cross-posted from: https://lemmings.world/post/17893006

I am in the market for a new laptop. I have searched quite a lot and decided to go with Lenovo. I am connected to mains most of the time and I am looking for compute power over efficiency. So the new Intel Lunar Lake 258V processors are not for me. That means Zenbook S14 is out of discussion. Also before anyone push a Framework plug, No! Framework laptops are not available where I live.

Its for my personal use and my preferred setup is Gnome on EndeavourOS. and its mainly used as a media consumption device. But occasionally it could run ffmpeg h265 encoding, run one or two moderately heavy podman containers (like Jellyfin) and sometimes a 6GB RAM VM or a local LLM model (3b) (very rare).

Basically I have narrowed it down to two laptops:

  • Lenovo Yoga Pro 7 Gen 9 (14, AMD) - AMD Ryzen AI 9 365 (Preferred)
  • Lenovo ThinkPad P14s (AMD) Gen 5 - Ryzen 7 PRO 8840HS

With Yoga Pro 7 being my preferred pick. When similarly specked with 32GB RAM, both are almost similarly priced, with Yoga running about $200 extra. I feel that new ThinkPads are a little overpriced for what they offer, at-least where I live.

  • Yoga has the new AMD architecture (Zen 5).
  • Yoga’s screen is better than ThinkPad’s (2.8K OLED @ 120Hz vs FHD IPS @ 60Hz, OLED option is not available for ThinkPad here).
  • Yoga has an Aluminum build. I haven’t used ThinkPads in the past, but had a plastic Dell Latitude in the recently (2022) and its build quality and plastics were really bad. Currently I have an Aluminum built laptop (from 2018) and its so much better than Dell’s.
  • I prefer the aesthetics of Yoga over ThinkPad (Though its subjective).
  • ThinkPad is a bit cheaper (by $200) and upgradable.

Yoga Pro 7 Gen 9 (14, AMD) being very new, I don’t know about its Linux (EndeavourOS) compatibility.

Does the new Ryzen AI 9 300 series work well with Linux? This is the only linux-hardware.org probe for this laptop.
Yoga Pro 7 Gen 9 (14, AMD):
Yoga Pro 7 Gen 9 (14, AMD)

On the other hand, the ThinkPad P14s (AMD) Gen 5 works well with Arch with Ryzen 7 PRO 8840HS. This puts me in a dilemma, should I spend a little more and for the not heavily Linux tested, but new Strix Point (Ryzen 300 series) Yoga Pro 7 or go for a tested Ryzen 7 PRO 8840HS ThinkPad?

I am planing to keep my laptop for 5-6 years.

If anybody have the new gen AMD processor Laptops running Linux (Any Distro) please share your experience.

  • IrritableOcelot@beehaw.org
    1·
    5 days ago

    A couple added notes after rereading your post:

    • Linux shouldn’t care about the specific laptop, you might want to try searching for the 365 SOC instead, that ought to give you more info.
    • Strix Point should give you substantially better compute power and efficiency than the 8000 series, so you can have your cake and eat it too.
    • on a reliability note, I recommended a Yoga to a friend a couple years ago, and within a year the hinge broke and shattered the screen. She now has a thinkpad, which is a lot more durable.