Heads up: I’m not a gamer. A combination of specs, pricing, availability and urgency led me to purchase this laptop for productivity reasons. My run-through may not cover all aspects needed for gaming.
As my work depends on this laptop, I did purchase the additional on-site support.
Keyboard Shortcuts
If the RGB show on the keyboard annoys you, use Fn+SPACE to select a less annoying mode for now.
Also: Fn+L to toggle the Legion logo, Fn+Q to toggle thermal profile. These shortcuts work on both Windows and Linux.
Windows
I expect support to want to deal with Windows only, so I left Windows installed.
Even if you decide to remove Windows, I recommend you set it up first and use it to apply any BIOS or firmware updates prior to installing Ubuntu. (As it turns out, my laptop already shipped with the latest BIOS version.)
The factory Windows install uses about 60GB, so I shrunk the Windows-SSD down to 75GB. You can use the Disk Management tool to do so.
BIOS
Shutdown the laptop and restart it while pressing F2. This gets you into the BIOS. I made the following changes:
- Graphic Device: Dynamic Graphics (you will need to use nomodeset in GRUB if you don’t do this)
- Boot > PXE Boot to LAN: Disabled;
That’s it. I left Secure Boot enabled. Ubuntu and Ubuntu based Linux distributions have no problem with it.
Ubuntu
Install Ubuntu. How to install Ubuntu has been well documented, I won’t repeat it here.
You’ll notice that while the brightness function keys appear to work they do not actually change the brightness. You can fix this by editing /etc/default/grub and adding the amdgpu.backlight parameter:
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="amdgpu.backlight=0"
Run update-grub, reboot, and things will work.
Battery Conservation Mode
Battery conservation mode prevents your laptop battery from charging fully and keeps it around 60% instead. This should aid the longevity of the battery.
For convenience I created a systemd unit called /etc/systemd/system/battery-conservation-mode.service
with the following content:
[Unit]
Description=Battery Conservation Mode
[Service]
Type=oneshot
ExecStart=/usr/bin/bash -c 'echo 1 > "/sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:14.3/PNP0C09:00/VPC2004:00/conservation_mode"'
ExecStop=/usr/bin/bash -c 'echo 0 > "/sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:14.3/PNP0C09:00/VPC2004:00/conservation_mode"'
RemainAfterExit=yes
[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target
Which we then activate using:
systemctl daemon-reload
systemctl start battery-conservation-mode
systemctl stop battery-conservation-mode
systemctl enable battery-conservation-mode
Function Lock
Maybe you never use the F1, F2,.. keys and just want them to function them as permanent media keys (for volume control, etc.) instead. You can do this by enabling the Fn Lock:
echo 1 > "/sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:14.3/PNP0C09:00/VPC2004:00/fn_lock"
Just like the battery conservation mode, you could put this in a systemd unit to enable it automatically at start-up.
File System
Ubuntu comes with periodic SSD trimming out of the box. No need to enable that yourself. If you use encrypted partitions like I do, Ubuntu also enabled discard in crypttab automatically. Some changes I made to fstab:
- Added the ssd option for my btrfs file systems.
- Added the noatime option to both btrfs and ext4 file systems.