Everything I use works out of the box. I don't use suspend to disk--in fact I turn off swap and don't always create a swap partition--so I cannot speak to that feature. Many people seem to complain about it in forums.
The touch pad and touch screen are nice. I like the fact that power comes via usb C port but that uses one of them. I use usb hubs anyway for more ports. I have since updated to Kubuntu 25.04 via 24.10 and still no hardware issues.
I pair bluetooth devices such as my google pixel earbuds. Wifi works without issues. backlight on keyboard is nice and adjustable. screen brightness and volume adjustments work.
it's interesting that booting splash screen showed both hardware vendor and kubuntu logo. this must be a uefi thing as both uefi systems did it.
This laptop also runs windows so the disk layout has partitions for that. I'll leave those alone.
I have enough ram that I will not use a swap partition. this also removes risk of exposing encryption keys on suspend to disk. I could use encrypted swap but since I dont want to use it anyway--why bother?
I installed an unencrypted kubuntu on this system to get efi and the boot process working before tackling encrypted drives. I had to create a separate EFI partition which I dont recall having to do in the past. I think the previous installers mounted the original EFI related to windows.
kubuntu calameres installer (which is same as Lubuntu now?) still sucks at setting up LUKS. Each installer gets a little better but refuses to work in some way.
The installer does allow me to choose luks2 as a format for a partition but crashes during install. A non encrypted boot partition is also required which I create.
Next, I create LUKS volumes before starting the installer and decrypt them. The previous installers would allow me to choose them under some conditions but this one refuses to see LUKS partitions created by me.
The workaround is to run the install twice. The first time install without encryption using manual partitioning. Create /boot , /boot/efi, and root (/). Don't spend extra time on this as we will overwrite it. After the system boots up run the live cd installer again and on the partitioning choose 'replace'. One of the options will be to choose an existing installtion and above that is a checkbox for encryption. check it and enter the passwords.
It uses Luks2 and an unencrypted boot partition which is fine for now. I turned secure boot back on and everything is fine.
Steps
boot kubuntu installer into TRY
manual partitions; install without encryption
reboot into installer again
replace on existing partition
choose encryption
after install i setup the boot process to use my smartcard for the decryption and I setup the smartcard for logins, sudo, etc
Secure boot is enabled but the secure boot options were not presented during install. I suspect I have more work to do to enroll Kubuntu into secure boot.