By the way TPM is activated. I don’t have a clue why HCL report reads “TPM: Device not found” Is there someone here that can inform me about this?
@fsflover
I ran in one problem with suspend. After supending to sleep by closing the lid for more than 12 hours the system wouldn’ t wake up. I have had this same problem with a T480 before. After that I found that suspend is working fine again. But I didn’ t keep it for lomger than 4 hours in suspend.
I’ve currently got 4.0 working on a T480S.
Lenovo’s Thinkpad BIOS does not allow you to select the EFI file and expects a standard EFI directory naming/structure, as per:
Once copying the efi files from -/qubes/ all works well.
I’ll send an updated reply when I’ve got r4.1 working.
Thank you @Quser59 for your report, which is online now!
I had to remove/shorten your remarks to not explode the table. Instead I have pasted them into your original post, which is linked from the HCL entry (reporter name links to the post).
@Sven I have Qubes running on a another T480s with the exact same spec. So far, no issues whatsoever.
As above:
Lenovo EFI boot requires /boot/efi/EFI/qubes → /boot/efi/EFI/BOOT; grubx64.efi → BOOTX64.efi, grub.cfg → BOOTX64.cfg and xen-$latest.efi → xen.efi
Touchscreen input requires usb controller assigned to sys-usb and qubes proxy TabletInput sys-usb->dom0 enabled.
On this machine I also had to set the USB controller pci options:
qvm-pci attach --persistent --option permissive=true --option no-strict-reset=true sys-usb dom0:xxx
Hi I am considering acquiring a T480s and installing Qubes. Sorry I’m new to this, and I don’t quite understand this abbreviated set of instructions. I was looking at the UEFI troubleshooting guide and it does not specify grubx64.efi or grub.cfg. Would you mind elaborating on these steps a little more? I would like to gauge how difficult this is before committing to buying a T480s. I am hoping that troubleshooting UEFI is just a tiny bit of text editing and a few cp and mv commands, which should be quite trivial.
Hi VXC the T480s (2018 & 2019)) works out of the box with QubesOS. On the contrary with my T14s AMD (2021) I have a number of issues to solve.AMD is not always Linux friendly and QubesOS is not the easiest Linux install. I have 2 T480s running QubesOS now an Intel i5 8350U 40GBRAM and a i7 8650U 40GBRAM both have 8GB soldered and a 32GB soDIMM in the memory slot (Specs say 24GB RAM is max but 40GB works fine). Installing QubesOS takes a little time but on the 2 T480s I use I have no real issues except from an occasional suspend to hybernation issue that occurs (I don´t use suspend to sleep). Both are non touch screen models L8 Mobo’s I do recommend the T480s it has the advantage of a second M.2 2242 or 2230 SSD in the WIWAN slot. Although the T480s is 3years older then the T14s Gen2 AMD this older T480s laptop is to prefer for QubesOS. Anyway never buy the newest hardware if you want to run QubesOS. ThinkPad T480s is widely available and not too expensive (I fully recommend this type).
Mind you I am just starting to use QubesOS and still in the trial and error phase.
Although the T480s is 3years older then the T14s Gen2 AMD this older T480s laptop is to prefer for QubesOS. Anyway never buy the newest hardware if you want to run QubesOS.
Thanks for the advice. This is really helpful for me! For the T480S I’m surprised that you didn’t need to do any of the UEFI troubleshooting mentioned by Quser59. However out of the box compatibility is definitely a plus! I will probably give T480S a try
Hi VXC No UEFI/BIOS troubleshooting was necessary at both T480s QubesOS installations.
But I always flash the latest UEFI/BIOS before I install a new OS on a system.
At Lenovo these new firmware is easy to download.
Furthermore the cooling issues for the 8th Gen Intel i7 CPU’s I mentioned before are solved in Linux now. My fan almost never is on for longer than e few minutes. Also battery life is great now on these CPU’s This is one of the advantages when you use not the newest hardware.
