ThinkPad Linux Failure

[davidwillsalden]

I have owned nothing but ThinkPads going back to the original IBM days, and have owned a half dozen produced by Lenovo. I currently still have a couple of X*** models that I keep as spares. Except for the earliest ones, I have always dumped the Windows OS and replaced it with the current version of Ubuntu. Soooo, I was thrilled when Lenovo came out with the X1 Carbon with a native installation of Ubuntu. VERY disappointing, to say the least. Most disappointing has been Lenovo's horrible technical support and customer service.

The laptop just randomly freezes and has to be hard re-booted (manually holding the on/off switch down until if finally shuts down and can be rebooted.) This happens on a standalone (no integration into any systems) basis, running Chromium as a browser (or Opera for that matter) with only that app open. Simple on line browsing or word pocessing. This a.m it happened while in the midst of browsing the NY Times. Twice I have lost significant work. So, I sent it back for customer/tech support. The Lenovo response was to send me one email acknowledging receipt. The next thing I knew...weeks later..was the laptop showing up with a note saying 'we attempted to reach you. We can't find anything wrong. So here it is back." I had received NO follow up emails and no phone messages on the phone number Lenovo had for me. Within a day, the freeze reoccurred. so I called and got a nice person who apologized and said send it back with as much detail as you can give us. So I did. Go back to the beginning of this paragraph and repeat. Same process. No communication. Laptop is returned saying 'we can find a problem." Perhaps it is your system?
Now, all other laptops in the house run fine on the same internet connection. They are all ThinkPads running Ubuntu (except for one ChromeBook...disappointing too, but that may be a chromebook thing rathe rthan a hardware thing). Only this brand new X1 Carbon with native install of Ubuntu doesn't work reliably. And Lonovo won't do anything. I guess I can just use it when I don't mind having to reboot and start work over. Not a pretty return on a $1,000 laptop investment.

[axur-delmeria]

It would've been more helpful to fellow forum members, if you gave some more details, as to which particular X1 Carbon you have-- there are currently 11 generations already, some with Intel and AMD variants.

Personally I don't like Ubuntu, and prefer Debian over it. You could try distro-hopping to find out which one works for you.

[Neil]

I would at the very least run MemTest for a while and see what it reports. It wouldn't be the first time a new computer shipped with faulty RAM. That may not be the issue, but it's something easy to test and rule out.