1+ Year Running Arch Linux On a Lenovo Yoga 2 Chronicled

New submitter KeithCu writes with a lengthy explanation of the joys (and just a handful of glitches) he's had in running Arch Linux on his ultraportable, a Lenovo Yoga 2. Other than the hardware-specific issues, I've been amazed by how well Arch Linux works, given that it doesn't have release cycles, or a big team with a lot of money supporting and marketing it. I've heard only 30 developers maintain the core Arch packages, with most of them having a full-time job doing something else! At the same time, it shouldn't be a total surprise things work so well, because free software doesn't just fall off a turnip truck. Not many reviews feature pictures of a laptop charred from building LibreOffice.

Comments

Way too many problems

[PRMan]

Yeah, yeah, we know. Windows and Mac are terrible and Linux is so much more "stable".

Scanning for networks failed No networks found

the de-facto wireless GUI on Linux...was broken for my machine because it thought my wireless card was disabled

Meanwhile, my mouse is the most frustrating issue

Resume has been flakey...I never closed my screen because I didn’t trust it would come back. Sometimes, it would come back, but Gnome wouldn’t let me login!

For a while, the laptop speakers never worked after a reboot until I plugged something into the headphone jack, and then removed it

One time I was building LibreOffice while it was on a blanket and it overheated and charred the bottom. When doing CPU-intensive work, I now place this laptop on a metal plate

There are 4K videos on Youtube, but they are extremely jittery and suck all the CPU as the GPU is not being used

It took hours to render these 3200×1800 Arch wallpapers

[The mouse] use[d] to jump violently all over the screen while typing, but now it just hovers in small circles

In spite of my problems, I’m very glad I don’t need to mess with the Windows or Mac world.

Unfortunately, such advanced battery features are not yet enabled in Linux

OK, so let's see. Other than the network card, mouse, 2D graphics, sound, CPU, 3D graphics, battery and the fact that normal usage melted it, it works awesome. I think I'll stick with Windows 10 TP on my laptop, where I've only had minor network issues requiring a reboot to get it back sometimes.