Lenovo ThinkPad X230

Related articles

• fprint
• TrackPoint
• HiDPI

Lenovo ThinkPad X230

Configuration

Kernel

/etc/mkinitcpio.conf

MODULES="i915"

After saving the above files, make sure to regenerate your init ram image by the command mkinitcpio -p linux, and follow the steps in kernel parameters.

Screen

X230 has IPS or TN screen with 125.37 DPI. Refer to HiDPI page for more information. It can be set with command xrandr --dpi 125.37 using .xinitrc or other autostarts.

See Intel for driver choice.

Touchpad

The original configuration renders the touchpad quite useless, as it behaves very jumpily. Ubuntu Bugtracker offers a solution for this issue. Add the following

/etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/50-synaptics.conf

Section "InputClass"
        Identifier "touchpad"
        MatchProduct "SynPS/2 Synaptics TouchPad"
        # MatchTag "lenovo_x230_all"
        Driver "synaptics"
        # fix touchpad resolution
        Option "VertResolution" "100"
        Option "HorizResolution" "65"
        # disable synaptics driver pointer acceleration
        Option "MinSpeed" "1"
        Option "MaxSpeed" "1"
        # tweak the X-server pointer acceleration
        Option "AccelerationProfile" "2"
        Option "AdaptiveDeceleration" "16"
        Option "ConstantDeceleration" "16"
        Option "VelocityScale" "20"
        Option "AccelerationNumerator" "30"
        Option "AccelerationDenominator" "10"
        Option "AccelerationThreshold" "10"
	# Disable two fingers right mouse click
	Option "TapButton2" "0"
        Option "HorizHysteresis" "100"
        Option "VertHysteresis" "100"
EndSection

Setting e.g. the motion-acceleration value in dconf to 2.8 works nicely.

Backlight control keys

Note: On most X230 models, backlight works by default without any issues. Use below only in case of any problems.

Due to an issue with the firmware of several ThinkPads the backlight control keys (fn + F8/F9 on the X230) don't work correctly. Setting the brightness via e.g. the GNOME power control panel or altering the brightness value in sysfs is possible.

The issue can be temporarily and partially fixed in adding the acpi_osi="!Windows 2012" kernel parameter. The fix is partial in that only 8 steps are accessible via the keys. See [1] for details.

Suspend to ram

There is an issue with system shutdown with power saving tools that cannot distinguish sys devices. You will need to add to the systemd shutdown trigger on this machine or else you'll get a system reboot when you shutdown the machine. Put this in /etc/rc.local.shutdown and update and enable its service, if not already.

/etc/rc.local.shutdown

#!/bin/bash
# /etc/rc.local.shutdown: Local shutdown script.
# A script to act as a workaround for the bug in the runtime power management module, which causes thinkpad laptops to restart after shutting down. 
# Bus list for the runtime power management module.
buslist="pci i2c"
for bus in $buslist; do                                                             
  for i in /sys/bus/$bus/devices/*/power/control; do                              
    echo on > $i
  done
done

/usr/lib/systemd/system/rc-local-shutdown.service

[Unit]
Description=/etc/rc.local.shutdown Compatibility
ConditionFileIsExecutable=/etc/rc.local.shutdown
DefaultDependencies=no
After=rc-local.service basic.target
Before=shutdown.target

[Service]
Type=oneshot
ExecStart=/etc/rc.local.shutdown
StandardInput=tty
RemainAfterExit=yes

UMTS Modem

Some models come with an integrated USB UMTS modem.

$ lsusb -d 0bdb:1926

Bus 003 Device 004: ID 0bdb:1926 Ericsson Business Mobile Networks BV H5321 gw Mobile Broadband Driver

In order for it to work with NetworkManager, you will need to install ModemManager from the official repositories.

For it to be recognized by ModemManager, you also need to set the kernel module option to:

/etc/modprobe.d/umts-modem.conf

options cdc_ncm prefer_mbim=N

USB BIOS update

You can use geteltorito^AUR to create bootable USB images from the BIOS update ISO. It is as easy as:

$ geteltorito.pl g2uj24us.iso > update.img 
$ sudo dd bs=512K if=update.img of=/dev/sdX

Power Saving

Follow the main article: Power saving

Power saving kernel parameters in addition to graphics card power saving, are shown below. acpi_backlight=vendor loads the vendor specific Backlight#ACPI driver (i.e. thinkpad_acpi) so the brightness keys (Fn + F8 and Fn + F9) work correctly.

Note that the acpi_backlight=vendor kernel option also works with the standard Arch kernel (currently 3.7.10-1) and has the additional bonus that (Fn + spacebar) controls the keyboard lighting.

TLP

Users of TLP need to pay attention to a hardware bug according to which it is recommended to only use either the upper or lower charging threshold. The following configuration is recommended by the developer of TLP.[1]

/etc/default/tlp

START_CHARGE_THRESH_BAT0=67
STOP_CHARGE_THRESH_BAT0=100

x230T (tablet version)

Multitouch screen for the x230t (tablet version)

Note: Some x230t models have a multitouch screen in addition to the wacom tablet.

Works out of the box with xf86-input-libinput.

Wacom tablet input

Works out of the box with xf86-input-wacom. See Wacom tablet

Not Working

• Microphone on-off key does not work out of the box

Note: It works out of the box with GNOME.

See also

• A Hacker's Ongoing Review for Lenovo ThinkPad X230