A quick post since I have seen various folks ask online whether their laptop is supported by Qubes OS. I decided to grab the beta of the 4.1 release from July and try it out on some laptops (and my current desktop) where a new release would be most helpful, especially on some Ryzen-based systems where the previous 4.0 release did not work well out of the box. Since I also recently got the wonderfully consumer-friendly FrameWork laptop, I would try it out there as well, since I plan to use it as my daily driver OS.
You can see from the table below that there is some decent support for even relatively recently Ryzen CPUs. In fact at this point the Ryzen systems may even have better support compared to 10th and 11th gen Intel-based laptops.
| Model (CPU) | Successful Install via USB | Post-Reboot “Initial Setup” Step | Final Boot | Supported after Install: Audio | Ethernet/ Wifi | Function/ Special Keys | Video |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ASUS Vivobook 14 / TM420U (Ryzen 5 5500U) | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Lenovo IdeaPad 5 / 14ARE05 (Ryzen 7 4700U) | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| ASRock A300W (Ryzen 5 3400G) | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Gateway GWNTN-10BK (Intel i5-1135G7) | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Surface Laptop Go (Intel i5-1035G1) | ❌* | ||||||
| FrameWork Laptop (Intel i5-1135G7) | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ϟ | ✅ | ❌ϟ | ✅ | ✅ϟ |
Hardware Notes
* Surface Laptop Go
(I mistakenly wrote it was the SL3 previously, corrected)
The installer does boot on the Surface Laptop Go, but for me it only recognizes 4GB of Memory instead of the full 16GB on my device. Since Qubes needs a large amount of memory to manage its VMs, I’m calling this a fail.
ϟ FrameWork Laptop.
WiFi: For the Framework laptop, you can order one of several Wi-Fi modules. The one I ordered with my system did not work (Intel AX210). Since the laptop is completely (and easily) internally accessible and upgradeable, I swapped the card for an older Intel 9260 card, and it works fine.
Video: There are rendering issues with the video with new windows, especially when changing DPI or Window Scaling. Haven’t figured out a great solution to this yet, but will update here when I do.
USB: When I chose to use a separate sys-usb Qube (which is the default), there was a constant connect/disconnect error flashing in the notification tray. I’m not sure if this is a problem with the USB controller or the swappable port modules, but even after pulling out all the modules the connect/disconnect spam continued. This also caused the sys-usb qube to constantly burn CPU. I’d recommend if you want to use Qubes for now you should definitely use the Beta, but DO NOT choose to set up a dedicated sys-usb.
Anyway just a quick upate, if you use one of these laptops and have been interested in trying out Qubes OS, now is indeed a great time to check your support again with the 4.1 beta.