I tried live booting multiple free distro images, with mixed results. It seems only older libre kernel versions (around 4.9.0 and below) work.
Internal wifi card does not work with free software.
Based on this Lenovo forum thread, it seems the G50-45's BIOS prevents unapproved wifi cards.
$ glxinfo | grep rendering direct rendering: Yes
glxgears runs at about 295 FPS, and htop shows all 4 CPU cores spiking up to ~80% when using glxgears.
HDMI and VGA outputs do not work. Display settings show Monitor: Unknown and cannot change resolution from 1366x768. Brightness cannot be reduced from 100%. As the screen is very bright, this may present a major usability issue to some users, and it drains the battery quickly.
GPU/display performance is poor. Video playback (in VLC) is buggy and lags sometimes. The image is low-quality as it has too much pixelation. SuperTuxKart at lowest rendering settings runs far too slowly to be playable.
Internal Bluetooth card does not work.
3G cards | 33 |
Acquisition cards | 34 |
Bluetooth | 56 |
Ethernet cards | 169 |
Fingerprint readers | 11 |
Host Controllers | 170 |
Modems | 18 |
Notebooks | 785 |
Printers | 125 |
RAID adapters | 20 |
Scanners | 24 |
SD card readers | 56 |
Sound cards | 140 |
Video cards | 341 |
Webcams | 132 |
Wifi cards | 228 |
TOTAL | 2342 |