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I've bought a Lenovo Thinkpad Edge E540 and am intending to replace the pre-installed Windows 8.1 with Ubuntu. Will I be able to make use of processor technologies, such as Hyperthreading, VT-x etc., with a Ubuntu OS or will a replacement? I'm new to Linux so I'm apologizing in advance if there are any redundancies or false understanding in my question :)

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Linux should support hyperthreading and virtualization (in probably all mainstream AMD/Intel processors):

  • Virtualization - You can use various programs to virtualize, such as VirtualBox, Gnome Boxes etc

  • Hyperhtreading - it working should show twice the amount of CPUs in system monitor, to check in more detail this post may help

You should be able to test to some extent whether these features work on your machine in the Live environment on the Install disc, so you don't have to install to see if it works. You hardware should be supported anyway.

Note their are varying drivers available for hardware (e.g. some CPU drivers support 'governors' that allow changing the frequency to increase speed or decrease power usage - this can easily be changed with this panel indicator).

Also, you can dual boot with windows 8 if you want, instructions to help with this are here.

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  • Ok thanks :) But do you recommend dualbooting? Won't it slow down the machine or have any undesired effect on both OS?
    – Aliakbar Ahmadi
    May 16, 2015 at 17:02
  • It should not slow the machine down at all, though it will means there is less diskspace for each OS. The OSs shouldn't effect each other unless one changes the firmware (e.g to install the AMD proprietary drivers, you probably need to do that in both systems)
    – Wilf
    May 16, 2015 at 17:31
  • Ok i see. But maybe I'll just run Ubuntu as a virtual machine, only problem I find difficult is allocating ressources to the VM so it uses cores homogenously :/
    – Aliakbar Ahmadi
    May 16, 2015 at 17:36
  • There is nothing wrong with multi-booting, in fact it provides redundancy and there are some things that are much easier in Ubuntu. Be aware that some non-GPL EULA's consider a VM to be a separate and distinct machine, whereas dual (or more) booted OS's run on the same machine (although not concurrently). You can always add more disk space.
    – mckenzm
    May 17, 2016 at 22:08

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