Monday, January 23, 2017

Lenovo C20 running Linux- A quick review

All-in-one computers don't need space for a tower (I don't have space for a tower), but the ones I've seen before have been quite expensive. Now there are all-in-one PCs available at the sub-£300 price. I bought a Lenovo C20 for £290 and installed Linux on it.

I installed Debian Stretch alpha because Debian Stable is getting a bit long in the tooth, this is not going to be a work machine and I much prefer Gnome 3.22 over 3.14. The usual warning applies: Stretch is still in Testing, so there may be bugs.

All I had to do to install was to disable Secure Boot after tapping F1: the computer was set to boot in EFI mode, and the Debian installer identified and used the EFI partition.

During installation I was warned about missing firmware, but enabling non-free repositories and installing the iwlwifi and realtek firmware got my hardware working.

I also installed firmware-linux and firmware-linux-nonfree, the latter giving me the microcode for my processor.

The only errors so far are these warnings, which seem to be a mismatch between kernel and firmware, and don't actually mean that Wifi dosn't work.
firmware: failed to load iwlwifi-7265D-24.ucode (-2)
Direct firmware load for iwlwifi-7265D-24.ucode failed with error -2
firmware: failed to load iwlwifi-7265D-23.ucode (-2)
Direct firmware load for iwlwifi-7265D-23.ucode failed with error -2
General comments: the screen on this version of the computer is excellent- full HD- but other versions with the same model number have a lower resolution screen. the processor used also seems to vary. Performance as a family computer- web browsing, word processing, watching videos- is fine. I haven't tried it with anything taxing. The onboard speakers are good too, so I could do away with the external speakers I had on the shelf above my old laptop. Printer/scanner setup was very easy. Even Suspend works.

All in all, an excellent all-in-one, if you are looking for a Linux friendly family computer.

I shall now abandon it to Peppa Pig, Horrid Henry and Barbie movies, for intensive testing by small children. At least I have my laptop to myself now.

No comments:

Post a Comment