AMD Thinkpad L14 Gen 3 Ryzen 7 PRO 5875U with Qubes 4.2.0

User Support HCL Reports
6

Installation

Basic Input

  • Keyboard - works
  • External USB mouse - works (notification pops up asking to connect to dom0)
  • External USB keyboard - works (connect to a VM via sys-usb tray icon)
  • Touch-pad - works
  • Touch-pad supports “tap as click” and scrolling with 2 fingers works - 2 finger scrolling works, tap as click untested
  • Display brightness change shortcuts - works
  • Sound volume shortcuts - works
  • Keyboard led and keyboard brightness change shortcuts - n/a; no backlight
  • Output of xinput --list from terminal of dom0 - bash: xinput: command not found
  • Check if keyboard and/or touchpad is PS/2 connected (how to check ) - keyboard works when sys-usb is powered off

Internet and bluetooth

  • Ethernet cable connection - works out of the box or actions were required? - works
  • Ethernet cable connection - speed - 15MB/s download, 5MB/s upload; did not benchmark on local network
  • Wifi connection - works out of the box or actions were required? - works
  • Wifi connection - speed, is reliable over the time? - seems reliable over time; 14MB/s download, 5MB/s upload; did not benchmark on local network
  • Bluetooth - works out of the box or actions were required? - works
  • Bluetooth - shows devices, connection process works, sound output or copying works. - works; can play audio from phone via Qubes speakers, but the quality was poor (laggy)

Suspend

  • Suspend/Resume works - works out of the box or actions were required? - works
  • Does resume breaks WiFi, if it does, how to recover it? - additional steps required: reload the mt7921e kernel module (this can be done automatically)
  • Does resume breaks Bluetooth, if it does, how to recover it? - faulty; reboot whole system (I have not attempted reloading a module yet)

There’s probably a better way to fix both.

Video [increase VCPU to the qube before test]

  • Fullscreen and windowed video playback of youtube - 720p/1080p/2K/4K in Firefox. Does it drop frames? - faulty? this played fine immediately after install, but after updating, it will only play for a split second in fullscreen and windowed mode
  • Video file playback of file using mpv/mplayer/smplayer - 1080p? Higher resolutions and bitrates? - mpv works; after seeking or pausing it will often fail to resume immediately (see output below), switching to Debian and running sudo apt install pulseaudio-qubes worked wonderfully
  • Multiple displays configuration works (using available DP/Thunderbolt, HDMI or other video ports) - USB-C untested. 4K display over HDMI worked after increasing VRAM.

Audio

  • Speakers (sound playback) (was sys-audio used?) - works; sys-audio was not used
  • Head-phones via 3.5" jack - works, automatically turns off speakers
  • Head-phones via USB-C - works, automatically turns off speakers (note that you connect this directly to the desired VM)
  • Sound output via HDMI - worked originally but broke some time later
  • Audio-optical (S/PDIF) output - n/a

Fans

  • Fans are silent on idle - works
  • Are fans noisier than on Windows/Linux?. If they are, was thankfan or similar software tried? - untested

Other

  • Have you tried running Windows 10 HVM qubes? - untested
  • Does CPU boost seem to be working properly? - works; ran while :; do :; done which increased CPU frequency in xenpm start 1 | grep "Avg"

Specs:

  • ThinkPad L14 Gen 3 (AMD) spec sheet
  • Display native resolution: 1920x1080
  • Maximum possible RAM memory - 64GB
  • CPU score: 16282
  • 5 USB buses (lsusb output below):
    1. QEMU tablet
    2. Bluetooth, left USB-A, left USB-C (not the one for charging)
    3. unknown
    4. camera, right USB-A, left USB-C for charging and data
    5. unknown
  • Internal TPM - 2.0, untested because I’m awaiting AMD support for verified boot; I disabled TPM before installing

Outputs

lsusb run in sys-usb with nothing plugged in

Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 001 Device 002: ID 0627:0001 Adomax Technology Co., Ltd QEMU Tablet
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 002 Device 002: ID 0489:e0d8 Foxconn / Hon Hai Bluetooth Adapter
Bus 003 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0003 Linux Foundation 3.0 root hub
Bus 004 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 004 Device 002: ID 1a40:0101 Terminus Technology Inc. Hub
Bus 004 Device 003: ID 13d3:54aa IMC Networks [unknown]
Bus 005 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0003 Linux Foundation 3.0 root hub

