This is a guide to running Linux with the Lenovo IdeaPad Y530 laptop.
This guide is intended to provide you details on how well this laptop works with Linux and which modules you need to configure. For details on how to actually install and configure the required modules have a look at our guides section for distribution specific instructions.
This page is just for discussing using Linux on the Lenovo IdeaPad Y530. For a general discussion about this laptop you can visit the Lenovo IdeaPad Y530 page on LapWik.
If you would like to edit this page please first view our Editing Guidelines.
For full specifications see the Lenovo IdeaPad Y530 specifications page.
| Name | Lenovo IdeaPad Y530 |
| Processor | Intel Core 2 Duo |
| Screen | 15.4” WXGA Widescreen |
| RAM | 2GB to 4GB |
| HDD | 250GB to 320GB |
| Optical Drive | DVD+-RW or Blu-ray |
| Graphics | NVIDIA Geforce 9300M or NVIDIA Geforce 9500M or NVIDIA Geforce 9600GS |
| Network | Ethernet, Intel 5100 802.11abgn or Broadcom 4312 802.11b/g, Bluetooth |
| Device | Compatibility | Comments |
|---|---|---|
| Processor | works | freq steps 2,0 GHz, 1,6GHz, 800MHz |
| Screen | works | |
| HDD | works | |
| Optical Drive | works | |
| Graphics | works | |
| Sound | works | hda intel module |
| Ethernet | works | |
| Wireless | works in newer kernels (tested 2.6.27-rc6) | module iwlwifi 5000 agn + firmware from intellinuxwireless.org or module broadcom-wl if the wireless is Broadcom 4312 |
| Bluetooth | works | |
| 56K Modem | Not Tested | |
| USB | works | |
| Firewire | Not Tested | |
| ExpressCard Slot | works, (tested with a SD card only) | |
| Camera | works | |
| Face Recognition | it's only a windows program, NOT a hardware feature | |
| TV Tuner | No | No drivers yet, being added to V4L shortly |
You will need to use kernel version 2.6.27 (or newer) to get the wireless working. Major Linux distributions released after October 2008 support wireless out of the box.
On some models there is a wireless controller by Broadcom installed. To check enter command 'lspci' and look for 'Broadcom Corporation BCM4312 802.11b/g'. If it is the case it might be required to install broadcom-wl module.
Some keys are bad mapped to make it proper add following to your /etc/X11/Xmodmap:keycode 174 = XF86Stop
keycode 233 = XF86MonBrightnessUp
keycode 232 = XF86MonBrightnessDown
Most distibutions control brightness in reverse - increasing causes in fact decrease, it's need modifications in DSDT, brightness can be controlled by changing this:/sys/devices/virtual/backlight/acpi_video0/brightness
Note: brightness was an issue on older versions of kernel. After updating Fedora 10 to kernel 2.6.27.21-170.2.56.fc10 the problem with inverted brightness dissappeared.
Suspend to ram isn't working.
There should be no major issues when using a recent Linux distribution on the Lenovo IdeaPad Y530.
Discussion
Everything work great (Almost)!! I have a Y530 dual boot (Vista/Ubuntu 11.04). The only issue is not having Audio through HDMI!! I love everything else. Almost ready to drop Vista!
Suspend and hiberation now works perfectly on Lenovo Y530
http://web.archiveorange.com/archive/v/LLXmLkvUz4XgDWgOzkZS#vFZ6nI4Y9aCllOG
About 4.1 sound on kernels >2.6.32 - I'm still looking for solution
Excellent! This does in fact work. I'm currently running Linux Mint Julia x64, so it should work on Ubuntu as well.
Sound work on 2.6.34 too. Newer kernels needs recompilation with 2.6.34 modules, so there isn't a solution for stock distro kernels yet.
The fix for the sound on the Y530, which worked for me on Ubuntu 10.04, no longer works on Ubuntu 10.10. In fact, when I add the line to modprobe.d, I don't get any sound at all. Anyone get this to work?
