Ubuntu on Lenovo G50-70/G40-70

Question

I am shopping around for a new laptop and came across Lenovo G50-70/G40-70 on the market which has an option of not having any OS installed. I regularly use Windows, but in the recent years I am seeing Ubuntu being more and more of a better option hence having a clean laptop will mean I can start off with Ubuntu right off the bat. I have used Ubuntu before but that laptop broke down so I did not continue on as my new laptop had Windows pre-installed.

I saw a few threads on one or 2 driver issues, but I guess it is because of the lack of internet connection to properly configure the system hence I doubt that will be an issue on my side as I have an option to work off a wired internet connection (of course, provided that the driver for the lan card is set up right!)

My main concern is the driver compatibility, as I am concerned about losing some of the functions that the laptop provides. Has anyone gotten a completely working system up before?

Thanks for the help in advance!

Solution

I got a G50 and installed Mint 17 Cinnamon (Ubuntu 14.04) on it. Almost everything was running out of the box:

• LAN
• Wireless
• USB
• Card reader
• Audio
• Battery info
• Touchpad (+ multi-finger gestures with touchegg) etc

The only thing that's missing is the Dolby feature (Lenovo warns that it might be only available on Windows). Seems like it's possible to configure, but I've only given it a few hours of research.

In conclusion: you shouldn't have to worry about driver compatibility with a G50.

---

Update:

Certain x246 encodes produce screen tearing (Intel HD 4400). Adding

CLUTTER_PAINT=disable-clipped-redraws:disable-culling
CLUTTER_VBLANK=True

to /etc/environment fixed it.

Comments

[Taylor Ramirez]

I've got a Lenovo G570 and everything works great on it.

[berbt]

I noticed screen tearing when playing certain x246 encodes. Answer updated with the solution posted here