Hi VXC No UEFI/BIOS troubleshooting was necessary at both T480s QubesOS installations.
That’s great news!
Is the i7 recommended over the i5 for Qubes? I was thinking the power efficiency might be better on the i5. I would be willing to sacrifice a little power efficiency if getting the i7 offers a noticeable gain in performance.
Hi VXC
The i5’s are good enough, but always take the 8th generation i5 8250U or i5 8350U. Preferably the latter. These have 4 cores and 6MB cache on the cores.
DON´T take the 7th generation i5 7200U or i5 7300U those only have 2 cores and only 3MB cache on the cores. NOT RECOMMENDED.
The 8th generation Intel i5 & i7 are great they leave a huge performance leap to the 7th generation i5 & i7.
More important is that you invest a few € or $ in sufficient RAM.
My advise is that when you buy a T480s, try to get a version with 8GB RAM soldered on the board and add at least a 16GB RAM soDIMM this way you have 24GB RAM (You can get up to 40GB when you add a 32GB soDIMM). The amount of RAM is important if you intent to run more QUBES at the same time (it’s all virtual machines so it’s depending on the amount of RAM you have installed). Due to the fact that the VM’s run in fast RAM memory it’s a real fast OS (RAM is a lot faster than SSD NVMe gen 3x4). In QubesOS you can easily adjust the amount of RAM a QUBE can access so some Qubes you run with a smaller amount of RAM simply because there is not much RAM needed.
Another nice aspect of T480s is also that the 2280 SSD slot allows double sided SSD. For instance you can get a double sided ADATA 8200 which is good and fast and energy efficient and not expensive. In the WiWan slot there is only room for a one sided short SSD (2242 or 2230). That is if you intent to install a 2nd SSD (Think about it it can come in handy).
So i5 is good enough (download the PSREF for Lenovo T480s and you can see what are the possible choices that Lenovo offerred). Intel i7 is not that much faster it has the advantage of 8MB cache on the cores but I doubt that a normal user will notice. Better is to invest a little money RAM there you gain performance when you want to run QubesOS.
The page you are linking to describes exactly what is needed:
Some firmware will not recognize the default Qubes EFI configuration. As such, it will have to be manually edited to be bootable. This will need to be done after every kernel and Xen update to ensure you use the most recently installed versions.
Copy the /boot/efi/EFI/qubes/ directory to /boot/efi/EFI/BOOT/ (the contents of /boot/efi/EFI/BOOT should be identical to /boot/efi/EFI/qubes besides what is described in steps 2 and 3):
cp -r /boot/efi/EFI/qubes/. /boot/efi/EFI/BOOT
Rename /boot/efi/EFI/BOOT/xen.cfg to /boot/efi/EFI/BOOT/BOOTX64.cfg:
mv /boot/efi/EFI/BOOT/xen.cfg /boot/efi/EFI/BOOT/BOOTX64.cfg
Copy /boot/efi/EFI/qubes/xen-*.efi to /boot/efi/EFI/qubes/xen.efi and /boot/efi/EFI/BOOT/BOOTX64.efi. For example, with Xen 4.8.3 (you may need to confirm file overwrite):
cp /boot/efi/EFI/qubes/xen-4.8.3.efi /boot/efi/EFI/qubes/xen.efi
cp /boot/efi/EFI/qubes/xen-4.8.3.efi /boot/efi/EFI/BOOT/BOOTX64.efi
Thanks Quser59. I actually had no issues installing 4.1.1 on the T480s.
The only I issue I had was trying to use debian as a default template. Couldn’t get wireless to work on debian. After using fedora as a default template, everything works now.
Tested: All USB ports, WiFi, Audio Jack, Speakers
Not tested: HDMI, LAN, SD, Camera (listed as device), Microphone (listed as device)
Issues: Slow return from sleep when lid was closed.
