

          I think it used to be more or less "undo screw, remove cover, remove keyboard" ... with other parts being under the keyboard rather than vice versa. It's been a long time though.

          One thing in favour of Lenovo and Thinkpad then and now is that you can download all the field service guides - so at least one isn't guessing which worryingly fragile part to remove next. Another point in favour of ex-corporate devices.

    • By defanor 2025-11-1517:28

      > In my experience, Dell and Lenovo have excellent Linux hardware support.

      I have tried just one cheap Dell laptop, Vostro 3515, which works mostly fine with Linux (it came with Ubuntu, I have installed Debian), but the touchpad becomes unreponsive sometimes (probably after a sleep), and at some point it refused to charge, which required an UEFI firmware update to fix, which in turn required Windows (I had to use Windows PE) to install, as the direct update (from the UEFI itself) was failing, and there is no Linux option.

      Could have been worse, but now considering a Lenovo ThinkPad as a future replacement.

    • By as1mov 2025-11-1516:491 reply

      +1

      This is my go to way of buying a new laptop. I've gone through 2 machines in the last 8 years (Dell 7270 and 7330). Both bought for <$400. Linux works ootb, though I haven't tried any of the more obscure distros.

      Though now manufacturers are doubling down on soldered components, so buying a cheap machine and upgrading the components yourself is not really possible :(

      • By jll29 2025-11-1520:06

        Yep, same experience here, very good results with DELL Latitude E7240, E7260 and similar. Very rugged and Linux works like a breeze - on eBay from $179 (just checked again).

        One is well advised to upgrade them to 16 GB RAM and put in a 1 TB SSD, and possibly a new battery. My better half wanted one of those again after I gifted her a brand new MacBook Air, so used she got to the DELL and Ubuntu running on it.

    • By karczex 2025-11-1516:16

      I'm using Linux on some dell precision and camera just don't work. It's possible to install some custom kernel to make it work, but the pain of maintaining it by myself in comparison to IT department supported setup is a no go.

    • By madduci 2025-11-167:43

      Indeed. My last 2 laptops have been Thinkpads and they have great Linux Support, for stable and edge OSes with latest kernel versions.

      Rock solid, expandable and stable

    • By storus 2025-11-1520:401 reply

      With the recent Intel layoffs many Linux drivers are no longer maintained and as a consequence some older laptops don't boot anymore.

      • By worthless-trash 2025-11-1521:511 reply

        Did upstream disable hardware.. I didnt see the memo for disabling anything boot related.

        Can you tell me what you found breaking as I will have to deal with that.

        • By worthless-trash 2025-11-177:281 reply

          Quick research showed that some were marked as 'unmaintained', but I don't see anything that would prevent systems from booting, or even the code from working.

          Some (not all) of the systems were picked up by other people. I do not know where you're getting the information from, but if you want to, please share.

          • By storus 2025-11-1818:04

            It was somewhere on HN in the past few weeks, a few folks mentioned they can't boot some systems anymore.

  • By gchamonlive 2025-11-1515:515 reply

    If you want portability on something premium, I can't recommend enough the Lenovo Yoga Slim 7. Specwise I've got the one with the Core ultra 5 125h. It also has an option with the 155h, but it battery and thermals can take a hit that I don't think it's worth it. It's got 16gb spread across 8x2gb modules and 512gb of ssd, both soldered, both extremely fast.

    Build quality that rivals MacBooks, but with superior keyboard, very nice battery life and an oled screen on top of it.

    The problem I had with the oled screen is that I thought it oversaturate reds out of the box on Linux, which I corrected using hyprshade: https://github.com/gchamon/archie/blob/main/hypr/shaders/vib.... I am looking for a better solution because the filters get picked on screenshots and washes out the colours. I need to find an ICE profile or export one from Windows.

    The camera also behaves a bit weirdly. It has noticeable quality difference when using chromium and other browsers, the latter with perceptible quality degradation.

    Other than that, a very good mobile linux driver, snappy, cool, quiet, charges fast and a joy to use.

    • By aruggirello 2025-11-1517:011 reply

      > it oversaturate reds out of the box on Linux, which I corrected using hyprshade

      Another option would be Redshift, which has a nice widget (Redshift Control plasmoid) for KDE Plasma. It doesn't affect grabbed screenshots or stuff like simplescreenrecorder, BTW

    • By vachina 2025-11-1519:541 reply

      16gigs soldered seems like obsolete on arrival for a windows PC.

