Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon (Gen 10)

From ArchWiki
Hardware PCI/USB ID Working?
Video 8086:46a6 Yes
Wireless 8086:51f0 Yes
Mobile broadband 8086:7560
2c7c:0127
1cf8:3502
Yes
Audio 8086:51c8 Yes
TouchPad 06cb:00fc Yes
TrackPoint 06cb:00fc Yes
Webcam 06cb:0052 Partial
Fingerprint reader Yes
Bluetooth Yes
NFC Untested
Touchscreen Yes
Warning: Do not buy this laptop (says even Lenovo) with MIPI camera (listed by Lenovo as 'Computer Vision camera') (an only option with 2.8k OLED screen but also possible with IPS screens) which does not have open source drivers and will not just work in the coming few years.

Audio

This laptop requires ALSA firmware (i.e. the sof-firmware package needs to be installed) in order for the soundcard to work.

Video

See Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon (Gen 9)#Video

Fingerprint reader

The fingerprint reader works out of the box using fprintd. See Fprint.

Camera

The Gen10 Carbon X1 can be configured with one of two webcam setups:

Mobile broadband

The Fibocom L860, Fibocom FM350-GL, and Quectel EM05-CE WWAN chips are currently available for this laptop. The Quectel EM05-CE chip should be operable out of the box on Linux. Use of the Fibocom L860 chip requires installing the external FCC unlocking tool, which is available with the thinkpad-l860-gl-fcc-unlock-binAUR package. Do note that the unlocking tool does not work in the US yet, however it has been promised that support for US sim cards will be available soon. FCC unlocking for the Fibocom FM350-GL is available for non-US customers [1].

After installing thinkpad-l860-gl-fcc-unlock-binAUR, enable the lenovo-cfgservice.service. The package also includes a modemmanager hook that will allow ModemManager to unlock the modem when appropriate.

Some users report that the Fibocom L860 LTE modem does not work correctly with its factory firmware version, 18601.5001.00.01.01.32_GC. Firmware version can be checked by inspecting the output of mmcli -m [modem index]. When running the firmware version mentioned above, it is possible to connect to an LTE bearer but the exposed wwan0 interface might not be able to get an IP address. Upgrading to the latest firmware, 18601.5001.00.01.17.09_GC at the time of writing, fixes this issue. Unfortunately, this modem cannot be upgraded using using fwupd, so again at the time of writing, the only solution is to do so from a Windows installation using Windows Update.

Powersaving

This laptop works nearly out of the box with tlp; however, the WWAN chip currently has issues with runtime power management and will prevent booting if runtime-pm is enabled for the device. To exclude it, modify the tlp configuration like:

/etc/tlp.conf
RUNTIME_PM_DENYLIST="08:00.0"

Performance modes

Lenovo supports 'platform-profiles' on newer kernels which can rather dramatically improve performance by decreasing throttling, or greatly improve battery life and thermals by lowering the CPU's power limit. These modes can result in over a 100% increase or decrease in CPU power draw. The default mode is "balanced" however users can switch between these modes using the following keyboard shortcuts:

  • Fn+l - Low-power mode
  • Fn+m - Balanced mode (aka Medium)
  • Fn+h - Performance mode (aka High)

These modes can also be selected automatically by using tlp and the PLATFORM_PROFILE_ON_AC/BAT configuration fields.

The currently active mode can be checked with the following command:

# cat /sys/firmware/acpi/platform_profile

Intel GPU power saving

The i915 kernel module is used for the Alderlake iGPU. This supports various power saving measures such as frame buffer compression, panel self refresh. Some of these may have been enabled by default internally within the driver, but can also be manually set using kernel command line arguments.

  • Frame Buffer Compression can be enabled by setting enable_fbc=1. This seems to work fine.
  • Panel Self Refresh can be enabled by setting enable_psr=1 or enable_psr=2. enable_psr=2 seems to work fine.
  • Display controller power management: enable_dc=4 . Seems to work fine.

Both settings tested on 1260p with Linux 6.7 kernel.

Firmware

UEFI firmware and other device firmware is available through the Linux Vendor Firmware Service (LVFS), and can be installed using fwupd. Updates to the UEFI firmware include updates to the Intel Management Engine, so they may fail altogether if IME is disabled on the UEFI settings. A workaround for this is to temporarily enable IME, upgrade the firmware with fwupd, and disable IME after that.

Secure boot works out of the box with custom keys from multiple tools, including sbctl.

Function keys

In the firmware configuration it is possible to swap the Ctrl and Fn keys.

Some of the function keys have keycodes with values that are too high to use in X, which truncates values past 248. In Wayland, these keys might be difficult to map but can be doable manually using the in your desktop environment by specifying the XF86 keysym by hand from the table below. For example, in Gnome you can use dconf-editor to modify entries in /org/gnome/settings-daemon/plugins/media-keys/ and other settings locations.

Key Visible?1 Marked?2 Effect
Fn+Esc No Yes Toggles Fn lock
Fn+F1 Yes Yes XF86AudioMute
Fn+F2 Yes Yes XF86AudioLowerVolume
Fn+F3 Yes Yes XF86AudioRaiseVolume
Fn+F4 Yes Yes XF86AudioMicMute
Fn+F5 Yes Yes XF86MonBrightnessDown
Fn+F6 Yes Yes XF86MonBrightnessUp
Fn+F7 Yes Yes XF86Display
Fn+F8 Yes Yes XF86WLAN
Fn+F9 Wayland-only Yes XF86NotificationCenter
Fn+F10 Wayland-only Yes XF86PickupPhone
Fn+F11 Wayland-only Yes XF86HangupPhone
Fn+F12 Yes Yes XF86Favorites
Fn+PrtSc Wayland-only Yes XF86SelectiveScreenshot
Fn+Space Yes Yes XF86SelectiveScreenshot
Fn+4 Yes No XF86Sleep
Fn+Left Yes No Home
Fn+Right Yes No End
Fn+l No No Switch to low power mode
Fn+m No No Switch to balanced/medium power mode
Fn+h No No Switch to performance/high power mode
  1. The key is visible to xev and similar tools. Wayland-only indicates the code can only be seen from a Wayland session.
  2. The physical key has a symbol on it, which describes its function.

Accessibility

This laptop features a UEFI interface that is driven with a mouse or touchscreen; however, this interface can be disabled in favor of a traditional keyboard interface which is more accessible to use. Blind users might need to request help from a sighted person in order to make this change initially, but once changed the interface is far more easily navigable.

The boot device can be changed out of the box without needing to access the UEFI menu during boot by hitting F12, though the menu is initially on a 10 second timer so it might be necessary to input an UP or DOWN after the menu loads if the user is using a screen reader or something else which might take time in order to provide the user feedback on which option to select.