| ThinkPad P51 | |
|---|---|
| Recommended CPU | i7-7820HQ |
| Max. memory | 64GB (4 slots) |
| USB controllers | 1 |
| Coreboot | no |
| Heads | no |
| ME_cleaner | no |
| Qubes OS pre-installed | no |
| Developer tested | no |
| Certified | no |
| Problems | Suspend broken, No HDMI audio |
| HCL reports | R4.0, R4.0 |
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Hi Sven hope all is well,
Iâve been researching several of the laptops on the HCL and Community Recommended List - It seems that if I want memory in the 32 to 64GB range, there is a very limited amount of laptops that would âjust workâ (I am a newbie to Qubes).
I know you mentioned that you have been using the P51 yourself.
Couple questions if you donât mind:
Does your HDMI audio work? I know that was a reported issue with the 4.0 version on HCL (Michael Holtâs log).
I also notice that the successful logs are with M1200 Mobile or HD 630 Graphics, but I see a couple P51 with Quadro M2200 for sale. I am not sure if the M2200 would create an issue since it isnât exactly the same as listed on the successful reports.
I also notice that there are three successful logs on HCL for the P50 without workarounds, but I donât see it mentioned on the Community Recommended List. Not sure if the P50 has some unforeseen issues not mentioned on the logs?
Lastly, I went through the Community List for any laptops that have a max memory over 16 GB, and it seemed the L380 didnât require any workarounds, the P51, and E570.
The T480 appears to require workarounds, so I omitted it from my search (I also omitted the preinstalled laptops due to price).
Basically I think the P51 might be the best bet It has more positive reviews, you have been using it for 4 years, etc⌠but Iâm concerned about the difference in graphics between the successful logs and what is for sale (in regards to Qubes complications).
Hopefully I am posting this in the appropriate area since it is a predominantly P51 question with a little P50 sprinkled in there. Thanks!
Hi @MrTea, welcome to the Qubes OS Forum!
Does your HDMI audio work? I know that was a reported issue with the 4.0 version on HCL (Michael Holtâs log).
I donât know honestly and I am not using that machine anymore, so it would be a lot of effort to test.
I also notice that the successful logs are with M1200 Mobile or HD 630 Graphics, but I see a couple P51 with Quadro M2200 for sale. I am not sure if the M2200 would create an issue since it isnât exactly the same as listed on the successful reports.
I cannot recommend using Nvidia cards at all. In my personal experience and observing discussions here and on the mailing list for years, my strong recommendation to you is to use the integrated Intel graphics. Especially when you are a beginner and donât want to spent a lot of time troubleshooting.
Due to they way graphics works in Qubes OS it wonât make much of a difference in performance anyway. Yes, with R4.1 experimental support for GPU pass-through might be available. But thatâs an advanced topic and doesnât belong in the âjust worksâ context.
I also notice that there are three successful logs on HCL for the P50 without workarounds, but I donât see it mentioned on the Community Recommended List. Not sure if the P50 has some unforeseen issues not mentioned on the logs?
The reason is simple: for an entry to make it into the community recommended list we need at least two successful entries using the same processor. These three P50 entries use three different CPU, thatâs why none of them has made it on the list yet. If someone with the P50 reads this and especially if your CPU is already listed in the HCL: please submit a HCL report!
Basically I think the P51 might be the best bet It has more positive reviews, you have been using it for 4 years, etc⌠but Iâm concerned about the difference in graphics between the successful logs and what is for sale (in regards to Qubes complications).
Stick with integrated graphics!
Hopefully I am posting this in the appropriate area since it is a predominantly P51 question with a little P50 sprinkled in there. Thanks!
Perfect!
Iâm glad I asked - I had no clue about the graphics issues, thank you for that!
Ok well I will hunt for one with the integrated graphics (I donât have any intensive video processing or other GPU demands, so that makes my life a little easier).
Side note and off-topic, but your T430 log sounds great (how well Qubes runs, and the ability to do coreboot, etc.). The 16GB of max memory makes me a little hesitant, but you do seem comfortable with it (I donât play games or do any intensive video processing). It is making me revisit whether I need more than 16GB really.
Anyways, thank you once again!
I will hunt for one with the integrated graphics
âIntegratedâ means they are part of your CPU.