      I briefly owned a Slim 7 32gigs but sold it because it felt too heavy for a 14incher. Got an M1 instead.

      • By gchamonlive 2025-11-1520:56

        Windows itself is obsolete. My yoga is pretty slick and light.

    • By user_7832 2025-11-1517:352 reply

      Do you know what the oled screen resolution is on your device? One of my family members has what I believe is the same laptop, and while I appreciate the build quality, the OLED clearly isn't RGB (in its subpixel arrangement - or some other such major aspect), because the 1080p screen looks so bad for text I initially thought it was broken.

      • By Nab443 2025-11-1517:57

        Oled pc screens have a terrible reputation for text. Some more than others, but it seems it's better to stick to lcd if you happen to read or write a lot.

      • By gchamonlive 2025-11-1519:511 reply

        1920x1200

        It's awesome for text though. The only issue I found was the overblown reds.

        • By user_7832 2025-11-176:51

          Thanks. That’s funny (iirc it’s the same resolution), maybe they updated the sub pixel structure I suppose.

    • By wkjagt 2025-11-1615:18

      My daily driver is an X1 Carbon gen 5. 8 years old by now, but runs Arch (btw) flawlessly. I had an M1 MacBook Air before this and I actually prefer the old ThinkPad (but I do miss the MacBook's battery life)

    • By cryzinger 2025-11-1520:182 reply

      I have an old Yoga that I've considered throwing Linux onto... are there any particular distros you've used that play nice with the touchscreen?

      • By gchamonlive 2025-11-1520:56

        The one I have doesn't have a touchscreen and I don't have any workflow that would benefit from it, so I can't help you there, sorry

      • By fwipsy 2025-11-1520:29

        Default Ubuntu seems pretty touch-friendly these days with large icons etc.

  • By rcarmo 2025-11-1515:583 reply

    If you have an old Intel MacBook Air, they work beautifully with Linux as well: https://taoofmac.com/space/blog/2025/11/05/2200

    • By jebarker 2025-11-1516:424 reply

      I did this with the 11”, which was one of the greatest sized laptops for travel IMO, just had to replace the explody looking battery!

      • By w0m 2025-11-1518:513 reply

        I'm down to ~10m of battery life on my i7 11" - any pointers on battery replacement? Laptop worked great otherwwise (retired it last year due to battery life)

        • By bxparks 2025-11-1519:17

          I tried eBay like 4 times. But they were all fake or defective. At least one of them was dead on arrival.

          I finally bought one from iFixit.com. Far more expensive than eBay, but the battery actually worked great for about a year. Then about a month after the 1-year warranty expired, it degraded noticeably (maybe to 80%) with only about 100-200 charge cycles. Even iFixIt cannot source a battery as good as the original Apple.

          Right now, it's at 65% capacity after 584 charge cycles, after 4.5 years of service. I will probably go back to iFixIt. At least I'll get one year of full capacity from them, instead of the fake or DOA ones from eBay.

        • By jebarker 2025-11-160:16

          I used iFixit. I haven’t been tracking battery life really, but after a couple of years it’s still going strong

        • By rcarmo 2025-11-1715:35

          iFixit had a kit for the Air. Not sure about other models.

      • By haunter 2025-11-1520:10

        This is what I want to do as well but the 8GB RAM version was CTO, eveywhere I look people are only selling the 4GB models

      • By jll29 2025-11-1520:08

        11" is a great size - especiall if one has to work on a plane occasionally (economy class - not your own jet).

      • By incanus77 2025-11-1517:11

        Same, I have a 2013. It’s such a good size.

    • By bxparks 2025-11-1519:08

      The last time I tried this in 2022, I encountered a bunch of rough edges. I tried Ubuntu or Mint on a MBA 11 (2013 or 2015 models). Maybe Linux has gotten better since then?

      For example, the fan did not work out of the box. I had to install something called 'macfanctld'.

      Sleep did not work, it would wake up as soon as it went to sleep. I had to install something called a 'suspend-fix.service' hack.

      Brightness control was flaky. It would always wake up at the lowest brightness setting. Disabling auto-dimming caused it to wake up at the highest brightness.

    • By normie3000 2025-11-1523:51

      I've got one of these but it can't handle google meet these days.

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