Contents

Device

The Lenovo ideaPad 710S 13IKB is a sleek 13.3" screen laptop with Intel's core(TM) i7-7500 CPU which comes installed with Windows 10 Home.

The placement of keys is a little unusual, but not show-stopping.

Components

OOTB Device Manager list

  • Edition Windows 10 Home
  • Version 1511
  • OS Build 10586.420
  • Processor Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-7500 CPU @ 2.7GHz
  • Installed RAM 8.00GB (7.96 usable)
  • Intel chipset SATA RAID Controller
  • NVMe Samsung MZVLV256

Purchase

Lenovo's EU contact address listed on the back of the device is in Bratislava. The Lenovo sales person I spoke with was based in Barcelona who informed me the laptop would be shipped from a warehouse in Netherlands. The payment processor is a company called Digital River in Ireland with a C/O address in Lancashire. I don't pretend to understand the reasons for such complicated logistics but I hope Lenovo have some post-Brexit plans in place.

Install

After complaints from customers on the Lenovo forum, Linux BIOS' were released for some new models.

I was a bit reluctant to replace Windows 10 Home with Ubuntu 16.04.1 LTS as I was unsure whether there were Linux drivers available for all the peripherals. But I was convinced I had to try when Windows 10 Home without warning proceeded to download a boat load of updates and then restart 3-4 times during installation of those updates.

Downloaded the appropriate BIOS update for 710S 13IKB, verified checksum and ran exe. The exe flashes the BIOS onto ROM and reboots machine. The BIOS now allows AHCI SATA Controller mode to be selected under 'Configuration' tab in BIOS (Fn F2 during boot). Windows 10 still runs with the RAID mode selected.

Ubuntu

  • Ubuntu 16.04.1 LTS

Write downloaded, verified ISO image to SanDisk Cruzer Blade 32GB flash drive.

Boot the laptop from the USB drive and choose to install Ubuntu. Due to write speed of NVMe controller to SSD, install happens very fast.

16.04.1 LTS lists 4.4.0-59-generic as Linux kernel version.

LVM

Choose to use LVM for future ease of re-sizing partitions. 3 partitions are created with the ubuntu-vg volume group on nvme0n1p3.

  • pvdisplay

--- Physical volume ---
PV Name /dev/MZVLV256HCHP-000XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX-part3
VG Name ubuntu-vg
PV Size 237.50 GiB / not usable 0
Allocatable yes
PE Size 4.00 MiB
Total PE 60799
Free PE 3
Allocated PE 60796

  • vgdisplay

--- Volume group ---
VG Name ubuntu-vg
System ID
Format lvm2
Metadata Areas 1
Metadata Sequence No 3
VG Access read/write
VG Status resizable
MAX LV 0
Cur LV 2
Open LV 2
Max PV 0
Cur PV 1
Act PV 1
VG Size 237.50 GiB
PE Size 4.00 MiB
Total PE 60799
Alloc PE / Size 60796 / 237.48 GiB
Free PE / Size 3 / 12.00 MiB

  • df -h

Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
udev 3.9G 0 3.9G 0% /dev
tmpfs 788M 82M 707M 11% /run
/dev/mapper/ubuntu--vg-root 226G 5.6G 209G 3% /
tmpfs 3.9G 812K 3.9G 1% /dev/shm
tmpfs 5.0M 4.0K 5.0M 1% /run/lock
tmpfs 3.9G 0 3.9G 0% /sys/fs/cgroup
/dev/nvme0n1p2 473M 122M 327M 28% /boot
/dev/nvme0n1p1 511M 3.6M 508M 1% /boot/efi
tmpfs 788M 132K 788M 1% /run/user/1000

ath10k

The Qualcomm Atheros QCA6174 802.11ac Wireless Network Adapter doesn't work OOTB. An apt-update/upgrade fixes that though. Thankfully the wired network adapter works OOTB. If not, follow instructions found here.

Many thanks to kvalo for the firmware update.

Gotchas

  • During the install, Ubuntu may complain about not being able to install boot loader to nvme0n5 or something to that effect. Choosing another partition / logical volume doesn't work. Restarting the install seems to iron out the bug.

References