Hi all,
We are purchasing a new laptop for a new employee.
We’ll be booting directly into bios, changing settings as required, and installing linux immediately (either Fedora or POP).
However, we’ve only ever run intel machines.
Does anyone know if this could potentially cause any issues? We want a set and forget experience (have had that with intels).
System specs for the Ryzen version
Processor AMD Ryzen™ 7 7735U Processor (2.70 GHz up to 4.75 GHz) Operating System
Windows 11 Pro 64 (being removed immediately)
Graphic Card Integrated AMD Radeon™ 680M
Memory 16 GB DDR5-4800MT/s (SODIMM)(2 x 8 GB)
Storage 512 GB SSD M.2 2242 PCIe Gen4 TLC Opal
Display 14" WUXGA (1920 x 1200), IPS, Anti-Glare, Non-Touch, 45%NTSC, 300 nits, 60 Hz
Camera 1080p FHD IR Hybrid with Microphone and Privacy Shutter
Battery 3 Cell Li-Polymer 47 Wh
AC Adapter / Power Supply 65W
Fingerprint Reader
Pointing Device Trackpad
Keyboard Backlit, Black - English (US)
WIFI Wi-Fi 6E 2x2 AX & Bluetooth® 5.1 or above
Colour Graphite Black
Weight 1.53kgs / 3.37lbs
Part Number: 21M3003DAU
I should add the intel version here for comparison, I feel it has a little more happening:
System specs:
Processor 13th Generation Intel® Core™ i7-1355U Processor (E-cores up to 3.70 GHz P-cores up to 5.00 GHz)
Operating System Windows 11 Pro 64
Graphic Card Integrated Intel® Iris® Xe Graphics
Memory 16 GB DDR4-3200MHz(8 GB Soldered + 8 GB SODIMM)
Storage 512 GB SSD M.2 2242 PCIe Gen4 TLC Opal
Display 14" WUXGA (1920 x 1200), IPS, Anti-Glare, Non-Touch, 45%NTSC, 300 nits, 60 Hz
Camera 1080p FHD RGB with Microphone and Privacy Shutter
Battery 3 Cell Li-Polymer 47 Wh
AC Adapter / Power Supply 65W
Fingerprint Reader
Pointing Device Trackpad
Keyboard Backlit, Black - English (US)
WIFI Intel® Wi-Fi 6E AX211 2x2 AX & Bluetooth® 5.1 (Windows 10) or Bluetooth® 5.3 (Windows 11)
Colour Black
Weight 1.47kgs / 3.23lbs
Part Number: 21JK00P5AU
Any advice would be GREATLY appreciated. Thanks so much! Torn on the intel VS the Ryzen
AMD and Intel both have very good linux support. On that note there shouldn’t be much of a difference.
In fact, AMD GPU drivers are quite a bit ahead of Intel on Linux. And the AMD laptop has a significantly more powerful iGPU plus it has DDR5 ram. So it should give you noticeably better performance.
More problematic could be the wifi chip, fingerprint reader and maybe the camera.
Wifi nowadays works well on Linux so I don’t think that should be much of a problem. Intel Wifi usually has better support though.
Cameras also mostly work though the IR sensor might not work.
Fingerprint support on linux is 50/50 (from linux-hardware, it seems fingerprint on similar models is not working unfortunately). If you know the exact fingerprint reader model on the laptop you can check if it has linux support.
Thinkpads usually have good support on Linux overall so I won’t be too worried with either option. I couldn’t find the exact models on linux-hardware.org, however I did find similar models:
All AMD models by this name (E14 Gen 6)
I have a similar T14 with AMD and everything works fine, except the fingerprint reader. Tested with Debian, Fedora, MX, and more
There’s really no difference between cpu manifacturers. You should instead consider that the fingerprint reader can easily be a pain in the ass to make it work properly
Loads of fingerprint readers are not useable in Linux either, thanks Synaptics, and Co!
I spent about two years trying and giving up to get my fingerprint reader working on my X1 Carbon.
Then chat gpt comes out and I ask that how to do it.
