Lenovo Yoga and Linux

I'm looking for a laptop. I found the Lenovo IdeaPad 520s, but then I found the Yoga 520 for around the same price with the same specs. I was very interested, until I read about the whole Yoga 900 RAID to AHCI drama where people were unable to install Linux and Lenovo ended up providing a Linux-only BIOS update.

Can someone tell me if I would have problems installing Arch Linux on such laptop? Would I be better off buying the IdeaPad 520s? Both laptops don't have a PCIe SSD, they just have M.2 SSD. Does this mean there won't be a problem? I'm so confused.

This might not be the right place to ask, but everyone seems to be so kind to each other here on devrant...

You can actually buy the Yoga Laptop and Test it if Linux would work.. If not send IT back and buy the other one... Idk where are you from but here in Germany thats nö Problem to do such an act.

@SupZee I'm from Belgium. I guess I could do that, but I kind of feel bad doing that for some reason... Edit: just checked, I can buy one and send it back, they would give my money back.

@Danacus why would you feel Bad? I mean there is a reason for such an Option.. Its more than your right to buy a product of your choice, to test it and if its not that what you search you can send it back... I do this all the time by(with?) Amazon and didn't get any problems.

@SupZee it's just because it's such a waste. They're not going to sell a laptop when I've been playing around with it for 2 days. But I guess that's how things work nowadays. It's not a bad idea actually, thanks!

Don't buy lenovo laptops as they don't provide security updates..

@canonbolt Okay... Any other suggestions? (around €800)

Grab any which fits your requirements and check if it has proper heat exit space, I recommend having 2: 1 in side and 1 in bottom.

I've recommended heat exit cause my friend bought laptop which had only exit in side and can't get good performance however its core i3 6th gen.

The Ideapads are crap, I bought a cheap one (I think a V310? IDK) for my parents last year, and the keyboard is utter shit. The rest is ok, but Lenovo can do better. It's ok for the price, except for the keyboard, but you can see and feel that it is a cheap one.

Linux is usually ok on Lenovos, if you buy all Intel most hardware runs out of the box. The Ideapad had only one problem, some graphics part of Debian freezes after hibernate, but my parents don't need hibernate and I never took the time to figure it out.

I have an older E540, which is runs debian without any problems, and I recently bought an E580, but that one will stay on windows, so I don't have any experience with linux on it. But the overall quality is really good (only the clickpad is worse than the one of the E540)

I don't know the Yoga, but if you can afford it, I would not buy an Ideapad, I'd go at least for the Edge series, the quality is by far better. Or even the X-series, but those prices are outrageous.

ThinkPad Yoga?

@Danacus I can understand your opinion about this, but its Vetter to play with this for 2 days and know that it dont going to fit your requirements or to be all the time pissed in the fact that you bought a piece of crap that dont fit to you.
You're welcome

@Danacus you can search for the HP Pavillon Power 17.. I got it on sale from 1199€ to 999€

The specs are quite good for a portable device nowadays. It got 1050ti, i7 7700HQ, 1tb of Hard Drive and 256gb of ssd and 8gb RAM... For most of the games, Programms and much more this is enough.

@ddephor I have already found a ThinkPad E580 (with an AMD GPU), but I'm afraid most ThinkPads are to heavy for me to carry around every day. And the X1 is way to expensive.

@Linux Good suggestion, but way over my budget

@SupZee It's a good suggestion. I'm now looking at hp laptops. I feel like a 17 inch or even a 15 inch laptop would be quite big for me. HP does have some 14 inch laptops available here, but many of their laptops still have 7th generation dual core processors. I have found a 14 inch 2 in 1 though. I don't need a 2 in 1, but it's the best I could find and I don't really mind it.

@canonbolt that one is only available in Canada, US and UK unfortunately. And I'm not going to import anything.

@ddephor I bought an ideapad 320 and the keyboard is better than any other laptop I've used (though not as good as my mechanical)

@j4cobgarby I think newer IdeaPads aren't that bad as some people say. It's not fair to compare other laptops with older models of the IdeaPads. I've been hearing a lot of good things about the keyboard and touchpad on the IdeaPads lately. At this point I'm still convinced that I want to buy a 520s or yoga 520, until someone gives me a "better", but still similar alternative.