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3 May 2020

Migrating Lenovo T480 from Ubuntu to Pop!_OS

I’ve been using Ubuntu exclusively on my T480 for over a year now, and have been quite happy with it. I’m not a big fan on snaps, and since Canonical is pushing it more and more onto Ubuntu, I decided to give another distribution a try.

System 76’s Pop!_OS is based on Ubuntu and seems to have quite a good reputation. It doesn’t include snapd and System76 maintains a ppa that appears quite developer friendly - thus I decided to give it a try.

BIOS settings

I changed these settings when I first setup my T480, but I included them for completeness:

Thunderbolt BIOS Assist Mode (High CPU usage fix)

https://forums.lenovo.com/t5/ThinkPad-T400-T500-and-newer-T/T480-CPU-temperature-and-fan-speed-under-linux/m-p/4114832

BIOS:
Config > “Thunderbolt(TM) 3” >

Other power-saving options and configs

BIOS:
Security > “I/O Port Access” >

Preparation

Remember to back up all your files. In my case the most important directories were:

editor configs omitted

Post installation configurations

Pop!_OS works quite well out of the box. Here’s a few changes I did after the installation completed.

Restore backed-up folders

Pretty much self explanatory. Restore the previously backed up folders into the home folder.

NVMe IO error workaround

sudo kernelstub -a "nvme_core.default_ps_max_latency_us=500"

For details see newer articles:

Switch graphics mode to intel

While I struggled with the dedciated nvidia graphis card and it’s power consumption last time around (which ultimately boiled down to a simple sudo prime-select intel) , the Pop!_OS version with proprietary nvidia drivers comes with a graphics mode toggle directly in the GUI. Or a bit more comfortable:

sudo system76-power graphics integrated

also, make sure to turn off power for the discrete nvidia graphics chip:

sudo system76-power graphics power off

https://support.system76.com/articles/graphics-switch-pop/

After waking up from suspend, discrete graphics seem to turn back on automatically, as described in this issue: https://github.com/pop-os/system76-power/issues/74

To work around this, add following script to /lib/systemd/system-sleep/ (slightly altered from the one in the issue)

#!/usr/bin/env bash

case $1 in
  post)
    if [ $(/usr/bin/system76-power graphics) == "integrated" ]; then
     /usr/bin/system76-power graphics power off;
    fi
    ;;
esac

Gnome configuration

Keyboard shortcuts

I don’t like the default keyboard shortcuts much, thus I changed the following values in Settings > Keyboard shortcuts:

Name Shortcut
Home folder Super+E
Launch email client Disabled
Launch terminal Ctrl+Alt+T
Launch web browser Disabled
Enter adjustment mode Disabled
Resize window larger Disabled
Resize window shorter Disabled
Switch focus to window down Disabled
Switch focus to window left Disabled
Switch focus to window right Disabled
Switch focus to window up Disabled
Move to workspace above Ctrl+Alt+Up
Move to workspace below Ctrl+Alt+Down
Move window one workspace down Shift+Ctrl+Alt+Down
Move window one workspace up Shift+Ctrl+Alt+Up
Switch applications Disabled
Switch windows Alt+Tab
Focus the active notification Disabled
Lock screen Super+L
Turn screen reader on or off Disabled
Turn zoom on or off Disabled
Zoom in Disabled
Zoom out Disabled
Close window Alt+F4
Maximize window Super+Up
Toggle maximization state Super+Down
View split on left Super+Left
View split on right Super+Right

Software

Editors

Misc

Input methods

OR

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