mpv

 (+) Video --vid=1 (*) (h264 608x1080 30.000fps)
 (+) Audio --aid=1 --alang=eng (*) (opus 2ch 48000Hz)
libEGL warning: DRI2: failed to authenticate
[vo/gpu/opengl] Suspected software renderer or indirect context.
MESA: error: ZINK: failed to choose pdev
glx: failed to create drisw screen
failed to load driver: zink
[vo/gpu/opengl] Suspected software renderer or indirect context.
[vo/gpu/drm] VT_GETMODE failed: Inappropriate ioctl for device
[vo/gpu/drm] Failed to set up VT switcher. Terminal switching will be unavailable.
[vo/gpu/drm] Listing DRM devices with drmGetDevices failed! (No such file or directory)
[vo/gpu/drm] Failed to find a usable DRM primary node!
[vo/gpu/libplacebo] Found no suitable device, giving up.
[vo/gpu/libplacebo] Failed initializing vulkan device
libEGL warning: DRI2: failed to authenticate
[vo/gpu-next/opengl] Suspected software renderer or indirect context.
MESA: error: ZINK: failed to choose pdev
glx: failed to create drisw screen
failed to load driver: zink
[vo/gpu-next/opengl] Suspected software renderer or indirect context.
[vo/gpu-next/drm] Can't handle VT release - signal already used
[vo/gpu-next/drm] Failed to set up VT switcher. Terminal switching will be unavailable.
[vo/gpu-next/drm] Listing DRM devices with drmGetDevices failed! (No such file or directory)
[vo/gpu-next/drm] Failed to find a usable DRM primary node!
[vo/gpu-next/libplacebo] Found no suitable device, giving up.
[vo/gpu-next/libplacebo] Failed initializing vulkan device
Failed to open VDPAU backend libvdpau_nvidia.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
[vo/vdpau] Error when calling vdp_device_create_x11: 1
[vo/xv] No Xvideo support found.
MESA: error: ZINK: failed to choose pdev
glx: failed to create drisw screen
failed to load driver: zink
[vo/sdl] Using opengl
[vo/sdl] Warning: this legacy VO has bad performance. Consider fixing your graphics drivers, or not forcing the sdl VO.
No video PTS! Making something up. Using 30.000000 FPS.
AO: [pipewire] 48000Hz stereo 2ch floatp
VO: [sdl] 608x1080 yuv420p
Invalid video timestamp: 0.000000 -> 0.000000
AV: 00:00:14 / 00:00:14 (99%) A-V:  0.000

Exiting... (End of file)
2 Likes
7

That took a long time to put together, but I know my system better because of it. Better to iron out technical issues now instead of when you’re presenting to an audience.

It seems the only big issues are network devices going down on suspend and video playback. I’m planning on working on network devices next, but smooth video playback was an issue I was unable to fix on my last computer; I would appreciate advice on how to fix that.

2 Likes
8

Thank you for information!

About playback stopping in a second after start: it is almost always related to sound not being able to be passed to audio qube (dom0 by default). The vchan/sound buffer gets full and playback instantly stops.
Try the video file without audio track (e.g. remove it completely with ffmpeg).

1 Like
9

That’s awesome information!

I don’t have that problem with mpv. mpv works fairly smoothly unless I seek or pause, which triggers:

Audio/Video desynchronisation detected! Possible reasons include too slow
hardware, temporary CPU spikes, broken drivers, and broken files. Audio
position will not match to the video (see A-V status field).

Disabling audio using --aid=no removes this error message, but I still have the problem that the video will freeze for several seconds.

However, YouTube will never play for more than a split second unless I mute it, then it seems to work fine, including seek and pause.

10

Using i3 window manager and xrandr --output HDMI-1 --above eDP-1 --auto causes each kind of mouse click to fail in AppVMs, still works fine in dom0 and works fine after you remove the screen and run xrandr --auto.

Edited because after increasing VRAM, the mouse click issue with the second monitor went away.

11

On resume from suspend, sys-net would show a page allocation failure and CPU Tainted: G

dmesg prior to fix

[ 1067.807736] mt7921e 0000:00:07.0: ASIC revision: 79220010
[ 1067.892557] mt7921e 0000:00:07.0: HW/SW Version: 0x8a108a10, Build Time: 20231120183400a

[ 1067.919520] mt7921e 0000:00:07.0: WM Firmware Version: ____000000, Build Time: 20231120183441
[ 1067.978287] kworker/0:1: page allocation failure: order:5, mode:0x40cc0(GFP_KERNEL|__GFP_COMP), nodemask=(null),cpuset=/,mems_allowed=0
[ 1067.978318] CPU: 0 PID: 1910 Comm: kworker/0:1 Tainted: G        W          6.1.62-1.qubes.fc37.x86_64 #1
[ 1067.978328] Hardware name: Xen HVM domU, BIOS 4.17.2 01/03/2024
[ 1067.978336] Workqueue: events mt7921_init_work [mt7921_common]
[ 1067.978350] Call Trace:
[ 1067.978356]  <TASK>

Fix

sudo rmmod mt7921e
sudo modprobe mt7921e

Fixes the problem.

