Linux on the Fujitsu Lifebook U729
37 comments
·November 15, 2025jjice
Avamander
> Things I learned to look out for:
Don't buy any recent Intels. Some Intel ThinkPads have accelerometers built-in just to throttle your PC to oblivion when it moves. Basically unusable in any moving vehicle such as a train. It's basically anti-portability baked-in.
When it doesn't throttle, it just has abysmal battery life compared to AMD Ryzen ThinkPads of the same generation. Both lose horribly to Apple's ARM chips though.
They also tend to have soldered WiFi modules, making it impossible to upgrade later when newer and better WiFi iterations come out. If that had been the case with a few of the older models I still have, they would be unusable at this point.
There are plenty of firmware bugs as well. For example plenty of Lenovo (especially Intel as far as I've seen) models have stuttery and freezing touchpads. Though the touchpads tend to be horrible anyways.
I'd say the older (5+ years old) generations might have had slightly better driver support or they're finally fixed at this point. But there's nothing I'd spend my money on if I can just as well install Asahi on an M-series laptop.
eptcyka
M1 and M2. But those are in an entirely different price bracket. I’d go so far as to say those are not comparable.
gear54rus
> Some Intel ThinkPads have accelerometers built-in just to throttle your PC to oblivion when it moves
Wtf? That sounds crazy, any sources?
ajsnigrutin
They don't want you to burn your testicles when keeping it in your lap.
https://download.lenovo.com/pccbbs/pubs/x1e_p1_gen5/html/htm...
> The Cool and Quiet on lap feature helps cool down your computer when it becomes hot. Any extended contact with your body, even through clothing, could cause discomfort. If you prefer using your computer on the lap, it is recommended that you enable the Cool and Quiet on lap feature in UEFI BIOS:
(it can be disabled on this laptop)
more: https://askubuntu.com/questions/1416567/disable-lap-mode-on-...
as1mov
+1
This is my go to way of buying a new laptop. I've gone through 2 machines in the last 8 years (Dell 7270 and 7330). Both bought for <$400. Linux works ootb, though I haven't tried any of the more obscure distros.
Though now manufacturers are doubling down on soldered components, so buying a cheap machine and upgrading the components yourself is not really possible :(
Teknomadix
My daily driver for several years now has been an AMD Ryzen 7 powered ThinkPad t495. $120 used. After upgrading the RAM to 64gb it felt very snappy and usable. I run NixOS / Hyprland with rofi/waybar. When an accident happened and the first t495 was damaged, I bought a second for $80, swapped the parts and was back in business. I use it for coding, web research, and a bit of CAD design via FreeCAD. Very happy with the hardware!
karczex
I'm using Linux on some dell precision and camera just don't work. It's possible to install some custom kernel to make it work, but the pain of maintaining it by myself in comparison to IT department supported setup is a no go.
gchamonlive
If you want portability on something premium, I can't recommend enought the Lenovo Yoga Slim 7. Specwise I've got the one with the Core ultra 5 125h. It also has an option with the 155h, but it battery and thermals can take a hit that I don't think it's worth it. It's got 16gb spread across 8x2gb modules and 512gb of ssd, both soldered, both extremely fast.
Build quality that rivals MacBooks, but with superior keyboard, very nice battery life and an oled screen on top of it.
The problem I had with the oled screen is that I thought it oversaturate reds out of the box on Linux, which I corrected using hyprshade: https://github.com/gchamon/archie/blob/main/hypr/shaders/vib.... I am looking for a better solution because the filters get picked on screenshots and washes out the colours. I need to find an ICE profile or export one from Windows.
The camera also behave a bit weird. It has noticeable quality difference when using chromium and other browsers, the latter with perceptible quality degradation.
Other than that, a very good mobile linux driver, snappy, cool, quiet, charges fast and a joy to use.
rcarmo
If you have an old Intel MacBook Air, they work beautifully with Linux as well: https://taoofmac.com/space/blog/2025/11/05/2200
jebarker
I did this with the 11”, which was one of the greatest sized laptops for travel IMO, just had to replace the explody looking battery!
internet2000
> But the thing that got me, in all honesty, was the brand. “Fujitsu laptop” sounds like colour in a William Gibson novel: “crawling into the avionics bay, Case took out a battered Fujitsu refurb, and stuck a JTAG port in the flight computer—”.
It's kind of hard to take this opinion seriously after that.
Ezhik
This website is called Hacker News.
marcodiego
> install Windows 11. This came with the laptop. And the installation makes installing Linux feel easy: I had to do so many weird tricks to avoid having to create an account with Microsoft during the installation.
