I’m looking into the possibility of getting a laptop to dual boot Windows 10/11 with Qubes. Qubes would be the main OS, but when performance is needed (say for gaming or for battery life) I’d switch to Windows. Since I want to get into casual gaming, I’m looking at getting a laptop with an AMD APU which uses integrated Radeon graphics. However on the system requirements page it says AMD graphics aren’t tested often. But this leaves me unsure with whether or not an AMD laptop might work or might not work.
Generally speaking, are modern AMD integrated Radeon graphics likely to work? Is it a 50/50 chance? Or is it unlikely to work?
When it comes to the question whether a specific laptop will work with Qubes OS, the only way to be sure is to have a positive report in the HCL for the specific configuration and release you are targeting. This is rare with Intel machines and even more rare with AMD machines. Our list of community-recommended laptops currently doesn’t have an AMD machine on it. That’s not because of any bias, but simply because there are no sufficient reports.
So if you are ready to take some risk and do some troubleshooting, you may look into a laptop that has Radeon Vega 3 or 8 in it. You haven’t mentioned how technical you are, so take this into consideration. Most importantly make sure that the CPU supports IOMMU!
My 2 cents: if you can afford it I’d recommend you get whatever AMD machine you’d like for your gaming and in addition get a used ThinkPad from eBay that is on the list of community-recommended laptops or has good HCL reports. For Qubes OS you are better off with an older machine anyway, since new hardware is typically not supported to well.
Aside from the fully-positive entries, you may accept some limitations of other machines. Eg. my MSI Bravo 17 works pretty nicely for everyday work, if you accept the suspend/resume does not work.
(separate answer as should probably be split to new thread)
I’m still thinking myself of buying me a Thinkpad, but I’m pretty wary of used hardware.
It seems a bit harder to trust a random ebay seller for used hardware, than to trust a manufacturer, right ? There may have been firmware modifications, even unbeknownst to the previous owner (malware infection), at least in theory. I’d think establishing trust in such hardware would require to apply some sort of “decontamination” process involving checking the various firmwares, but that would possibly require quite some knowledge about the particular hardware (probably not all of which being publicly available to start with).
Throw away the HDD and put new SSD inside. Flash Coreboot/Heads (disable/clean ME). Remove Bluetooth card. Exchange Wi-Fi card against better/newer one. → this should get rid of any residual firmware modifications.
If you can: max out the RAM. This way you can have a kick ass Qubes OS machine for little money and verified boot.
Sorry I was not clear, I meant “a page for hardware decontamination howtos for various types of hardware”. This would Community-recommended computers page could possibly act as a portal for this kind of information too.
