from makingStuffForFun@lemmy.ml to linux@lemmy.ml on 26 Feb 2025 08:16
https://lemmy.ml/post/26477057
Hi all,
We are purchasing a new laptop for a new employee.
We’ll be booting directly into bios, changing settings as required, and installing linux immediately (either Fedora or POP).
However, we’ve only ever run intel machines.
Does anyone know if this could potentially cause any issues? We want a set and forget experience (have had that with intels).
System specs for the Ryzen version
Processor AMD Ryzen™ 7 7735U Processor (2.70 GHz up to 4.75 GHz) Operating System
Windows 11 Pro 64 (being removed immediately)
Graphic Card Integrated AMD Radeon™ 680M
Memory 16 GB DDR5-4800MT/s (SODIMM)(2 x 8 GB)
Storage 512 GB SSD M.2 2242 PCIe Gen4 TLC Opal
Display 14" WUXGA (1920 x 1200), IPS, Anti-Glare, Non-Touch, 45%NTSC, 300 nits, 60 Hz
Camera 1080p FHD IR Hybrid with Microphone and Privacy Shutter
Battery 3 Cell Li-Polymer 47 Wh
AC Adapter / Power Supply 65W
Fingerprint Reader
Pointing Device Trackpad
Keyboard Backlit, Black - English (US)
WIFI Wi-Fi 6E 2x2 AX & Bluetooth® 5.1 or above
Colour Graphite Black
Weight 1.53kgs / 3.37lbs
Part Number: 21M3003DAU
I should add the intel version here for comparison, I feel it has a little more happening:
System specs:
Processor 13th Generation Intel® Core™ i7-1355U Processor (E-cores up to 3.70 GHz P-cores up to 5.00 GHz)
Operating System Windows 11 Pro 64
Graphic Card Integrated Intel® Iris® Xe Graphics
Memory 16 GB DDR4-3200MHz(8 GB Soldered + 8 GB SODIMM)
Storage 512 GB SSD M.2 2242 PCIe Gen4 TLC Opal
Display 14" WUXGA (1920 x 1200), IPS, Anti-Glare, Non-Touch, 45%NTSC, 300 nits, 60 Hz
Camera 1080p FHD RGB with Microphone and Privacy Shutter
Battery 3 Cell Li-Polymer 47 Wh
AC Adapter / Power Supply 65W
Fingerprint Reader
Pointing Device Trackpad
Keyboard Backlit, Black - English (US)
WIFI Intel® Wi-Fi 6E AX211 2x2 AX & Bluetooth® 5.1 (Windows 10) or Bluetooth® 5.3 (Windows 11)
Colour Black
Weight 1.47kgs / 3.23lbs
Part Number: 21JK00P5AU
Any advice would be GREATLY appreciated. Thanks so much! Torn on the intel VS the Ryzen
threaded - newest
.
@makingStuffForFun My E16 G1 which is similar works perfectly
Same. I love my E16 Gen 1.
I have a similarly spec’d E14 Gen 6. I run Fedora and am very happy. I didn’t need to do anything, everything ran out of the box (even the fingerprint sensor and the little nob).
this is a gen6 e14. Thank you. That’s what I needed to hear. Turns out the intel has a bit more to it, will udpate my post. So undecided
AMD is no problem. Only nvidea (of the big mainstream hardware manufacturers) does not supply Linux drivers.
In fact AMD will most likely make it easier than Intel if something doesn’t work. Intel pretty mutch only thinks about Winows, so if there are driver problems, there are only windows drivers to download on their website (but there shouldn’t be an problems in the first place anyway)
To be clear, NVidia supplies Linux drivers, but they are proprietary semi-broken nonsense.
Where did you get that from? Intel officially supports their drivers on linux and has many engineers working on support for their products in the kernel and mesa.
It’s rare that I see something this false on here, damn. Nvidia does supply Linux drivers and they are 95% painless nowadays (still much worse than what is found in Mesa for Amd or Intel, but the bar is high). Intel has excellent Linux support, better than AMD in some cases (think wifi chips). Anectdonally, I have had a bit of issues with my Amd laptop, and the flaws were all related to the integrated GPU!
Yeah I was pretty surprised. There are still some frustrations now and then but the Nvidia driver has gotten much closer to AMD lately. There’s even an open driver being developed.
I’ve had a very good experience with a similarly-speced AMD E16 gen 1.
The only issue I’d warn you about is the Wi-Fi modem might be a Realtek on some models. Mine came with one, and while on recent kernels, it mostly worked well out of the box, it had one issue: something went weird with ACPI when I switched between certain networks, which caused the card to crash and completely disconnect to the system unless I rebooted. I was able to find a fix by changing some options with modprobe.d, which I detail here: startrek.website/post/14342770 . Since that, it’s been an extremely smooth experience.
To explain why AMD is fine: Linux doesn’t care about the brand, it just needs a chip that uses the x86 instruction set. This was Intel’s invention and AMD occupies the niche of Intel’s competitor. Intel is Coke, AMD is Pepsi, basically.
Actually the modern 64 bit processors are based on a design by AMD which was then licensed by Intel as far as I know.
Correct. That is why it is often referred to as amd64.
Mystery solved. Thank you
TIL!
There are differences in the laptops themselves though. For example, last generation thinkpads did not support S3 sleep for AMD models only.
My p14s AMD gen 4 (same as T14) does in the bag after a few days, because it only supports “modern standby”. I wish I got an Intel model just for that.