The way secure boot evolved is disgusting. Specially because, at the time it was becoming popular, people we're warned that was more a tool of control than for security. Having to install a proprietary OS to install another should be forbidden.
mystifyingpoi
But what happened doesn't make sense even. Why would upgrading the BIOS suddenly restore the option to toggle Secure Boot? If the previous owner (assuming, some company) disabled this, why would it be so trivial (comparatively) to work around it?
makeitdouble
If the company fully managed the previous windows install, they'd have control on the upgrades to the BIOS as well and could just block them. These restrictions disappear with standard windows install.
maelito
Is there a good linux ARM laptop, fanless ?
danans
A Lenovo Chromebook Plus 14 has a M2 equivalent ARM CPU/GPU (Mediatek Kompanio Ultra/Mali Immortalis G925), and comes with an arm64 Linux VM (Debian Bookworm) ready to go out of the box that supports most regular Linux apps built for ARM (including VSCode, Cursor, Claude code, etc). I use it for my software development daily driver. Battery life is amazing as you'd expect.
I've even run local LLMs and have gotten 30 tok/sec with smaller Gemma models (had to install mesa vulkan drivers from debian-backports for GPU support in the VM).
If ChromeOS's Linux VM doesn't suit you, you can replace ChromeOS with Linux with a bit of work:
https://askubuntu.com/questions/1506894/how-to-install-ubunt...
Another Chromebook with the same setup is the Acer Chromebook Plus Spin 514.
haunter
You won't find anything like the Macbook Air M1 in build quality, display, and battery life
Thinkpad X13s and T14s (both with Snapdragon) are the best closest alternative.
makeitdouble
The M1 Air display being 2560x1600, that isn't much of a high bar to cross.
Surface Pro are 2880x1920, Asus’ pz13 series will be in the same ballpark. Getting Linux on them will be a bit more of a PITA, but you get the touchscreen and form factor to balance. Build quality will be basically on par with Apple, battery life should be taking a more serious hit (linux + smaller battery from the start)
cromka
Have a look at X1E devicetree in Linux kernel source (https://github.com/torvalds/linux/tree/master/arch/arm64/boo... all the way to the bottom). There are some models that have a very active development and an almost complete support by now, with Thinkpad T14s probably the most active.
imwally
I’d be interested in this as well. I want a quiet machine with a decent display and a long battery life. Right now the MacBook Air checks those boxes but I’d be very interested in an alternative that I can throw Linux / OpenBSD on.
maelito
My Ryzen framework 13 is silent almost all the times, except gaming and processing map tiles.
makeitdouble
While I personally want a fan and see it as price to pay for better thermals, the disadvantages aren't just noise.
The most critical issue would be the fans still spinning to cool down the machine when it was sent to sleep. That creates the vicious cycle when bagged right after sleep, where the fan try to lower the temp, but their running in a closed environment warms the confined air, which pushes the fan to run faster yet.
That's the recipe for a hot and dead battery when you take it out of the bag.
I had that with MacBooks and Windows laptops alike.
dmitrygr
MacBook Air M1. Find one with max ram (Facebook marketplace, $400), have storage upgraded to 2TB (IYKYK), Linux support is good.
cromka
Sorry, but no: https://asahilinux.org/docs/platform/feature-support/m1/#tab...
Can't even drive an external display over the DP.
Linux support on Apple hardware is subpar compared to ARM Thinkpads.
fulafel
I guess it's the physical HDMI port that's needed, as Minis and the Pro laptops have working monitor HDMI monitor support?
jack_tripper
How did you upgrade the soldered storage?
baq
Take it to a shop which cnc mills the original one off and solders a compatible new one on. Maybe you can desolder the old one, but why bother.
varispeed
In my opinion, touching anything made by Fujitsu is not ethical.
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Post_Office_scandal
michaelg7x
This was my first thought as well.
UncleSlacky
TL;DR: When in doubt, update the BIOS before doing anything else.
qrobit
Unless there is some vulnerability in the current version that you want to take advantage of. See e.g. mediatek exploit to unlock bootloaders without authorization by OEM or hacking PS4.
giancarlostoro
Whenever Microsoft makes me make an account and I cannot bypass it I just make an throwaway with not so pleasant words in the email. Followed by installing EndeavourOS.
mystifyingpoi
I really hope this still works forever. Unfortunately I suspect, that one day they'll require a phone verification or similar, like many services do nowadays.
Tossing Linux on used enterprise laptops is maybe the best bang for your buck machine you can get. They're often time a great value and within three years old. Used multiple Thinkpads and Dells over the years that were fantastic and gotten sub $400.
Things I learned to look out for:
- Locked BIOS
- Look into the manufacturer's repairability reputation. I replaced the entire keyboard on my ThinkPad X1 Carbon and it was perfectly fine. It was a pain to get to, but no problems. On a Dell Latitude, it refused to charge my non-OEM battery replacement. My fault - I should've done some research.
In my experience, Dell and Lenovo have excellent Linux hardware support. I don't know about other manufacturers, but I hope that that's also the case now too.