As suggested by Suspend/resume troubleshooting, I did

echo "mt7921e" >> /rw/config/suspend-module-blacklist

Then I suspended and resumed, but WiFi doesn’t work. dmesg has the same error as before, followed by:

mt7921e 0000:00:07.0: register device failed

I tried,

sudo rmmod mt7921e

but this resulted in sys-net crashing. I repeated this with the same effect.

I tried suspend again, and this time ran:

sudo modprobe mt7921e
sudo rmmod mt7921e
sudo modprobe mt7921e

And it worked. I repeated that and it worked again.

Ultimately, I ended up removing mt7921e in /rw/config/suspend-module-blacklist and instead implementing this behavior manually:

Automated fix

/rw/config/qubes-bind-dirs.d/50_user.conf

binds+= ( '/etc/pm/sleep.d' )

/rw/bind-dirs/etc/pm/sleep.d/restart-network.sh

#!/bin/sh

case "${1}" in
	suspend|hibernate)
		sudo rmmod mt7921e
		;;
	resume|thaw)
		sudo modprobe mt7921e
		;;
esac

This ran into a lot of issues, so I fell back to just manually running sudo rmmod mt7921e && sleep 0.5 && sudo modprobe mt7921e

2 Likes
12

WiFi reconnects automatically with some additional configuration. The only major item left is video+audio playback. Do you know how to fix audio playback?

What else do I need to do to get this on the community-recommended list?

13
  1. This list is kind of outdated and does not reflect the current situation. You can see it only consist of outdated laptops and certified ones.
  2. Its rules are to strict, even laptops that require NO additional steps like you have with wifi, failed to get into it.

If/when the new extended compare/recommended list is created, this laptop can definitely hope to get there.

1 Like
14

For some reason,

qvm-features dom0 gui-videoram-min $(( (1920 * 3840) * 2160 / 1024 ))

Did not persist between reboots, so I added it to ~/.profile

Edit: Did not work, so I changed it to:

qvm-features dom0 gui-videoram-min $(( (1920 * 3840) * 2160 * 4 / 1024 ))
15

If it is not an expected behavior, you should report it on github issues.

16

Great that works without problems on 4.2! I’m still on 4.1, I have to see when I have time to upgrade. Maybe a clean install is better for the HCL/recommended list, but obviously that takes more time, so I’m not sure when I’ll have the time for that.

Checking CPU frequency does not work properly on Qubes for some methods.
Try xenpm start 1|grep "Avg freq"while doing something CPU intensive.

3 Likes
17

CPU boost works! Thank you.

1 Like
18

Thank you for all the info. I noticed: 25 min. zoom call - minus 30% battery. How is the battery time on average use approximately? Qubes is rather battery consuming,

19

It seems really good compared to my T450s with an old battery. On the L14, the battery seems to last 3-5 hours of use.

1 Like
20

That’s pretty good. I have seen often in tests that those AMD Ryzen 7 CPUs have better battery performance in general than comparable Intel CPUs (like Ryzen 7 7840HS vs i7-13700H).

21

I got video playback including YouTube working smoothly by switching to Debian and installing pulseaudio-qubes. HDMI audio no longer works after updating Fedora, but it works on Debian.

I’m still having the same issue as Scumbag: pciback ... not ready ___ms after FLR. This delays the startup of the sys-net by about a minute.

22

I have installed R4.2 on my L14 and also experienced WiFi not working after suspend, which is also fixed by reloading kernel module in sys-net. I did not have this issue in R4.1 so I found that strange. The only other difference I could think of was that I used the default Fedora template in R4.1, but R4.2 uses Fedora-xfce.
When I switch sys-net from fedora-39-xfce to fedora-39, WiFi works again after suspend without needing to reload kernel modules.
So that would make it a template issue instead of a hardware compatibility issue.

2 Likes
23

Interesting. fedora-39 no longer works for me, with or without my workaround.

However, switching sys-net to debian-12-xfce fixed the issue.

Edit: It is not totally fixed. It seems to work most of the time, but still requires rebooting sys-net occasionally.

2 Likes
24

@zaz willing to test AEM trenchboot? I am just about to retire my T480 as a testing machine and wanted to get the L14 for my daily.

25

A week from now, I will have enough time to risk messing with my computer. However, it seems trenchboot is still not working for AMD. See their Github Milestone.

1 Like