Does all hardware of a Thinkpad Edge E525 work

Question

I would like to buy a new computer in the next days. The Thinkpad Edge E525 (AMD A6-3400M with AMD Radeon HD 6520G, product number 12002JG) is in the pole position, but I did not find a review how the hardware works with Ubuntu:

Friendly Ubuntu for Lenovo - Ubuntu certification for Lenovo

I would be grateful for any speedy answer whether all hardware of the E525 works with Ubuntu (especially 11.10). And if not, what are the issues and have you find a solution. Thanks!

Answer 1

Good news! I dared to buy it before the answer from Cyrilco came in. And Ubuntu 11.10 (alternate, AMD64) works with fine with our Lenovo.
So far I only found one minor issue: It does not recognise MMC-cards.

But there is probably a problem with the ATI graphic card, but I followed the answer of Isaac Joseph in another question and that helped me through the black screen after installation:

1) Go here and download the alternate install live CD.
2) Boot and install from the alternate LiveCD
3) After installation, boot with nomodeset
4) Drop into TTY, log in as usual [I had a hard time to find a terminal/command line as the screen was black, so I went through the installation process (with the CD/USB drive) again; at some point, I chose to return and to go to the command line. Probably there is an easier way to do it.]
5) Install fglrx: sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install fglrx
6) After it's finished, just reboot and boot normally. You should be able to boot into Ubuntu 11.10.
Also, I should mention that everything will seem kind of sluggish. If you install compizconfig-settings-manager and turn off "Sync to Vblank" in General --> OpenGL, everything will be visibly faster and smoother.

Probably because of the nomodeset "no video mode activated" appears just after the BIOS loaded. The loading Ubuntu logo and the encryption password question are not as nice (pixeled). Not sure if this can be changed. But the starting of Ubuntu works fine and afterwards I don't notice any video or screen problems.

Answer 2

The answer won't be speedy, but with a Edge 525 (AMD A8+ Radeon HD 6620g), Ubuntu 11.10 doesn't work. A little problem exists with the graphic card.