Nope. Same problem here. Bleeping regression!
I'm on 10.10 and sound is only coming from the two “tweeter-type” speakers. Hope this works itself out soon.
I use Y530 with Ubuntu (I installed 9.10, now upgraded to 10.04).
In spite of many attempts I never managed to succesfully suspend or hibernate this machine. Tried both standard Ubuntu method (uswsusp), and TuxOnIce, experimented with different ideas found on the net, nothing worked.
Another problem is that wireless is a bit flaky, it happens to disconnect with kernel errors in dmesg (usually once-twice a day). Whenever it happens I click the short script I wrote:
sudo rmmod iwlagn
sudo rmmod iwlcore
sudo modprobe iwlcore
sudo modprobe iwlagn
sudo ip link set wlan0 down
sleep 1
sudo ip link set wlan0 up
and the machine reconnects. Other methods I tried (like disconnecting and reconnecting via network applet, restarting network manager and a few similar) did not work.
Apart from that everything works well - screen, sound, keyboard, card-reader, even camera (I tested cheese). On 9.10 sound used to be initially muted after boot, on 10.04 the problem seems to be resolved.
i purchased lenovo ideapady530 model name4051
in bulild is vista i am no satisfied with it so i prefer to change to Linux
so any one can tell me the site which to download the drivers
sekhar:
It doesn't work that way. Do a little research online about “linux hardware drivers” and you'll soon find this out. You will need much more information about the chipsets that control various parts of your laptop in order to figure out if there are open source drivers or if you need to get proprietary ones from the various vendor websites. Here's a major hint: lspci and lshw are your friends.
p.s. If I was you, I wouldn't bother with linux on this laptop unless you really enjoy endless tinkering for basic functionality. Either way, good luck!
go to the linux official site and order it you will get within a week. its free of cost.
I have tried practically every distro available on this laptop and have come to the conclusion that I absolutely hate this machine. If I can even get through the installer, then I'm going to suffer through random system freezes, lack of suspend/hibernate, and general instability. I should have just spent the extra money and bought a thinkpad… What a nightmare this has been.
I hear you. I sold mine, bought a Dell Studio 15 (refurbished from Sam's Club - $275) and have had nothing but happy times since then. Every single thing I use on here works, though the wireless card needed an updated driver, which Dell announced on their site.
Seriously, if you can find one, try a Studio.
CrashTest_
thanks for the tip. I have been looking at offerings from dell, hp, and lenovo (thinkpads only, of course). I was wondering how good those studio models were. Perhaps I'll give that a try. They are very affordable as far as I'm concerned.
Someone needs to update this page to say that nobody should bother with the y530 unless they are either a masochist or don't really need to get any work done.
I'm running Mint and have had ridiculous problems of freezing, where the UI is completely non-functional. This, sadly, keeps me from using this sweet distro full time.
and this is common across all debian-based distros.
Hasn't anyone else had problems with Hibernate/Suspend on this model? I have addressed every other issue noted, but can't suspend to ram, or hibernate. Granted Ubuntu 10 opens in a flash, but still, I want to close my lid, and have it go to sleep.
For me the biggest problems have, in the past, been suspend/hibernate not working at all, brightness, and sound, and in the present, most major distros with the latest kernels seem to have my Y530 doing a constant reset, which is only alleviated by disabling ACPI through options at the beginning.
Ubuntu 10.04 (currently in beta) seems to solve all of these issues, out of the box, except suspend/hibernate. Interesting note, I think this is the first version that has my SD card reader working out of the box as well, or I just never noticed it before.
Quite surprised to not see Suspend issues in this thread.
Also, fyi, my Lenovo Ideapad Y530 has Intel graphics, not nVidia.
Bluetooth turn on/off is not possible. I was reading http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/IdeaPad-Y-and-U-series-Laptops/How-to-turn-on-bluetooth-on-ubuntu-08-10/m-p/113740 and http://old.nabble.com/Thinkpad-ACPI-with-Ideapad-S10e-td21867024.html, a remarkable thing is a way to control Embedded Controller for lenovo line, Is there a way to control it???
