I have just purchased a Lenovo G50-45 (AMD A8-6410, 1Tb Sata Drive, 8Gb DDR3). It currently has Windows 8.1 installed which lets face it is horrible, I have currently changed the UEFI system to legacy mode and ran both Debian Live cd and Ubuntu 14.04 live cd just as a quick test to see how the system will be out of the box.
I have no wireless modules found under debian (iwconfig) but running lspci recognised the card. Ubuntu had configured my wireless otb and I was able to connect to my wifi seamlessly.
The card in question according to Windows 8.1 Device manager is a Quallcomm Atheros 956x Network adapter. I believe that the ath9k 'driver/module' is required for these cards, the first main difference between the live cds I can notice is that Ubuntu is using 3.13.0-32 whereas Debian is using 3.2.0-4.
I am not a fan at all of Ubuntu systems, what I would like to have running on this laptop would be debian or archlinux. From the research I have done so far this is rather hit or miss, arch has a number of issues regarding ath9k dropping connections and with debian I will be required to install backports kernel and initramfs. Now im a relative intermediate Linux user, but I am still a little unsure of backports. What I really want/need is a secure stable system with encrypted LVM and of course WiFi.
During many Google searches and a search or two on LQ I cannot find anything relating to the Quallcomm card nor a Lenovo G50-45. The laptop is not listed on Linux-on-laptops nor is it listed on the Lenovo HCL in the Arch wiki.
This is also my first UEFI system so im a little unsure about what this entails. I have set The BIOS to Legacy mode, is that all I need to do to ensure the system works correctly like the old school BIOS systems? Or is there more to it than that, or can I simply create a UEFI installation of the distro of my choice.
Any help with this matter would be greatly appreciated.