When I bought laptop 4 years ago I ran into the issue of AHCI not being an available setting in bios.
I need to buy a new laptop now. Is the AHCI setting i BIOS still be a requirement to install Manjaro?
If yes, is there a mathode to figure if the laptop I’m looking a online does have the AHCI setting available in bios?
Does any other distros work around the AHCI requirement? If so, how?
Any recommandations for laptop? Priority is low weigth, high on battery runtime.
My mother’s 14-year-old Acer laptop is AHCI by default
By the way:
dmesg | grep -i --color ahci
How would you go about running this on the laptop you look at in a online store?
Welcome to Manjaro forum @Petrym
AHCI has been superseded by NVMe
Advanced Host Controller Interface - Wikipedia
For modern solid state drives, the interface has been superseded by NVMe.[2]
[2]: NVMe vs. SATA: Which SSD Technology Is Faster? www.howtogeek.com
Hardware recommendations are discouraged by forum rules
wiki.manjaro.org - Forum Rules - Product Recommendation Requests
Threads seeking advice about specific computer product recommendations are discouraged.
- Such topics, like the technology they discuss, quickly become obsolete and are unlikely to provide any lasting benefit to the wider community.
- You are expected to be able to do your own research and draw your own conclusions about which product best suits your individual requirements.
- However, Manjaro partners with several hardware vendors. If you’re interested in hardware powered by Manjaro, you are welcome to check out the available options at Manjaro hardware.
I do not thik there is anything on the market that would not support it.
Nowadays, you have to disable RAID in the settings 
but laptops usually do not support RAID anyways. For the record, i have neither setting and it works. The disk is nvme.
The thing you have to avoid with ANY linux is Intel Optane ssd. This does not work. But the good news is, it is clearly written which laptop has it. Usually even as a big advertisement or sticker on the machine in the shop, but surely on the website of the laptop.
And this is easy to avoid since intel has negligible market share in the storage market.
See that was the thing, the last time I bought a laptop. Intel bios had a bios setting where you decided if it should run AHCI or RAID. Then Intel figured it was a good idea to leave that thing on RAID as default, as the Intel RST driver FOR WINDOWS works it out well anyway. So far so good. But then Intel figured, as there is never any need to change this bios setting, just remove it from list of available bios settings. Thats where they forgot about Linux users… Linux just could not be installed with such bios.
So the question is, has Linux now got drivers that works with bios set to RAID mode?
Alternative question, has Intel gone back on their decision to hide the AHCI/RAID setting in their bios?
One of the most important factors is how I maintain my bios and firmware.
Stay away from cheap Chinese junk, pay a little attention to quality, good laptops easily last ten years, not just four.
Intel never decided to hide this setting. A Hardware manufacture of a laptop decides which UEFI will be licensed and which options will be available. There are not that many UEFI supplier out there. Intel can only make recommendations, but a Hardware manufacture will decide which options are available and which are the default values. Just see the stability problems with Intel desktop processors of the 13th and 14th generation, which are in part because Hardware manufacture decided to use different default values for the CPU.
Don’t think so. It is still in manjaro’s install guide.
Not sure if lvfs is the right place to look. It is just an update mechanism, windows can use it too, even on a machine not running Linux.
For me, the ultimate place to look for compatibility with linux is the hardware database. You can even see what works and what not. And the go to the arch wiki laptop article to see if there is workaround.
P.s. do not forget to contribute after buying, the database relies on user submissions.
That 4 year old cheap Chinese junk that was stolen… I can’t find anything today that matches its specs…
-Intel I5,
-0.92 kg
-FHD
-30 hours battery runtime (30h advertised, 25h actual usage new, 18h actual usage after 4 years),
-40GB ram,
-2xSSD 1TB (pcie4x4 and pcie4x3, set up manual file sync, not raid, I did have a spare SSD with my full system backup ready to run in a moment if the main ssd failed for some reason. I.e. when I ran system update, I had the pre-update system ready to run in case a problem showed up after a couple of days usage. If all OK. sync the files of the spare.)
-MIL-STD 810G. It is approved for sea mist, dust proof, fall proof…
-Cost: About 50% of any other laptop available at that time, independent of specs, in the ultrabook segment
I was using it on building site, where a 4m long 2x4 once fell on the laptop (lid open). It fell from table height to the floor a few times (lid open). I was using it on the beach. Putting it right down in the sand. saltwater from dogs shaking off was sometimes getting over it. The only thing 4 years of usage managed to brake was some paint missing at the corners and one of the rubber feet once fell off, which I clued back on.
Am I a lier? Read the specs: [I’m not allowed to post links, remove the §]
www.manualslib § .com/manual/2654647/Clevo-L141cu. § html § ?page § =12#manual
(One thing I see that was changed after that document was printed is the acceptance of 32GB ram modules)
From a news paper review: [I’m not allowed to post links, remove the §]
dinside.dagbladet § .no/data § /batteritid-av-en-annen-verden/72427496
(article named “Batterytime from another world”. Payment article, but a couple of lines above the payment shield it says “Not less than 30 hours of various light usage…”)
Why didn’t everyone buy this exceptional laptop? Because they’ve been told “Stay away from cheap Chinese junk, pay a little attention to quality”
So there stopped the development of a category of laptops that would have change the world to lots of users, and made a huge challenge for HP, Lenovo and Dell.
I am 100% sure another laptop, in particular one that costs 3x more, sitting in that stolen bag, would have just jumped out of the bag and run from the thief, save him self and come back home!
Edit: BTW. I’m writing this on an old cheap China laptop, from the same brand, that was 10 years old that day, 4 years ago when it got replaced. That is. My primary pc at the moment is a 14 years old cheap China laptop… Biggest problem, I only have 110 minutes of battery and 256GB SSD.
You misinterpreted this. Nobody is calling Clevo cheap chinese junk, au contraire !
OK, don’t feed the trolls. Why do you even ask, when you have already decided ?
There was no mention of “stolen” in the first post !
You’re asking, why am I trying to find a laptop that is somewhat near, or better, than an laptop that vent out of production 3,9 years ago?
I thought, if I pick three parameters, be able to install linux, have a usable keyboard, and battery runtime at least similar to the 4 year old model, ignoring anything else, it should be an easy job to find a product currently in production that is able match. In my hunt so far I’ve come up with 0!
Edit: If I accept battery runtime = 40% of the old laptop, Clevo L141au is matching the old one in all other aspects, except I can’t find an answer to wehter there is a possibility to set bios to AHCI. (Old clevo I was lucky to find a hacked bios with that option enabled. For the L141au to be an option I need to find a way to set bios to AHCI.