Lenovo Ideapad S10 is really an awesome netbook. The size is perfect, as intended as a portable machine. The harddrive is enormous, 160 GB, and come with 1 GB of RAM, which is easily upgraded. However, some drawbacks are the lack of DVD and the use of 3-cell battery, where other competitors already using 6-cell one hence expanding the battery lifespan. More about this netbook on <a href=\\\”http://www.uttamah.com/2009/lenovo-ideapad-s10-102-inch-netbook-review/\\\”> http://www.uttamah.com/2009/lenovo-ideapad-s10-102-inch-netbook-review/</a>
I cannot get the brightness remapping fix to work. I'm using ubuntu 9.04 beta. The brightness-up key just toggles betweeen brightness level 1 and 2, while the brightness-down key sets brightness level down to 0.
The acpi module for Asus laptops works on this Lenovo. I can control brightness by doing
###
echo 5 > /proc/acpi/asus/brn
###
From 0-8. And probably the other functions can work also.
Regarding multimedia keys (Linux Gentoo). Both sound control keys work, and play keys from F9-F12. Fn+F3 blocked my keyboard and forced me to reboot. No signal of life in that touchy orange keys.
In Ubuntu 9.04 beta, the touchy orange keys work
I've tried 2 distros tm (ubuntu and archlinux).
sound is borked, only 2 small speakers are playing (laptop is 4.1), also plugging in headphones dosesn't mute speakers.
alsamixer does not see them also.
brightness is reversed, and is only working from superdim to halfdim, so if you touch that button prepare to spend the time till next reboot watching low-brigntnes screen.
to make sound work you need to put:
###
options snd_hda_intel model=lenovo-sky
###
to your distro's /etc/modules.conf (or its equivalent)
For what kernel?
2.6.28+
Hi ukasz,
I have IBM-Y530 and sound as you said in Ubuntu 9.10 is cutted to 2 speakers not 4.1 as this laptop have installed. Your offer add “options snd_hda_intel model=lenovo-sky” line to /etc/modules.conf is not working for me, 1st problem I've faced with I didn't found /etc/modules.conf in my distro, only /etc/modules - and I've modified this file, reboot system and nothing is changed, the same 2x Speakers Linux, not 4.1 :((
Can anyone help?!
Update, find out that ”/etc/modules.conf” in Ubuntu 9.10 now is folder ”/etc/modprobe.d/” there are lots of files and 2 of them alsa-base.conf (+save) I assume this is what I'm searching for add this line to the very end of the file, reboot, don't work :( What I'm doing wrong!! On ubuntu forum there are the same question but it unanswered :(( http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1284856
options snd-hda-intel model=lenovo-sky
Worked for me on Lenovo Ideapad Y530 + Ubuntu 10.04 64 bits
It only worked the 2 main speakers, not the small ones and sub-woofer and
added:
options snd_hda_intel model=lenovo-sky
on:
/etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf
like ukasz and Geb said. Thanks!
beside of multimedia buttons, there're problems with sound (pulse) in skype, brightness is reversed o_O. Multimedia keys should have others codes each other, but a few have same codes and couldn't be configured with standard gnome tools (Ubuntu 8.10)
I have it since November 2008, installed Ubuntu 8.04 and had a lot of problems that corrected with the upgrade to 8.10, actually everything works pretty well except for the touch induced buttons (only the silence button works) and the multimedia buttons at the F9-F12 keys.
Beside a few tweaks with the sound configuration, had no proprietary drivers issues, and actually worked out of the box.
I have a Y530 purchased in November 2008 running Linux Mint 6 RC, and everything works including the hardware buttons for Play/Pause, Stop, Fast Forward, Rewind, etc.
Wireless worked out of the box, without having to enable any proprietary drivers as was the case with my Dell laptops.