Please help! Has anyone more successful experience installed qubes-os on Lenovo ThinkPad W541?
i7-4810MQ QM87, Integrated Graphics (HD 4600) & Quadro K2100M.
I have read one user installed but it is not completely clear whether this laptop is fully compatible with qubes-os?
More successful that what? It may help getting useful answers if you describe the issues you’re facing, and what you’ve aready tried to resolve them!
Hey, W541-owner here.
I’d like to share the experience I made so far.
iGPU = Intel HD 4600
dGPU = Nvidia Quadro K2100M
Regarding the CPU, 4810MQ is the default, so it might not apply, but be advised that anything below 4800MQ does not support VT-d and is not Qubes-compatible.
Also I cannot say anything about the stock firmware, I applied coreboot before ever installing Qubes. Further do I run 4.2.1 and cannot speak about earlier versions on that device.
When building coreboot for this device, I recommend adding nvramcui as a secondary payload. It gives you a minimalist menu where you can configure Fn-Ctrl-Swop stuff, but more importantly (en|dis)able the dGPU.
There are two routes really, the 2nd being the main reason I chose this device.
1. What you want
What you really want to do is disable the dGPU in the BIOS (might also apply to stock-firmware, but would have to guess on that one).
Disable it.
Install Qubes like you usually would.
Be happy.
The iGPU does a good job. It can handle:
- internal 3K display + 2 FHD monitors via dock
- internal 3K display + 1 FHD monitor via miniDP
(haven’t been testing both in conjunction)
I got a new 9-cell battery and I get ~4h of “casual” usage out of it. That is having a few browsers, my dev-, chat-, mail- and some other qubes open. ~10 in total running. Without heavy workloads.
But what about that K2100M, right?
If you went down this route and later enable the dGPU in BIOS, it might let you enter your LUKS phrase, but afterwards fails at varying stages.
I guess that’s because PCI-hotplug is disabled for security reasons.
2. What I hoped for
I got this device mainly because it of course has 32G RAM capabilities, but also has the K2100M compared to its T440P sister.
When you enable the dGPU prior to installing, the installation will work fine as well.
The dGPU will be recognized, the default nouveau driver is loaded then in dom0 and it shows up when doing lspci or qvm-pci in dom0.
You COULD use it like that, but all you get is more heat and battery drainage.
What I followed was the Gaming HVM Guide and yeah I felt lucky and did not check that IOMMU thing with another distro.
The key takeaways are:
- You can blacklist the dGPU
- You can boot and use qubes via iGPU
- You can NOT pass dGPU to other qubes
- You can NOT deactivate it afterwards, as it fails when it tries to blacklist a device not present
With dGPU activated, I get <2h of usage out of the battery. So not really feasible for me.
Other OSes seem to work fine with dGPU and can handle (de-)activation via either firmware or software just fine.
But from what I tried and did I can only recommend to leave the dGPU off, as it does not give you any benefit despite sucking up your battery.