HP ZBook Ultra G1a: An Incredible, Powerful Mobile Workstation Powered By AMD's Ryzen AI Max
As covered in the numerous Phoronix articles the past few weeks focused on the AMD Strix Halo performance, the HP ZBook Ultra G1a does work well out-of-the-box on modern Linux distributions like Ubuntu 25.04 and Fedora 42. In fact, the HP ZBook Ultra G1a is even certified by Canonical for use with Ubuntu 24.04 LTS. If on Linux 6.14+ and Mesa 25.0+ you should basically be in good shape for using the HP ZBook Ultra G1a and all the standard functionality of the laptop -- with one exception: the web camera.
👁 HP ZBook Ultra G1a laptop is Ubuntu certified
The 5MP IR web camera on the HP ZBook Ultra G1a isn't currently working out-of-the-box with upstream Linux kernels and the like but there is work in that direction. Similarly, if using the downstream Canonical OEM kernel on Ubuntu 24.04 LTS there is patched support onto its Linux 6.11 base, but not yet any fully upstream support. There is the out-of-tree driver code spread across multiple subsystems that is still working its way to the mainline kernel. Plus the libcamera code too. The issue at hand is that the HP ZBook Ultra G1a is the first laptop to market with the camera sensor connected directly to the APU. In the end this will provide lower-power, lower-CPU-use web camera support once the necessary open-source code is upstreamed but for now it is not. AMD will be making use of the hardware's image signal processing capabilities unlike Intel IPU6+ laptops relying on the Software ISP support, which will mean lower power and greater efficiency for web camera support once the bits are upstreamed. There is hope that all the code will be upstreamed into the mainline Linux kernel by possibly the end of the year, or around Linux 6.18. At that point it will be nice for rolling-release Linux distributions but for nice out-of-the-box presumably by the time of Ubuntu 26.04 LTS there will be a good experience there on the mainline kernel.
👁 HP ZBook Ultra G1a laptops with Ubuntu Linux and Fedora Linux
Besides the lack of upstream web camera support at the moment, there were not any other complaints about the Linux support for the HP ZBook Ultra G1a... There was even working LVFS/Fwupd support for updating the system firmware! Great seeing more laptops and consumer devices supporting LVFS and Fwupd for easy firmware updates under Linux.
I have tested the HP ZBook Ultra G1a on multiple Linux distributions, some of which were showcased within the earlier 7-way Linux distribution benchmarks on AMD Strix Halo from the Ryzen AI Max+ PRO 395. Among the distributions benchmarked there were Ubuntu 24.04 LTS, Ubuntu 25.04, Arch Linux, CachyOS, Clear Linux, Debian 13, and Fedora Workstation 42.