Jan "Jenkings" Škoda - blog

I finally won something, even though it was not a competition. I was the first to respond to a free Lenovo 80NR offer on an IT forum. I replied within 10 minutes of the offer being posted. Second post was one minute after me. So... I got it



At first I wanted it for collection purposes, but when it arrived and I tried it, everything changed. It only has 2GB of RAM and an Atom processor, but it is a great piece of hardware.

It is a tablet and a netbook in one. The screen can be detached from the keyboard, so it can work as a tablet, or you can attach the keyboard and use it as a terminal, for programming or writing.



And it is addictive. I never liked the Android tablets because they are completely useless. The phone screens are big enough to have another touch device, and it is useless for any kind of productive work. But this is an absolute game changer. I can surf the web, gather ideas and resources in tablet mode only, and then switch to productive mode by attaching a keyboard. I really love it, even though it lacks power.





But... There is a problem. It runs W10. I did some research and wanted to install the latest Ubuntu (24.04) as I read it should be possible. So I installed it successfully, but it would not boot. Then I discovered that the supit processor can only boot 32bit as the limit of its uefi, but it is 64bit in core, so it can then run a 64bit system... So I made a lot of manually edited install images of Ubuntu to make it boot 32bit and then load a 64bit operating system... After these many attempts, I still failed to boot the system.

I was embarrassed and wanted to go back to Windows 10, which would boot. I installed it, but discovered that there was no gyroscope, no touchscreen, no sound... no nothing.... So I downloaded the original drivers from the Lenovo site... installed them all and.... nothing :( literally nothing changed and the hardware works the same as without them. And the biggest mystery, the device manager does not see any of these devices.

So one of my retro-collecting mates thinks he is a driver-god and offered to make it work. I sent him the device a few days ago, it arrived and he is also very confused, but he will try. So I keep hoping it will work because I really need it now :)