Thinkpad x13s linux

[environmental-lead2]

I am getting a Thinkpad x13s and have heard that it is a pain to get Linux up and running on it. I don't think anyone has successfully done it yet. Does anyone know if it is possible? Also any troubleshooting help when it arrives and I try to install Linux would be much appreciated.

[Ralphred]

The state of arm64 is very comparable to x86_64 in the mid 2000's, if you are not up for running a source based distro* I'd steer clear for a while TBPH.

Keep an eye on arch and gentoo, these are most likely to be the first distro's with a working wiki to follow, but you'll have to be more patient than the average bear. It's hard to say how long before binary distros catch up, though debian's a good bet, then buntu will follow.

 

*I know plenty of people running arm64 this way, but most use faster hardware to do the heavy lifting with qemu or similar, YMMV with an arm device such as this though.

[environmental-lead2]

3 hours ago, Ralphred said:

The state of arm64 is very comparable to x86_64 in the mid 2000's, if you are not up for running a source based distro* I'd steer clear for a while TBPH.

Keep an eye on arch and gentoo, these are most likely to be the first distro's with a working wiki to follow, but you'll have to be more patient than the average bear. It's hard to say how long before binary distros catch up, though debian's a good bet, then buntu will follow.

 

*I know plenty of people running arm64 this way, but most use faster hardware to do the heavy lifting with qemu or similar, YMMV with an arm device such as this though.

Yeah that is what I was thinking. Gentoo might be the way to go, but at the moment I can barely get grub to boot. it just restarts as soon as I hit the OS I want to boot from. I am doing more digging and will update with a post once I get it working.

[Nayr438]

8 hours ago, environmental-lead2 said:

I am getting a Thinkpad x13s and have heard that it is a pain to get Linux up and running on it. I don't think anyone has successfully done it yet.

Probably because the Snapdragon sc8280xp is not officially supported by the Kernel yet. Initial Support looks like it will land in 5.19, which should hit a stable release around the end of July.

[environmental-lead2]

25 minutes ago, Nayr438 said:

Probably because the Snapdragon sc8280xp is not officially supported by the Kernel yet. Initial Support looks like it will land in 5.19, which should hit a stable release around the end of July.

I did see that linaro has added an initial devicetree for sc8280xp.

 

https://www.spinics.net/lists/kernel/msg4408403.html

[Ralphred]

4 minutes ago, environmental-lead2 said:

I did see that linaro has added an initial devicetree for sc8280xp.

Well, there is your patch(es).

So, disassemble a live USB you can get the kernel sources and .config for, patch it, reassemble, boot, do it again with a different qemu* version 'cus ARM's a PITA to build kernels for, boot, repeat patching for a permanent kernel(?) or just copy it to your live env. Personally, I might try it, but back out into "5.19" or "linux-next" as soon as the commits land.

Technically you could just replace the buntu kernel (or similar) AND replace the .deb package with your own to move from booting-to-install to booting-to-run , just to get a grip on how well it works right now, this would cut down drastically on the time investment potentially trying to do something that upstream isn't ready to do yet.

AFAIK the CPU's have been supported for a ~couple of years, so no probs there.

 

*I don't like Docker, but maybe there are some aarch64 build environments that would help you cut down on time investment too, I assume Docker works in windows?