Lenovo Yoga c940

Overview

Most functionality works out of the box, a kernel of version 5.4 is recommended due to Ice Lake's new Thunderbolt.

Device	Status	Modules
Graphics	Working	i915
Wireless	Working	iwlwifi
Audio	Partially	snd_sof
Touchscreen	Working	wacom
Stylus	Working ¹	wacom,usbhid
Accelerometer	Working	hid_sensor_accel_3d
Touchpad	Working	libinput
Camera	Working	uvcvideo
Bluetooth	Working	btintel
Fingerprint Reader	Not Working

Installation

Newer kernels boot without problems and the wifi should be available. If you get a blank screen after booting, the power modes are not supported by your kernel; refer to Troubleshooting.

Booting the install USB

To access the boot menu and BIOS, use F1. Disable secure boot from the BIOS. UEFI boot mode works fine.

Configuration

TrackPad

TrackPad works fine with xf86-input-libinput.

TouchScreen and Stylus

Touchscreen works with the Wacom driver (package: xf86-input-wacom). Also using the Stylus, the bottom button of the pen is defined as the eraser and the top button works as a middle mouse button

Note: See Tablet PC for more info on optimizing the touchscreen experience.

Video

The kernel supports Iris Plus Gen11 from version 5.3. With default configuration, tearing is apparent when playing videos. To fix tearing, create the file /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/20-intel.conf with the following content:

Section "Device"
   Identifier  "Intel Graphics"
   Driver      "intel"
   Option      "TearFree"    "true"
EndSection

That said there seems to be issues with Chromium based GPU acceleration, so either disabling that via Chromium flags, removing xf86-video-intel, or adding the following options to /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/20-intel.conf:

   Option      "NoAccel"     "true"
   Option      "DRI"         "false"

Note: On Kubuntu 20.04 LTS, Mainline kernel version 5.7-rc seems to fix screen flickering and tearing issues that are present in Kubuntu 19.10, 20.04 and Fedora 31 with kernels 5.3 and 5.4.

Audio

Pre linux 5.5

Audio works when using the snd_hda_intel driver, so make a file in /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf with

options snd_hda_intel enable=1 index=1

However Audio is partially working as there are some limitations.

Linux 5.5 and later

Audio (not including bottom facing speakers) and microphone works with sof-firmware and Linux 5.5 just add the following to /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf

blacklist snd_hda_intel
blacklist snd_soc_skl

Configure PulseAudio's to load Alsa modules with the correct device and channnel settings, by adding these two lines to /etc/pulse/default.pa:

load-module module-alsa-sink device=hw:0,0 channels=4
load-module module-alsa-source device=hw:0,6 channels=4

Unmute the Master channel:

$ alsamixer -c 0

Then press m on your keyboard.

Microphone

Microphone requires sof-firmware and linux kernel 5.5. blacklist the above and it will work.

Bug reports for Microphone

• https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=201251
• https://github.com/thesofproject/sof/issues/2134

Speakers

Audio is OK, there are 5.1 speakers, 2.1 in the soundbar, and 2 under the palmrest on either side of the laptop. Only the 2 speakers in the soundbar work, and not the subwoofer. This is not optimal, but Alsa/Pulseaudio report that its a 2 channel audio device. I have read in other articles from other Lenovo devices, like the X1 Yoga that they solve this by making the alsa/pulseaudio use 4 channels instead of 2. I have not tried this so I cannot report on it.

Thread on Alsa-devel about 5.1 speakers https://mailman.alsa-project.org/pipermail/alsa-devel/2018-November/142369.html

The problem appears to be that the amplifiers for the extra speakers are turned off by default and there is no available documentation on how to turn them on; more details on bugzilla.kernel.org#205755.

If the speakers are detected, unmuted, and the volume is turned up yet the audio does not seem to play through the speakers, try adding options snd-hda-intel dmic_detect=0 to /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf . Then, reboot.

Bluetooth

The Bluetooth adapter works out of the box.

Screen Rotation

I personally use bspwm and for that I use iio-sensor-proxy and screenrotator-git^AUR. But theres a whole article on this in Tablet PC.

ACPI

Suspend on lid works.

Manual fan control does not work at all.

Tablet/Laptop usage mode detection works with yoga-usage-mode-dkms-git^AUR.

Battery Conservation Mode (charge to max 50%) can be set with a 0/1 in "/sys/bus/platform/drivers/ideapad_acpi/VPC2004\:00/conservation_mode" where VPC2004\:00 could vary depending on the computer.

Hardware information

The output of lspci is

00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Device 8a12 (rev 03)
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Iris Plus Graphics G7 (rev 07)
00:04.0 Signal processing controller: Intel Corporation Device 8a03 (rev 03)
00:07.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Ice Lake Thunderbolt 3 PCI Express Root Port #0 (rev 03)
00:07.1 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Ice Lake Thunderbolt 3 PCI Express Root Port #1 (rev 03)
00:0d.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation Ice Lake Thunderbolt 3 USB Controller (rev 03)
00:0d.2 System peripheral: Intel Corporation Ice Lake Thunderbolt 3 NHI #0 (rev 03)
00:12.0 Serial controller: Intel Corporation Device 34fc (rev 30)
00:14.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation Ice Lake-LP USB 3.1 xHCI Host Controller (rev 30)
00:14.2 RAM memory: Intel Corporation Device 34ef (rev 30)
00:14.3 Network controller: Intel Corporation Killer Wi-Fi 6 AX1650i 160MHz Wireless Network Adapter (201NGW) (rev 30)
00:15.0 Serial bus controller [0c80]: Intel Corporation Ice Lake-LP Serial IO I2C Controller #0 (rev 30)
00:15.1 Serial bus controller [0c80]: Intel Corporation Ice Lake-LP Serial IO I2C Controller #1 (rev 30)
00:15.2 Serial bus controller [0c80]: Intel Corporation Ice Lake-LP Serial IO I2C Controller #2 (rev 30)
00:16.0 Communication controller: Intel Corporation Management Engine Interface (rev 30)
00:1d.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Ice Lake-LP PCI Express Root Port #9 (rev 30)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation Ice Lake-LP LPC Controller (rev 30)
00:1f.3 Multimedia audio controller: Intel Corporation Smart Sound Technology Audio Controller (rev 30)
00:1f.4 SMBus: Intel Corporation Ice Lake-LP SMBus Controller (rev 30)
00:1f.5 Serial bus controller [0c80]: Intel Corporation Ice Lake-LP SPI Controller (rev 30)
55:00.0 Non-Volatile memory controller: Samsung Electronics Co Ltd NVMe SSD Controller SM981/PM981/PM983

The output of lsusb is

Bus 004 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0003 Linux Foundation 3.0 root hub
Bus 003 Device 003: ID 06cb:00be Synaptics, Inc. 
Bus 003 Device 004: ID 8087:0026 Intel Corp. 
Bus 003 Device 002: ID 13d3:56b2 IMC Networks Integrated Camera
Bus 003 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0003 Linux Foundation 3.0 root hub
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub

Troubleshooting

Most of the difficulty is getting screen rotation, sound, and the microphone to work. Other issues like Chromium/Electron apps being slow, or graphics weirdness can be solved by uninstalling the xf86-video-intel package

If shutdown is not working and the system hangs on "reboot: Shutting down" on post 5.5 installations, try adding intel_iommu=off to GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT in /etc/default/grub. Then update via update-grub.