Lenovo T550 with Intel HD5500 experience?

English Hardware
#1

I’m considering renewing my notebook and look for Lenovo T550 with Intel HD5500 and Full HD 19200x1080 display. I do not know what wireless is inside (this information is mostly unavailable on web sites). I have Lenovo product number but it is not present in product lists I can see on Lenovo site (not much surprised); in case someone knows it, it is 20CK001WRT.

Anyone has practical experience? Question is mostly about video, wireless and touchpad/track point compatibility . Support for internal card reader is of course a bonus.

Thank you!

#2

I can’t help much, sorry.

But there’s this bug report against 13.2: https://bugzilla.opensuse.org/show_bug.cgi?id=928086

#3

Update

For the latest support of Lenovo laptops released in 2015 using Broadwell you will need kernel 4.1x and higher.
This will include the most recent Intel driver, Mesa and xf86-input-synaptics-1.8.2x driver for touchpad.

See: https://01.org/linuxgraphics/downloads/2015q2-intel-graphics-stack-releaseFor openSUSE 13.2: http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/X11:/XOrg/openSUSE_13.2/

Kernel 4.1.3x and higher: http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/Kernel:/stable/standard/

#4

Thanks, Romanator!

But there is still some (minor?) bugs to fix?
Or was the testing here done with an older kernel/stack release?:

01.org (Intel Open Source):
Intel® Graphics for Linux - 2015Q2 Test Results*
Test Result (Date: 2015-07-02)
https://01.org/linuxgraphics/2015q2-test-results
(linked from https://01.org/linuxgraphics/downloads/2015q2-intel-graphics-stack-release)

puzzled pistazienfresser (Martin Seidler)

#5

I believe there is a graphics problem with Intel GPU. Intel is working on an update.

All of the kernel patches for mapping of the Lenovo 2015 Thinkpads were added to kernel 4.1x and 4.2x.
I have read that this has been ported to earlier versions of the kernel. If you are experiencing problems
with kernel 3.16x with openSUSE 13.2, please submit a kernel bug report with Bugzilla.

Ref: http://bugzilla.opensuse.org/

I would also ask on the opensuse-kernel (kernel devs) mail list.
Re: http://lists.opensuse.org/

The best way to test out the openSUSE kernel on your Thinkpad is to also add additional kernel repositories to Yast, install the newer kernels, kernel-sources and kernel-syms.

Please note that openSUSE Leap 42.1 will be released with kernel 4.1.x LTS and the core is based on SLE.

#6

You may also want to consider this,

all Lenovo **30 series gets the “modern” touchpad which is pain in the butt to work with to begin with,
**40 series and up gets “modern” touchpad and keyboard which are not very fun to work with.

I have Lenovo T420 and E530, and I can NEVER work with E530 without a mouse.

Also, for some reason Intel graphics card seem to be happy with OpenSUSE 13.1, but not 13.2.

#7

Not certain if the model was the same, but I had serious trouble last week installing 13.2 on a Lenovo ( IIRC it was a T550, but not sure ), where Tumbleweed (probably thanks to it’s recent kernel) did the job fine. Must say I did not get the laptop in factory condition, my customer had already spent a week to get Ubuntu, Mint, Fedora to run on it without a satisfactory result.

#8

Thanks all of you for giving such nice detail about Lenovo T550 with Intel HD5500 experience.

#9

I’ve just started a new job (3rd day today!) and was given a T550 with intel GPU, lspci shows I have:

Network controller: Intel Corporation Wireless 7265 (rev 59)

I’ve not had any issues with the trackpad

I have noticed some issues with text being missing (I posted on another post about it yesterday but haven’t had a reply, basically, some font sizes I get characters go missing… no idea what the cause is yet, but the OP there had the same GPU chipset as me, but a different laptop, but I have no time to look in to it, quick fix was reducing some font sizes and I haven’t noticed it since

the wireless has been fine while I’ve used it (2 occasions so far - I prefer ethernet)

My main gripe so far is the lack of functionality with the Fn key and the keyboard shortcuts. There is a lock key in the top right, that doesn’t work as it seems to be an alias for Windows (Meta) + L. The Fn key is permanently lit, and none of the F key Fn’s work… I’m probably going to start a post about it after I have dug around some tonight…

Other than that, lovely laptop, especially with an SSD pre-installed!

#10

I was going to edit, but I was too slow:

FYI The Volume controls on the F keys work (up, down, mute), but the rest don’t

GPU = Mesa DRI Intel(R) HD Graphics 5500 (Broadwell GT2)

#11

The keyboard is probably just a model issue, have a look in the desktop’s settings for input devices. F.e. mine needs to be set to “Asus laptop” to have it all working like it should.

#12

Hi,

Thanks for the response, I did try this (unless there is another place I haven’t found), but I don’t want to hijack this thread with my issues, so I’ll start another post instead