- i7-6700HQ is a Skylake CPU with Intel HD530
- i7-6820HW is also Skylake with Intel HD530
- i7-7820HQ is Kaby Lake with Intel HD630
⌠I see that there are some reports in the HCL that list like i7-7820HQ Kaby Lake Quadro M1200 Mobile because thatâs how they where originally reported and the reporter might be using the Quadro M1200 Mobile graphics. But those entries should read i7-7820HQ Kaby Lake Integrated Graphics (HD 630) & Quadro M1200 Mobile because the integrated graphics are always there with that CPU.
Skylake or Kaby Lake are the generation / chipset.
Side note and off-topic, but your T430 log sounds great (how well Qubes runs, and the ability to do coreboot, etc.). The 16GB of max memory makes me a little hesitant, but you do seem comfortable with it (I donât play games or do any intensive video processing). It is making me revisit whether I need more than 16GB really.
That brings us again to the âjust worksâ aspect of it. When starting with Qubes OS and without having much Linux background it probably is a big advantage to have 32 GB or more if you can afford it so you can just start using Qubes OS with the standard full templates and crank the memory usage up until everything feels comfortable.
I feel confident that I can run circles around many newer and higher specâed setups with my T430, but thatâs after months of tuning the hardware (which fan/pattern, high-end SSD, even the cooling paste) and at this point years of learning about Linux, debian-minimal, and asking hundreds of questions etc. It was by no means a âjust worksâ transition 
A final point that comes to my mind is the perspective: if I click a link in my email and it takes 8 seconds for the web browser to show and another 2 seconds until the page is rendered my reaction is pure joy about how awesome my setup is (compartmentalized/secure, reduced attack surface, disposable qube with only 500 MB memory). However, if you are new to this way of computing and used to how things work outside of Qubes OS⌠waiting 10 seconds to see the page might frustrate you.
Whatever hardware you go for I highly recommend spending whatever extra money you have on getting a high-end, professional grade SSD. Thereâs lots of cheap junk out there ⌠donât try to safe there. The dirty (not so) secret is that most of the time your kick-ass CPU is waiting for I/O. So anything you can do to accelerate I/O (aka reading/writing from disk) will pay in spades.
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Added âProblemsâ line to the table. Discussion.
Iâd suggest just removing it from the list instead
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Why? It fulfills all criteria. Neither suspend nor HDMI audio are âcoreâ features and their absence wouldnât prevent one from using Qubes OS on that computer productively. Itâs reasonable to point them out as limitations, but removing the machine from the list would remove one of the few options that allow more than 16GB or RAM.
Because the purpose of this list is to provide users with machines that âjust workâ, i.e., give you perfect, reliable experience with everything working. If you start to make exceptions for non-working features which you think are irrelevant to everyone, it will turn into a copy of HCL in my opinion.
In other words, the criteria should also be improved to not include not-perfectly-working machines.
purpose of this list is to provide users with machines that âjust workâ, i.e., give you perfect, reliable experience with everything working.
That goes considerably further then the discussion about suspend and creates a lot of questions/issues. Letâs assume for a moment that suspend works on the P51[1] and the only known limitation is âno HDMI audioâ. Would you still want to remove the laptop from the list @deeplow?
How about Bluetooth, SD-card reader, fingerprint sensor, esoteric keyboard functions, ambient light sensors, keyboard backlight, âtap to clickâ, docking station support, HDMI hot plugging (lots of devices need the monitor to be plugged in at startup), etc? They are all critical to a âjust works Qubes OS experienceâ?
How do we make sure a HCL reporter checked all functions (even the ones they might not be aware of in the first place)?
Thatâs why I proposed a list of functions: networking, display, audio ⌠because those are the ones everyone expects and everyone checks. We can discuss if suspend, webcam and maybe a few others need to be added to the criteria. But then, if the respective info is not part of the original HCL report â how do we verify?
We might end up with a community-recommended list that basically contains the certified laptops and maybe the Librem. Wouldnât that be nice?
I still have the machine and will verify how R4.0.4 fully updated behaves. âŠď¸
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We can expect that in the future, more machines will get into this list, because many other companies, like System76 and Tuxedo target GNU/Linux systems with modern hardware. As long as we have at least a dozen machines, itâs good enough I think. I would prefer that the listed hardware worked flawlessly with Qubes. Apart from not disappointing the users (but see below), in this way we would support vendors who actually target Linux and not those who by chance (or by extremely hard work of volunteers) happen to support Linux more or less well.
