Linux on the Thinkpad T480


Laptop ordered Apr 23, 2018, finally arrived May 16. Why Lenovo's website sucks as much as it did last year (credit card denied error message is bogus, but the buck stops there) is beyond me. They all point fingers at each order.
I had wanted to get an 8th gen intel processor, and the X280 seemed the natural choice since I loved the 21hr battery lifetime on the X270, but the new redesigned X280 closed up the box (no more HDD, no space for an ethernet port, no memory expansion), so the T480, even though 1.5inch bigger, seemed a more natural fit for me.
Decided to get it with 16GB from Lenovo. That's against my usual habit or post-ordering putting in all the right upgrades. A sign of getting older?
Installed Kubuntu 18.04, as I need to wean myself off Unity, and Gnome3 isn't for me right now. Very configurable, I like it. I've also finally started to organize my dotfiles (and other things) into a github repo (just as Microsoft baught it) appropriately called teunix
Issues:

putting in a new SDD

Upgraded the HDD, but it refused to boot. The usual thing, boot from USB, let it figure out the UEFI boot, but no go. Then turned the BIOS into legacy mode, still no go. Then decided to copy (via dd) all partitions and use grub-installl to force the boot . That used to be the way in legacy boot. Still no go :( Eventually I did seea boot messages from linux saying 'failed to open \EFI\BOOT\mmx64.efi The EFI partition is just a very simple FAT partition, with some boot files, but my understanding is that via the OEM the NVRAM has been written with parameters that would cause a boot refusal if you tamper with the MBR or even HDD :-) The trick was to copy my old grubx64.efi (which was in another directory in \EFI somewehre) to the \EFI\BOOT, as well as a mmx64.efi, The former was suggested via google, but I did both. After this the boot was still scary, it came with a big blue screen inviting me to "MOK managment" (secret keys). I did something logical, i forgot, but after this another menu and then the familiar grub came up. So my old method "grub-install" from a live distro didn't work. But what's new here is that despite that my /etc/fstab was referring to the old disk UUID, it still booted after this new edi file and the MOK menu.... Battery: I got mine with two batteries, the internal one (small) and a bigger replaceable one. After two years both batteries have deteriorated a lot. The large battery has only 50% capacity left. Disappointing. Other references: This page was last modified on 08-Jun-2020 by teuben@astro.umd.edu.