Re: Anyone here have experience of Debian on Thinkpad P series?

On 2026-06-07 10:21, Chris Green wrote:
> I'm thinking of getting a refurbished Thinkpad P Series laptop to
> replace my existing Thinkpad T470.  I want a larger screen as my eyes
> are getting older.  Weight and size isn't a **huge** issue but I don't
> want anything a lot bigger.
> 
> So, something like a P1 gen 4 would seem to fit my requirements but
> I'm a little wary of them nearly always having dual display hardware,
> Intel 'built-in' and Nvidia.
> 
> Does anyone here have experience of installing Debian on one of these
> systems with Intel and Nvidia?
> 
> Although in theory there should be Thinkpad P series with no Nvidia
> hardware (it is an option) I have yet to actually find one for sale.

I have a P1 (20MD). There are only 2 "problems" with it: the fingerprint 
reader never worked reliably, which I don't mind. And, like you wrote, 
the display setup was weird. I never got any external display to work 
consistently with it. Not with the FOSS driver and not with the 
proprietary driver. One thing to note is that the wiring in my machine 
is such that you can only use the non-Intel hardware to drive external 
displays. The Intel hardware is just simply not connected to the port. I 
know others have been successful in getting external displays to work 
with newer P1's though. So, I would recommend looking for one that is a 
bit more modern than mine is (March 2019, if I remember correctly). 
Other than that I can tell you it is a great machine. I still love it, 
even though I have a P16 Gen 2 next to it now.

Grx HdV