Lenovo ThinkPad P1

Getting Ubuntu to Install and Boot

Shrinking Windows partition

Shrinking it from within Windows (RECOMMENDED)

WARNING: IF YOU HAVE BITLOCKER ON A DRIVE, YOU MUST HAVE YOUR WINDOWS BITLOCKER RECOVERY KEY IF YOU WANT TO SHRINK THAT WINDOWS PARTITION ON THAT DRIVE. OTHERWISE, FIND A DIFFERENT HARD DRIVE OR YOUR DATA WILL BE LOST. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!

Now shrink your drive within Windows by pressing Windows+R, typing diskmgmt.msc and pressing ENTER, then finding the NTFS partition you want to shrink (it's usually a big 250GB chunk you see on the screen) and right click > Shrink and shrink the partition by ~30GB or so for installing Ubuntu. (Don't create another partition on top of the "Free Space" that's now there. Just leave it be.)

If diskmgmt.msc complains with an error saying "the partition cannot be shrunk" or similar, you will need to follow the steps in Shrinking Windows partitions for installing Linux#Defragmenting the partition.

Shrinking it from within the Ubuntu installer (NOT RECOMMENDED)

Especially if you have little experience with the command line, PLEASE shrink your BitLocker partitions within Windows, not within the command line in the Ubuntu installer. There are ways to do it using the command line, but you have to be careful!

To do this, you'll have to open a separate command line with Ctrl+Alt+F2 and type a few commands in.

Tutorial for this is TBD. Here's a useful link though: https://superuser.com/questions/1458673/how-can-i-resize-a-windows-bitlocker-partition-with-gparted

Make sure you have enough space (~30GB for installing Ubuntu). If you don't, you may need to defragment your drive - see HP ZBook Studio G4 for information on how to do that.

Rebooting and BIOS settings

Burn the flash drive in GPT mode using Rufus. Use ISO mode (not DD mode).

Restart your computer.

You don't need to change the BIOS settings if:.

If you are using "UEFI BIOS version" 1.15, we HIGHLY recommend UPDATING TO A NEWER VERSION. You can do this using the Lenovo Vantage utility on Windows.

In the BIOS, make sure you are using DISPLAY > HYBRID GRAPHICS (I recommend this if you want to have battery life).

You can also allocate 512MB of video RAM instead of 256MB to make games faster.

Save and exit in the BIOS settings.

Installing with GRUB

It should automatically boot to the flash drive if you have it plugged in. You should see a GRUB screen.

Edit the first option by pressing e. Before --- in quiet splash --- (you may have to press up and right arrow to get to it because it doesn't show line breaks. The "\" at the end of a line means the line continues onto the next "line" of the screen), insert modprobe.blacklist=nouveau so the installer doesn't freeze.

(This is before the casperfs.whatever on the last line)

Press Ctrl+X to boot into Ubuntu installer.

If something weird happens, it may be the case that your flash drive is corrupted, so burn the image to your flash drive again in Rufus and try again.

If Ubuntu prompts to check your filesystem when booting, don't let it check your filesystem. Just in case. It won't do much if it checks the filesystem but it may corrupt Windows partitions by mistake.

Now go into the installer.

Turn off Secure Boot in the Ubuntu installer. You don't need to set a password for that. You also don't have to install third-party software.

You can set the bootloader partition to the Windows bootloader partition. Now, where you shrunk your disk and now have free space on it, click on that partition, and click Change... > Mountpoint > / and click OK.

You can click OK on the next screen when it asks you to confirm.

You can connect to the internet to get updates when installing.

First Boot into Your Ubuntu Installation

Now when the installer completes, reboot into GRUB and press e and under linux root=/some/random/thing ..., before quiet in quiet splash, type in modprobe.blacklist=nouveau. (only if you didn't install with discrete graphics. Talk to us in the Telegram for support with that.) Then press Ctrl+X to boot into Ubuntu.

If you reboot back into Windows (say, in GRUB) and you have shrunk a BitLocker partition, YOU MUST TYPE IN YOUR RECOVERY KEY ONCE. Then Windows will try to fix the Bitlocker filesystem which takes 2-3 minutes.

After Booting into Ubuntu...

Another important thing you'll need to do on kernels 5.7 and above is to disable psmouse.inter_touch to prevent the issue where the trackpad won't let the computer suspend (go into sleep mode).

Keep this in mind, you'll need to come back here if you are upgrading to kernel 5.7 (or whenever you perform an update) or if you're having issues suspending.

To do this, first press Ctrl+Alt+T to open a terminal, type uname -a, then press ENTER. You should see something like Linux x.y-z where x is the major version number, y is the minor version number. You can ignore z. If you see Linux 5.7-z or Linux 5.8-z or something else where x=5 and y>=7, you need to do this.

Now, edit /etc/default/grub in a text editor as the root user.

(To do this, type in sudo nano /etc/default/grub, press ENTER, and then type in your password. You should see different text appear on the screen.)

Under GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT, before quiet splash, inside of the double quotes, type in either:

1. If you have to disable the touchpad (kernel >= 5.7): modprobe.blacklist=nouveau psmouse.synaptics_intertouch=0 and save the file (Ctrl+X, Y, ENTER).

2. If you don't have to disable the touchpad (kernel < 5.7): modprobe.blacklist=nouveau and save the file (Ctrl+X, Y, ENTER).

In that same terminal (or in a new terminal), type in sudo update-grub and wait for the process to complete.

Now you no longer have to type in that modprobe.blacklist=nouveau thing (and the psmouse.synaptics_intertouch=0 thing if having suspend issues) every time you boot!

Enjoy using Ubuntu/Linux!

Sources

Incredibly useful link: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Lenovo_ThinkPad_P1

https://www.howtogeek.com/196655/how-to-configure-the-grub2-boot-loaders-settings/

Touchpad/suspend fix: https://askubuntu.com/a/981648

Specs

Processor	Intel Core i7 8850H (not overclockable)
RAM	16 GB @ 2400MHz DDR4 (1x16GB SODIMM stick)
Solid State Drive	M.2-2280 SATA3 512 GB (approx. 476.837 GiB) Solid State Drive (theoretical max 600MB/s), expandable with 1 M.2-2280 NVMe slot
Optical Drive	None
Display	15.6" FHD 1920x1080
Video Card	Nvidia Quadro P1000 w/ 4GB vRAM (supports Vulkan and OpenGL)
Network Cards	Intel Dual-Band AX200 802.11ac/ax wireless, Gigabit (1Gb/s) Ethernet and PxE (network) boot via 2 USB Type-C ports using a compatible USB-C to Ethernet adapter
Battery	4 cell Li-Cylinder, 80Wh
USB	(2) USB 3.0, (1) 3.1 Gen1, (2) Thunderbolt (USB 3.1 Gen2 form factor)
Pointing Devices	Trackpad (Synaptics?)
External Video Port	Dedicated HDMI port
Integrated Webcam	720p integrated webcam
Network Accessories	USB Type C to Ethernet adapter for PXE boot, probably provided with the laptop
Warranty	4 year with Accidental Damage Protection (ADP)
Other Ports and Sensors	Fingerprint reader, color sensor, microphone

Additional information (with a different CPU) @ NotebookCheck