I recently purchased a Lenovo X1 Carbon 9th generation, with an Intel Core-i7-1165G7, 16GB RAM, 1 TB SSD and a 1920x1200 non-touch display, where I successfully installed openSUSE LEAP-15.3 on this machine.
My plan is that this will be a long blog entry, with multiple posts over a period of time as I gradually update software associated with this laptop. If I have issues I will post for 'help' elsewhere in this forum.
INTRODUCTION:
This laptop replaces an ancient Toshiba Z930 (w/core-i7-3667U) which is significantly slower – which means any improvement looks good to me, and I am not the most demanding person for high performance.
Note that I am a basic user, with video conferencing, and video editing / rendering being my most demanding potential use, although typically I do some video editing/rendering on a separate desktop PC. Only when traveling ‘on the road’ do I render with the ultrabook. So it is highly possible aspects that I am FULLY satisfied with on this laptop, won’t please others who are more demanding users.
I primarily purchased the X1 carbon Gen-9 for (1) light weight, (2) being very slim, and (3) having many external interfaces. Likely I will keep this for 5 to 8 years, which is another reason I went for the X1 Carbon Gen-9 as opposed to an older cheaper device.
In deciding on this device, I was encouraged by the fact that Lenovo do sell this laptop with either Fedora or Ubuntu pre-installed, instead of Windows-10, if one wishes to purchase a GNU/Linux version. In the case of this laptop, Lenovo do not sell it with openSUSE installed, although in the past Lenovo have sold other computers with SLED and SLES reference:
https://support.lenovo.com/us/en/solutions/pd031426
I purchased a version of this Lenovo X1 Carbon Gen-9 with Windows-10 pre-installed. Part of the bargain I struck with my wife (in her agreeing to my purchase such a new Lenovo) was that if I could not get openSUSE to work with this laptop, then she would get the laptop, and she is an MS-Windows user.
While I have installed variants of SuSE and openSUSE many times, this is my 1st openSUSE LEAP-15.3 install. While I have been using openSUSE (and SuSE-Pro prior) since 2003, until now I had yet until now to try LEAP-15.3.
INSTALLATION PREPARATION :
Pre-install LiveUSB checks
Prior to installing LEAP-15.3, I tested booting the laptop to different live-GNU/Linux USB variants (press F12 on boot to see the possibility to boot to a USB device):
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Knoppix-9.1 – liveUSB booted fine [Microknoppix Kernel: 5.10.10-64 x86_64 bits]. wifi worked. Sound did not work (Alsa info:
http://alsa-project.org/db/?f=6803b75cc84178e5e5e2af1f55fe287f1029d9e4) . I did not know how to install sof-firmware under Knoppix so I could not confirm that would work. A full shutdown with “shutdown -h now” worked. Bluetooth was not identified in the app ‘inxi’.
[ OpenGL: renderer: Mesa Intel Xe Graphics (TGL GT2) v: 4.6 Mesa 20.3.4 ]
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openSUSE-LEAP-15.3 – live USB booted fine. [Kernel: 5.3.18-59.19-default x86_64 bits]. Wifi worked. Sound only worked after installing sof-firmware and restarting sound with YaST. ( ALSA information before sof-firmware installed:
http://alsa-project.org/db/?f=d004e9...f5b0bca527e709 and ALSA info after sof-firmware installed (audio now works):
http://alsa-project.org/db/?f=e57ada...be20bf5c5fa99b ) .
A full shutdown failed (only partly worked). Bluetooth was not identified in the app ‘inxi’.
[ OpenGL: renderer: Mesa Intel Xe Graphics (TGL GT2) v: 4.6 Mesa 20.2.4 ]
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openSUSE-Tumbleweed (20210924 version)- liveUSB booted fine. [Kernel: 5.14.6-1-default x86_64 bits:]. Sound only worked after installing sof-firmware and restarting sound with YaST ( ALSA information before installing sof-firmware:
http://alsa-project.org/db/?f=eae33c...3f3700aac0cff8 ) . Identified bluetooth but advised (in the app ‘inxi’) that “This feature requires one of these tools: hciconfig/bt-adapter”. A full shutdown with “shutdown -h now” worked.
