Mark Driscoll

Pro Congrats on the new rig, I think you picked a solid machine. I purchased the P16 gen 2 back in April. Similar, but mine has the intel i7-14700HX. I chose it because I needed a new machine - the whole "fully-riced x220 w/ dwm, st, et. al so my machine is virtually useless to everyone but me" Thinkpad Zealotry can be fun, for a while, but after x amount of years it wore me down.

Let's hit your first question before I start rambling and get downvoted to hell:

Q: "My first thought is to get Windows 11 installed and updated to use the Lenovo update tools first before installing linux. Is there an easier way to do this? I'd love to skip the Windows install since it'll take a day on it's own to finish that process."

A: I had this same idea - mine was shipped with win11 as well. I chose not to because I am lazy and thought Lenovo would take care of me for being a good boy and sticking with the supported distros, but I don't think you need or should do that anymore. Lenovo supports LVFS/ fwupdmgr and friends for the majority of firmware you're probably worried about:

• BIOS / UEFI

• Embedded Controller

• Thunderbolt

• AMD PSP-related updates (indirectly).

• whichever iGPU you have (under what I think is your thinkpad model on Lenovo's spreadsheet, i see UMA or the RTX500)

An alternate idea I've read many people chose (including myself): save the original nvme shipped with win11, stick it in the secondary slot under the machine that's easier to reach, then buy yourself a nice, explicitly "supported" drive and use that in the primary slot beneath the keyboard. I used a spare samsung 970 Pro I had on hand, but a safer idea may be to purchase the same model as the original. I've been abusing "scare quotes" lately.

rambling begins here:

It cost me just under a grand through one of those partnership/benefits my company has with Lenovo, and it fit all my requirements. In that order, unfortunately. Fortunately, after some pain and self-inflicted wounds just trying to get the damn thing to run Ubuntu or Fedora¹ it has met all my requirements - and then some. I like the machine. I think you made a good choice, even more so if you stick with Arch. Although that is purely conjecture based on what I learned while fumbling over myself during the two-ish weeks it took me to get up and running. I just feel like you're going to have a better time with Arch in this regard because Arch likely has you on a more recent kernel than the supported Ubuntu/Fedora versions. I used EndeavorOS for so long I forgot it was EndeavorOS before this. 3 or 4 years.

I should also mention my requirements, even though they may differ from yours as mine are particularly unique - and demanding, I simply won't settle for less:

• it works

• linux

• thinkpad

• i can read and write words on the internet & a shell, text editor, etc.

• i can compile c programs reasonably fast²

• installation causes minimal neurosis (at face value)

• coming soon! under construction

I took fairly detailed notes. I've developed bad habit of beginning my note-taking as soon I hear the first "why the phuck did I .." inner monolog alarm. I'm happy to share said notes with you (pm me) and the rest of the community, under the condition a new thread is started to rip me for all of the things I didn't know by heart. Or anything anyone thinks I should have done differently. That could actually be a fun learning experience, but tmi here - estimating im like at the 9th circle of downvote hell here already

Notes & Errata

1. those were the only two supported distros under the Linux for Personal Systems program - I think I misinterpreted that title as "it's basically plug-and-play"

2. C programs >= the kernel. I work a lot with OpenStack and its many love children. That's its own can of worms and also bad practice semi-admitting to touching work stuff on my personal stuff. I've never done that btw not once @ my employer