I was sent this Lenovo Doorbuster Deals: Desktops & Laptops & More | Lenovo US
Some nice deals, the X1 Carbon top left caught my eye. Can anyone confirm if that would be 100% Fedora compatible please? Or if any others are, I’d be interested to know too.
thanks
Lenovo are rarely 100% compatible.
Even the list of compatible ones are only rated to a certain version, such as 40 or 41.
We had a post the other day, a guy bought a new ‘compatible’ lenovo, 64 GB RAM, etc, paid for lenovo support. Something broke on update and support told him “only supported until F40” which is unserviced and EOL version.
Get something cheaper, or accept that 100% is an uphill battle.
I recently got a cheap Acer, say 90% compatible, there are a lot of 90 - 95% compatible laptops. The issues are normally suspend, function keys and sometimes camera.
Diagree.
I have had many Lenovos in past decades. All of them have been 100% compatible with GNU Linux / Fedora.
Some all intel systems not being cenrtified for Fedora doesn’t mean that they are not 100% compatible.
@joeyjonnson if you want max compatibility, make sure all components are intel (CPU, chipset, wifi, bluetooth) and you will have a compatible system.
Thanks. Where would I find a list of those mostly compatible ones?
My dell latitude has been mostly, perhaps completely, compatible. Always preferred a Lenovo though. I had a gorgeous yoga 16". Loved it, except the audio would never sound good and after months I gave up.
4 Nov 2025 06:02:55 MatH via Fedora Discussion ‘notifications at fedoraproject.discoursemail.com’ incoming+15e849bbba421ce0ac5fcee89d1ba0a2@fedoraproject.discoursemail.com:
https://linux-hardware.org/?view=computers
The problem though is that new laptops are released in a constant stream.
Basic rules are nothing with Nvidia, and check the wifi chip for Linux compatibility.
AMD make some very competitive CPUs and their graphics (both onboard and discrete) work well with Linux.
Dual channel RAM (2 RAM chips instead of 1) is also nice to have for gaming.
Thanks. No gaming here.
Ah yes I seen to remember someone telling me a while ago that Amd is better than Intel generally for Linux
4 Nov 2025 11:21:56 MatH via Fedora Discussion ‘notifications at fedoraproject.discoursemail.com’ incoming+013790702e5cce9903edf15c28072b23@fedoraproject.discoursemail.com:
FWIW, I paid USD$452 for a 1080 screen, AMD 7430u (which runs GTA V, let alone office and Firefox) 16GB RAM, 512 GB m2.
PCs for the last ten years have been great. The past few years have seen spectacular machines for fantastic prices.
Deals are often offered on models that use some problematic components. Lenovo often adopts newer technology that takes time to get in-kernel support.
This usually means they only have their support scripts for up to F40 and then the product is EOLed, you (or rather your employer) is supposed to buy a new laptop. They are usually useless if any software issues arise, but if anything hardware related happens, the service is excellent. The only issue is the hardware whitelist which prevents you from using cheaper cards like 4g-LTE modems not from Lenovo, etc.
In any case, with older platforms the hardware itself works fine, and usually all laptops that are at least 2 years old work better than the brand new generations, as all the bugs etc have been fixed long ago. I would safely recommend most previous year platforms to anyone as they usually have all the drivers in kernel, they are stable and usually much cheaper.
Even weird Chinese brands like Mechrevo, Machenike etc get polished and function perfectly starting the 2nd year.
It also means that they do not guarantee to continue to provide in kernel regression fixes or promise any other future work support.
yep, but through all the years with IBM/Lenovo I can’t remember a single laptop that would give any compatibility problems… the only difference is that with windows they all require manual download and install of about 1 zillion of lenovo drivers, while with linux it usually all works on first boot. I personally do not have any complaints about compatibility.
Hi @joeyjonnson
The Thinkpads are generally well supported, you can see the official list here: https://www.lenovo.com/linux and the X1 Carbon is explicitly mentioned. A very important point is the support of firmware updates under Linux (with fwupdmgr / Software / Discover).
I have the “sister model” Thinkpad X1 2-in-1 (Lunar Lake which is not officially suported yet) - but as of Fedora 43 everything works - see my post in the Lenovo community here:
Lenovo staff is quite active in the support forums too 
/Jaybe
Hello, Lenovo has a contract to provide portable workstations (laptops with discrete GPU) to French education and research institutes. As part of the contract, the hardware must be guaranteed to work with either Windows or Linux (Ubuntu 22.04 can be preinstalled). I cannot give you the prices or options which are confidential, but the models which are available are:
This does not mean that any other model won’t work, but these should be tested to be 100% compatible with Ubuntu 22.04.
Ha, I’m sure that’s true and i was unlucky, but after my first and only Lenovo purchase being a Yoga 16” (2023 or 2024 model i think), and with the audio being impossible to get working how it would on Windows, that knocked me a bit hence this thread! I have always ‘assumed’ the X1 Carbon was one of the THE most Fedora friendly laptops, but not sure I am right about that, especially after some of the replies on this thread
Lenovo hasn’t released sources for some libraries/modules, but does provide binaries for their Ubuntu 22.04 pre-installed version. Some people feel this is a GPL violation.