Lenovo T470s, Linux, wifi/ethernet and other problems

It is often tricky to buy a recent computer and to install Linux on it.

Here are a few problem I ran into when installing Linux Mint 18.1 on my T470s

Unable to install GRUB

Solution: Do not forget to create an EFI partition.

Wifi & ethernet don’t work

You can manually install a more recent kernel (instead of the 4.4).

On another computer, download a more recent kernel:

wget kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/v4.8.17/linux-headers-4.8.17-040817_4.8.17-040817.201701090438_all.deb
wget kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/v4.8.17/linux-headers-4.8.17-040817-generic_4.8.17-040817.201701090438_amd64.deb
wget kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/v4.8.17/linux-image-4.8.17-040817-generic_4.8.17-040817.201701090438_amd64.deb

Copy everything on the T470s and install the new kernel:

sudo dpkg -i linux-headers-4.8*.deb linux-image-4.8*.deb

Reboot.

It is often tricky to buy a recent computer and to install Linux on it. Here are a few problem I ran into when installing Linux Mint 18.1 on my…