It gives me a one-line bash / script thingy, and my fingerprint reader has worked ever since.
That was a pretty cool day.
I have a similarly spec’d E14 Gen 6. I run Fedora and am very happy. I didn’t need to do anything, everything ran out of the box (even the fingerprint sensor and the little nob).
this is a gen6 e14. Thank you. That’s what I needed to hear. Turns out the intel has a bit more to it, will udpate my post. So undecided
One thing I didn’t see mentioned yet that’s in favor of AMD: Intel and its stupid, stupid IPU6 system. I’ve got a new work laptop now with an Intel Meteor Lake chip and the webcam is hooked up via IPU6. This means that I can’t use the built-in webcam until upstream support for the specific sensor arrives in the kernel.
Some sensors are already supported but it shouldn’t be this hard to make the internal webcam of your laptop work. I thought these issues were a thing of the past.
This means that I can’t use the built-in webcam until upstream support for the specific sensor arrives in the kernel.
wouldn’t it suffice to build it from source into a kernel module that you can load? that way you wouldn’t even need to build the kernel. DKMS would help to automate this for kernel updates
That’s what I thought, too, so I compiled from source and loaded the module. Unfortunately this still only makes the camera work in Firefox, but not in Zoom and Slack where I actually need it. I stopped digging into it more and simply use a USB webcam for now until the driver for my sensor is fully upstreamed.
you may try it if you could use OBS to capture the webcam, and “relay” it with its virtual camera feature.
did you try running zoom and slack in firefox? Personally, I would never run them without the browser’s isolation
Webcam on Intel may not work due to drivers that Intel hasn’t written/upstreamed for IPU6 cameras. Looks like it’s in the work now… for certain sensors. Intel has taken literal years to get anything out. the Core Ultra 200 series is out but drivers for these webcams which have in use since Tiger lake (almost half a decade ago!!) still don’t work.
“Greg KH Recommends Avoiding Alder Lake Laptops” https://www.phoronix.com/news/Greg-KH-No-ADL-Webcam-Laptop
Nor the integrated cameras or the IR camera worked out of the box on my laptop. Some hacks could be done to make it work but it breaks after the system is updated. It never worked when I needed it and image quality was limited to 720p and worse. From what I understand, current methods to get the camera to work use minimal software processing to process the images, instead of the dedicated silicon.
Not all Intel laptops use IPU6. I know some HPs do not.
Haven’t had many issues with the Intel AX211. Very rarely, the wifi settings will disappear after my laptop suspends and a reboot is needed.
The battery capacity also doesn’t seem very big, I’m not sure how efficient the AMD CPU is but I’d be worried that Intel would deliver less battery life.
GPU performance might also be better on AMD? (haven’t checked).
To explain why AMD is fine: Linux doesn’t care about the brand, it just needs a chip that uses the x86 instruction set. This was Intel’s invention and AMD occupies the niche of Intel’s competitor. Intel is Coke, AMD is Pepsi, basically.
Actually the modern 64 bit processors are based on a design by AMD which was then licensed by Intel as far as I know.
TIL!
There are differences in the laptops themselves though. For example, last generation thinkpads did not support S3 sleep for AMD models only.
My p14s AMD gen 4 (same as T14) does in the bag after a few days, because it only supports “modern standby”. I wish I got an Intel model just for that.
Hopefully we will see better support in the future. Other than that it works pretty well.
I’ve had a T series with a 5850 in it for a while now, and it’s an absolute champ. Definitely one of the best laptops I’ve owned.
It should work without any issues. AMD is perfectly fine. They are among the main contributors to the Linux kernel and their products work just fine. In general, you should be worried only about nVidia cards, which this laptop doesn’t have. Even these are working much better nowadays.
AMD for sure.
It should work pretty well, I have a AMD 5600H and runs “MX Linux AHS” for 3 years now
the 680M is well supported. You should be fine with that.
I’d keep either CPU vendor behind one or two generations from latest, at least in the GPU dept, to avoid the chance of any issue. The 680M fits that mark so I don’t foresee anything major.