[ OpenGL: renderer: Mesa Intel Xe Graphics (TGL GT2) v: 4.6 Mesa 21.2.2 ]
Wifi worked with those live-USBs ( using the iwlwifi driver). Audio worked only after sof-firmare installed (for openSUSE liveUSBs).
Here is the file structure initially (as seen from a GNU/Linux boot USB with ‘parted -l’ ) BEFORE any SSD carving/partition creating (ie with no GNU/Liinux installed)
Code:
root@Microknoppix:/home/knoppix# parted -l
Model: SAMSUNG MZVL21T0HCLR-00BL7 (nvme)
Disk /dev/nvme0n1: 1024GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: gpt
Disk Flags:
Number Start End Size File system Name Flags
1 1049kB 274MB 273MB fat32 EFI system partition boot, hidden, esp
2 274MB 290MB 16.8MB Microsoft reserved partition msftres
3 290MB 1023GB 1023GB Basic data partition msftdata
4 1023GB 1024GB 1049MB ntfs Basic data partition hidden, diag
BIOS versions
I went to both the Lenovo support site, and the GNU/Linux ‘fwupd.org’ app site (which provides Lenovo firmware for installation under GNU/Linux) to see what versions of the BIOS were available:
On the ‘fwupd.org’ site v.1.47 was the latest version: https://fwupd.org/lvfs/search?value=X1+Carbon
Here is the link to v.1.47: https://fwupd.org/lvfs/devices/com.l...ETXXW.firmware
I also went to the Lenovo support site, and I noted a v.1.47 BIOS update there also:
https://pcsupport.lenovo.com/th/en/p...1-yoga-6th-gen
I checked my laptop, and it only had an older version 1.42 of UEFI BIOS (2021/06/15) where I also noted the latest was version 1.47 (issued 2021/09/15). Checking the change logs, I saw updates relevant to GNU/Linux and I knew I had a BIOS update to perform. One update in the UEFI BIOS update change logs in particular caught my eye (for the v.1.47 update): “Fixed an issue where thermal throttling may happens on Linux OS”.
I had not used fwupd app before. Given this was a new install of openSUSE LEAP-15.3, where I had not read of even 1 person before me installing openSUSE on this 9th gen Lenovo X1 carbon, I decided to play safe and do the firmware update from Windows-10.
However Lenovo recommended (if updating the BIOS from MS-Windows) to only do so with the latest Windows updates in place, so that meant I had to update MS-Windows-10 first, which I did (and that took a while).
Carving up the SSD for GNU/Linux
After the MS-Windows update, and after updating the BIOS to v.1.47, I re-booted to Windows-10 and I immediately disabled hibernation, disabled page file, disable system protection, defragged the SSD (where defragging was likely not needed), and reduced the MS-Windows partition to about 80 GB (using Windows-10 disk management). I could have reduced it further to 65 GB had I wished. This left most of the remainder of the SSD for openSUSE (aside from some MS-Windows recovery partitions).
I then booted to the Knoppix-9.1 liveUSB and used ‘gparted’ to carve up the newly created unallocated SSD space to / (~25 GB) and /home (~890 GB). I also created a ~16 GB swap (possibly not needed).
Code:
Model: NVMe Device (nvme)
Disk /dev/nvme0n1: 1024GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: gpt
Disk Flags:
Number Start End Size File system Name Flags
1 1049kB 274MB 273MB fat32 EFI system partition boot, hidden, esp
2 274MB 290MB 16.8MB Microsoft reserved partition msftres
3 290MB 84.2GB 83.9GB Basic data partition msftdata
4 84.2GB 111GB 26.9GB ext4 root
6 111GB 129GB 17.6GB linux-swap(v1) swap swap
7 129GB 1023GB 894GB ext4 home
5 1023GB 1024GB 1049MB ntfs Basic data partition hidden, diag
Once this was created I then proceeded to successfully install openSUSE LEAP-15.3 (with secure boot disabled).
.... to be continued ....
