I tried multiple free distros, with mixed results.
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.
(Tested on live Trisquel 8.0, kernel 4.4.0-119-generic)
$ 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 |