Maybe not for you, but there are people with different needs and use cases. The list is created in the expectation that the machine can be a daily driver. It means working at night, watching movies on an external display and not rebooting for that, using touch pad comfortably. (It all works on my Librem 15, expect I did not test HDMI audio.)
This question has already been asked before:
You can put this answer in the FAQ below the table if you wish. This is the definition of âcommunity-recommended hardwareâ in my opinion.
Donât forget that the original HCL is still there and probably needs some love, i.e., good sorting and probably removing old Qubes versions (or putting them aside). The machines which work âwell enoughâ for someone could be highlighted there, or sorted on top.
Maybe I misunderstood. Suspend not working may be an issue. As Qubes takes quite a long time to start and shutdown, sometimes I just suspend. But if you donât think thatâs criteria for not just working, thatâs fine by me.
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The laptop list is short.
So IMHO, we shouldnât be so restrictive, we just report the known issues and the users will choose by knowing theses issues. An important issue for a user isnât important for another, so let the users make their choices.
When the list will be long, we could make more restrictive choices, not presentlyâŚ
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I installed R4.1 on the ThinkPad P51 and it certainly qualifies for inclusion on the community recommended list. Everything works out of the box, including suspend and no workarounds or troubleshooting is needed.
@fsflover, I have proposed changes to the criteria I think you will agree with.
This proves also the point that a machine that started out to be troublesome (installing R3.2 required lots of troubleshooting and workarounds) eventually became a âeverything worksâ case with time.
Here is the HCL report.
I will now install R4.0.4 and check whether suspend works out of the box with that version too.
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Suspend by itself works with R4.0.4 on the P51. The issue is that the fedora-32 based sys-net needs to be restarted after resume in order to connect to WiFi again. A simple upgrade to fedora-34 makes this work flawlessly too.
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Here is the HCL report:
layout:
âhclâ
type:
ânotebookâ
hvm:
âyesâ
iommu:
âyesâ
slat:
âyesâ
tpm:
âunknownâ
remap:
âyesâ
brand: |
LENOVO
model: |
20HJS0A613
bios: |
N1UET86W (1.60 )
cpu: |
Intel(R) Core⢠i7-7820HQ CPU @ 2.90GHz
cpu-short: |
FIXME
chipset: |
Intel Corporation Xeon E3-1200 v6/7th Gen Core Processor Host Bridge/DRAM Registers [8086:5910] (rev 05)
chipset-short: |
FIXME
gpu: |
NVIDIA Corporation GM107GLM [Quadro M1200 Mobile] [10de:13b6] (rev a2) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
gpu-short: |
FIXME
network: |
Intel Corporation Ethernet Connection (5) I219-LM (rev 31)
Intel Corporation Wireless 8265 / 8275 (rev 78)
memory: |
16169
scsi: |
usb: |
1
versions:
- works:
âFIXME:yes|no|partialâ
qubes: |
R4.1
xen: |
4.14.5
kernel: |
5.15.81-1
remark: |
FIXME
credit: |
FIXAUTHOR
link: |
FIXLINK
Iâve been running this as my daily driver for about 3 weeks and it is working fine.
- Suspend works well although overnight the battery can lose about 60% of its charge. I just turned off hyper-threading in BIOS today and will let you know if this improves things.
- Audio over HDMI doesnât work
- I installed using discrete graphics and then tried moving back to hybrid. Unfortunately this meant that I couldnât use an external monitor with the laptop monitor off (something I need). I moved back to discrete and the external monitor now works perfectly.
- I have used the P51 with a Lenovo dock (Ultra model) and everything works perfectly.
- For some reason the number 1 button (and exclamation mark) donât work on the laptop keyboard. I use the numpad â1â as a workaround. My USB keyboard works perfectly including the â1/!â so very strange. I may have used the wrong keyboard setting when installing?
Very happy overall with my Qubes P51 setup.
Maffs0.
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Thank you @maffs0 for your HCL report, which is online now! Iâve moved your post into the P51 thread so all HCL for this machine are in one thread. Itâs also the thread linked from the recommended computers page.
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Iâve been using Qubes 4.1.2 for some weeks now, after having hunted for a ThinkPad P51 for some months, following the community recommendations. Iâm not really tech-savvy, but I was able to install Qubes quite smoothly, and it works great! I guess I just want to thank Sven and the other contributors for sharing their knowledge.
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