Installing Linux on a Lenovo LEGION Y520: A Log

# Intro

Over the weekend some Windows settings got on my nerves a bit, so I went ahead and installed Ubuntu 18.04 LTS.

The reason I'm writing this down is that laptops honestly aren't very Linux-friendly, so I'm logging all these little annoyances~~

1. First, of course, you burn Ubuntu onto a boot drive. I used rufus ↗ + ubuntu18.04 ↗

2. Then go into the BIOS and switch the type to AHCI (small rant: on a Lenovo you have to poke that little pinhole, super annoying)

3. I picked install straight from boot. After all, I wasn't going to dual-boot. My heart ached for exactly one second the moment Windows got wiped

4. What came next was probably the most painful part, since I was still getting used to a new system.

5. The very first thing to change is definitely the input method. I swapped out the garbage NewChewing (新酷音) for hime's 詞音, which is closer to Microsoft's input method on Windows. Much more comfortable

6. Next I started setting up the rest of my environment: Ruby on Rails, Anaconda

7. But when I went to shut down, it wouldn't shut down. I could only force it off. OMG

8. Looked it up online and found it might be a GPU problem. Tried stuff for ages, added a pile of commands, and then shutdown hit a soft lockup......

9. In the end I found I could install additional drivers in Software Updates. Once the Nvidia driver was installed, things got a lot better

10. Then the color temperature of the built-in night mode was super gross, so I installed Redshift

11. Noticed the battery drain was insane, so I installed TLP and powertop

12. The anaconda environment wasn't set up properly, so I switched to zsh and set up the path again

13. The overall zsh interface really does look a lot nicer

14. Installed peek, a gif screen capture tool

15. Mounting the hard drive took forever. At first I even got the /etc/fstab file wrong, booted into emergency mode, and spent ages fixing it

16. The rest were all small issues. It took a whole day, but I've finally escaped the clutches of Windows