HCL - Lenovo P14s Gen 5 (21ME001LUS)

User Support HCL Reports
1

I bought a brand new Lenovo P14s Gen 5 laptop and tried to get it working with Qubes. It sort of works as a standalone laptop. WiFi didn’t work, but that could probably be remedied with some effort. Unplugging USB devices makes it crash … maybe that is not a dealbreaker for some. The big problem for me was the Thunderbolt dock.

Running Qubes with the Thunderbolt dock connected would, in short order (once even when entering the disk encryption password) print a message “disabling IRQ 118” (or 119 don’t remember for sure). After that happened, all input of any kind to the laptop is disabled, including the built-in keyboard and trackpoint which otherwise was working.

For me the dock is a dealbreaker since most of the time I would be using the laptop at my desk. I’ve already initiated a return but thought I would get an HCL while I have the laptop here.

In order to get Qubes to install I used kernel-latest, and I added module_blacklist=ucsi_acpi to the Linux kernel command line when installing.

I tried various other snippets I found in the forums (e.g. acpi=off, ioapic_ack=new) to try to get it working better with the dock with no success. I would not recommend this laptop unless you never want to plug it in to Thunderbolt and you never want to unplug a USB device. I think there are few people who could live with these constraints.

It’s too bad because this is the first ThinkPad I’ve ever bought and it’s a great laptop, but I bought it strictly to run Qubes and it can’t do that for me.

---
layout:
  'hcl'
type:
  'Notebook'
hvm:
  'yes'
iommu:
  'yes'
slat:
  'yes'
tpm:
  '2.0'
remap:
  'yes'
brand: |
  LENOVO
model: |
  21ME001LUS
bios: |
  R2LET25W (1.06 )
cpu: |
  AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 8840HS w/ Radeon 780M Graphics
cpu-short: |
  FIXME
chipset: |
  Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Device [1022:14e8]
chipset-short: |
  FIXME
gpu: |
  Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] Device [1002:1900] (rev d2) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
gpu-short: |
  FIXME
network: |
  Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8111/8168/8411 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet Controller [10ec:8168] (rev 0e)
  Qualcomm Technologies, Inc QCNFA765 Wireless Network Adapter [17cb:1103] (rev 01)
memory: |
  28314
scsi: |

usb: |
  8
certified:
  'no'
versions:
  - works:
      'no'
    qubes: |
      R4.2.2
    xen: |
      4.17.4
    kernel: |
      6.9.7-1
    remark: |
      no WiFi, no thunderbolt, unstable (unplugging USB devices causes machine crash)
    credit: |
      FIXAUTHOR
    link: |
      FIXLINK
2 Likes
2

The laptop was boxed up waiting to be dropped off at UPS but I decided to give it one more try. I had been installing with a USB Qube. I decided to install again, this time without a USB Qube.

It works better. It actually does see a monitor plugged into the Thunderbolt dock. At this time I only tested with one such monitor. I could activate the monitor in display settings and it worked. Also, it didn’t block input forever.

However, although it worked better, it still did not work well. It would not block input forever, but it would still block it. I would have a few seconds of being able to use the mouse or trackpoint, then they would lock up for several seconds. This was a cycle that would repeat ad infinitum. The keyboard was worse. If I had a key pressed down when it “froze”, the key would repeat the whole time it was frozen and only stop the next time it became responsive to input again.

It is still, regrettably, completely unusable.

1 Like
3

I tried plugging in the Thunderbolt dock only after logging in to Qubes instead of having it plugged in while the machine starts and it actually works a lot better. When I plug it in after I’m logged in to Qubes, it takes a couple of seconds and then all three of my desktop monitors worked, and so did my external mouse and keyboard. I had to plug ethernet directly in to the laptop’s own ethernet port, and that did work.

I did still experience one crash though a few seconds after plugging in the dock so I’m not sure it’s perfectly stable.

Unfortunately the WiFi still is not working and after reading this two year old thread QCNFA765 (wcn6855) WiFi6 controller not working - #9 by Jakob I believe this is the end of the road as I’m facing exactly these symptoms.