Hopefully we will see better support in the future. Other than that it works pretty well.
I have basically the same machine (7730u instead of 7735u) - works great (go into bios and set power saving mode (default is smart cool, which is not that great, I had higher power consumption at idle) and disable psp)
AMD vs Intel - does not really matter - try to find performance/price ratio and pick better one. Also, go on lenovo configurator site, yoou maybe able to find (or spec up) the same laptop for even cheaper (I got mine for about $400)
In case you want to look at my config lemmings.world/post/21375035/13799657
linux-hardware.org/?probe=66c7a6f6dc
I find lenovo in general has pretty good linux support. Although mine has patchy WiFi
Mine works great but the touchpad is laggy when charging.
AMD and Intel both have very good linux support. On that note there shouldn’t be much of a difference.
In fact, AMD GPU drivers are quite a bit ahead of Intel on Linux. And the AMD laptop has a significantly more powerful iGPU plus it has DDR5 ram. So it should give you noticeably better performance.
More problematic could be the wifi chip, fingerprint reader and maybe the camera.
Wifi nowadays works well on Linux so I don’t think that should be much of a problem. Intel Wifi usually has better support though.
Cameras also mostly work though the IR sensor might not work.
Fingerprint support on linux is 50/50 (from linux-hardware, it seems fingerprint on similar models is not working unfortunately). If you know the exact fingerprint reader model on the laptop you can check if it has linux support.
Thinkpads usually have good support on Linux overall so I won’t be too worried with either option. I couldn’t find the exact models on linux-hardware.org, however I did find similar models:
All AMD models by this name (E14 Gen 6)
All Intel models by this name (E14 Gen 5)
21M3002TGE
21JK0009SP
I have a similar T14 with AMD and everything works fine, except the fingerprint reader. Tested with Debian, Fedora, MX, and more
One thing I didn’t see mentioned yet that’s in favor of AMD: Intel and its stupid, stupid IPU6 system. I’ve got a new work laptop now with an Intel Meteor Lake chip and the webcam is hooked up via IPU6. This means that I can’t use the built-in webcam until upstream support for the specific sensor arrives in the kernel.
Some sensors are already supported but it shouldn’t be this hard to make the internal webcam of your laptop work. I thought these issues were a thing of the past.
wouldn’t it suffice to build it from source into a kernel module that you can load? that way you wouldn’t even need to build the kernel. DKMS would help to automate this for kernel updates
That’s what I thought, too, so I compiled from source and loaded the module. Unfortunately this still only makes the camera work in Firefox, but not in Zoom and Slack where I actually need it. I stopped digging into it more and simply use a USB webcam for now until the driver for my sensor is fully upstreamed.
you may try it if you could use OBS to capture the webcam, and “relay” it with its virtual camera feature.
did you try running zoom and slack in firefox? Personally, I would never run them without the browser’s isolation
It should work pretty well, I have a AMD 5600H and runs “MX Linux AHS” for 3 years now
There’s really no difference between cpu manifacturers. You should instead consider that the fingerprint reader can easily be a pain in the ass to make it work properly
Loads of fingerprint readers are not useable in Linux either, thanks Synaptics, and Co!
I spent about two years trying and giving up to get my fingerprint reader working on my X1 Carbon.
Then chat gpt comes out and I ask that how to do it.
It gives me a one-line bash / script thingy, and my fingerprint reader has worked ever since.
That was a pretty cool day.
If it helps, I’m running PopOS on a Ryzen-powered Lenovo laptop (Yoga 6) with integrated graphics. No issues whatsoever, so far
Yeah I’m writing this from an Ideapad 5 with a Ryzen CPU & integrated Radeon running Arch (btw) with no troubles. This is my second Lenovo laptop, the first one also ran Ubuntu, POP, Manjaro, Arch & Nix with no worries too.
Webcam on Intel may not work due to drivers that Intel hasn’t written/upstreamed for IPU6 cameras. Looks like it’s in the work now… for certain sensors. Intel has taken literal years to get anything out. the Core Ultra 200 series is out but drivers for these webcams which have in use since Tiger lake (almost half a decade ago!!) still don’t work.
“Greg KH Recommends Avoiding Alder Lake Laptops” www.phoronix.com/…/Greg-KH-No-ADL-Webcam-Laptop
Nor the integrated cameras or the IR camera worked out of the box on my laptop. Some hacks could be done to make it work but it breaks after the system is updated. It never worked when I needed it and image quality was limited to 720p and worse. From what I understand, current methods to get the camera to work use minimal software processing to process the images, instead of the dedicated silicon.
Not all Intel laptops use IPU6. I know some HPs do not.
Haven’t had many issues with the Intel AX211. Very rarely, the wifi settings will disappear after my laptop suspends and a reboot is needed.
The battery capacity also doesn’t seem very big, I’m not sure how efficient the AMD CPU is but I’d be worried that Intel would deliver less battery life.
GPU performance might also be better on AMD? (haven’t checked).
I’ve had a T series with a 5850 in it for a while now, and it’s an absolute champ. Definitely one of the best laptops I’ve owned.
AMD for sure.
It should work without any issues. AMD is perfectly fine. They are among the main contributors to the Linux kernel and their products work just fine. In general, you should be worried only about nVidia cards, which this laptop doesn’t have. Even these are working much better nowadays.
the 680M is well supported. You should be fine with that.
I’d keep either CPU vendor behind one or two generations from latest, at least in the GPU dept, to avoid the chance of any issue. The 680M fits that mark so I don’t foresee anything major.