While I don’t nominally plan to update the kernel - its quite possible I will. The more I read, the more I see that kernels newer than what is in LEAP-15.3 is needed to take advantage of TigerLake CPU features - and its not clear to me how much is back ported into the openSUSE kernel (I guess I should research this).
I note this from the Linux Tiger Lake reviews, where it states:[INDENT=2]*
Linux 5.8+ supports all the Tiger Lake processor specific features. Hardware video decoding is supported through VAAPI. HEVC and VP9 support has been present in VAAPI for a very long time, AV1 hardware decoding support was merged to VAAPI in August 2020.*
[/INDENT]
So its quite possible a newer kernel (than what is provided with LEAP-15.3) is best installed to better utilize the Lenovo X1 Carbon gen-9’s CPU.
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[INDENT=2]
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where the above are for Windows-10/11 firmware based updates.
Possibly I have retrieved the above incorrectly - or possibly not. Regardless, I can see I have more research to do in order to understand the difference - as I had thought all firmware updates should be the same independent of the operating system on the device.
EDIT: I interpreted what I saw on the Lenovo site incorrectly. There are ‘firmware’ updates and there are ‘BIOS’ updates and they are not identical. I found 1.47 on the Lenovo site as a BIOS update. So I now have a ‘hook’ in which I can investigate this further.
Further to this BIOS aspect for the Lenovo X1 Carbon gen-9, I ordered my laptop on 28-September.
I note there was a BIOS v.1.47 issued on 15-Sep-2021, where BIOS v.1.45 issued on 19-August-2021 was the version before. I plan to check to see if the laptop I obtain will have 1.45 or 1.47.
I would like v.1.47 as I note these fixes implemented in 1.47:
[Problem fixes]
- Fixed an issue where system may not boot after failure of BIOS update or Intel Management Engine firmware.
**- Fixed an issue where thermal throttling may happens on Linux OS.**
- Fixed an issue where Windows OS can not boot after disabling Thunderbolt Port in BIOS Setup.
- Fixed an issue where system may hang up if ThinkPad USB Universal Type-C dock with USB 3.0 Ethernet Adapter is attached.
- Fixed an issue where HSTI validation failed in BIOS Device Guard test.
- Fixed a flicker issue happend on a specific monitor.
All of these look worth implementing - and in particular the ‘thermal throttling’ fix caught my eye.
The Lenovo should arrive in the next few days. I’ve made myself a big list of things to try/do with it as part of the Linux install. As I research this (wrt users of other GNU/Linux distros running their distro on this gen-9 Lenovo X1 Carbon) I note most have gone to a 5.14 kernel, in order to get better functionality with the Lenovo X1 Carbon gen-9.
I asked myself, if I were to do the same (going to kernel:stable:backports) for a recent kernel, how would I maintain it (with latest security fixes)? So I downloaded from that kernel:stable:backports repos the latest 5.14-9 kernel in that repos, and I extracted the change log:
I looked inside the changelog with a text editor for occurrences of ‘security’ and ‘TigerLake’ entries. There were quite a few of both … so that suggests to me that if I go this route (of using a 5.14 kernel from kernel:stable:backports) it may be prudent for me to keep that repos in my repository list, and from time to time (once/month ? ) to update the kernel even again to (1) obtain new security updates, and (2) take advantage of the many TigerLake CPU improvements between 5.3.18 (in openSUSE LEAP-15.3) and the 5.14.9 (or newer) kernel.
Of course openSUSE packagers maintain the 5.3.18 kernel with security updates, but I suspect they do not update/pickup the many TigerLake CPU updates (in the latest 5.3.18).
Continually updating the kernel:stable:backport kernel is rather more cutting edge than what I am normally comfortable with - so this should be a learning experience (outside of my comfort zone). Hopefully I am up to the ‘challenge’ ( for ‘lazy’ me ). … I will look forward to the day when the base LEAP moves to a 5.14 or newer kernel. Of course there is always Tumbleweed - but I prefer not to go that route as of yet (I have Tumbleweed on a test install on a desktop of mine).
My wife is laughing at all this preparation - knowing if I fail, she gets the Ultrabook. rotfl!
The Lenovo X1 Carbon Gen9 arrived a day earlier than I expected, and I played with it for a couple of hours, switching Windows-10 on for the 1st time, switching OFF the Windows-10 ‘quick start’, and played a bit with some BIOS settings. I then booted to a few different GNU/Linux live USBs to see how it responded to GNU/Linux (these being openSUSE-LEAP-15.3, openSUSE Tumbleweed (24-sep-2021 build) and Knoppix-9.1. I plan to blog on this.
Two issues I did note. openSUSE-LEAP-15.3 liveUSB on the Lenovo would not shutdown properly. Even ‘shutdown -h now’ would not do a proper shutdown. I’ve read this can be an issue with some GNU/Linux distros on this Lenovo Carbon X1 gen-9. However both Knoppix-9.1 (which has a 5.10 kernel) and Tumbleweed (which has a 5.14 kernel) shutdown ok with ‘shutdown -h now’.
The other item was the BIOS is relatively old, at v.1.42. The most up to date BIOS for this device is v.1.47 and I looked at the change history and there are a number of the BIOS updates between BIOS versions 1.42 and 1.47 that are relevant to GNU/Linux. So I may update the BIOS from Windows-10 prior to installing GNU/Linux.
Likely I will install openSUSE-15.3 when the time comes, and after doing that, my updating the openSUSE kernel appears more and more likely given the power issues.
On a happy note, while sound did not initially work with the liveUSBs, after I installed (in the liveUSBs) sof-firmware on LEAP-15.3 (and also Tumbleweed), and restarted the sound system with YaST, sound worked nicely on the openSUSE USBs (I didn’t know how to do this with Knoppix). I tested sound by playing a Youtube video (which also means the WiFi worked). So that is encouraging.
As noted - I plan to blog on future steps here with this Lenovo X1 Carbon Gen-9 and openSUSE.
If I have any issues where I need assistance, I will start a new thread in the appropriate ‘help’ area of our forum.