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I am considering selling my Mac to get money towards a Lenovo Thinkpad X1 because what I really want to do is to be running an Ubuntu system all the time.

Is this machine completely supported in Ubuntu, with no tiny little feature missing just because I am "going Linux"?

Optional user story section, skip to the question below if you don't have time:


I have a friend who bought a "works on Ubuntu" system a year ago and has hated the fact ever since: battery lasts less than if he boots in Windows (which he despises) and he ascribes that to "no good OS/harware integration and support for advanced chipset power management features", odd behaviour on suspend/resume/hibernate (says: "when it works 90% of the time and the other 10% it makes you lose your work is as good as broken -> 90% is the same as 0% he says), some occasional graphics card glitches he can perfectly well live with and has almost grown affectionate to, and finally, and that is what would make him undo his choice if he could, bad "input device drivers". He says: trackpoint and trackpad just "feel different", "so much better" on Windows and that was impossible to know from the website brochure.


That story makes me very doubtful... but I want to abandon this "walled garden" of prison that is my Mac and go Ubuntu all the way, no doubt about that! My dilemma at this time is just: "I don't want to live with those eternal frustrations for sure"!

Here's a directly answerable phrasing of my question:

  • Is the Lenovo Thinkpad X1 supported on Ubuntu? Yes/no, which version?
  • Which hardware features are not supported? Provide a list
  • Optionally: sort the list in descending order of frustration from your experience
  • Optionally: mention if there are acceptable workarounds to the "out-of-the-box" condition described in the earlier points and whether this ameliorates frustration at least to "tolerable" levels

Comment: the Ubuntu hardware certification page is so not-for-end-users it's unreal. Whoa. What would make it end-user friendly is:

  • Link to "buy here and you'll be just fine, this is the right configuration for you, it'll work as long as you press BUY on that page and don't browse further"

  • Remove mentions of may and might not work. Just tell it straight: press buy here and you will get a working system with the exception of A, B, C (so that I can decide whether the philosophical "freedom pleasure" I get from escaping an Apple world is enough to off-balance the loss, for instance, of Bluetooth capabilities (something that I of course use on my Mac) but "could" lose to use free (as in freedom) software

The certification page fails to dispel doubts in me as an end-user. I don't feel "eased into Ubuntu", I feel "partially informed".

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  • 4
    You can have a look at System 76, they ship Ubuntu by default and they guarantee that everything is working.
    – Marco
    Oct 14, 2012 at 17:52
  • 4
    My personal experience (your mileage may vary) is that Intel is the way to go. Now, I don't actually like Intel that much (the 80% desktop CPU share may be part of that), but my experience with Intel is pretty good. Intel's chips work well with Linux, most of their wireless cards have support built into the kernel through the iwl drivers, and their integrated graphics have open-source drivers for Linux. Considering that Linux's weaknesses are wireless and graphics, Intel makes a pretty compelling case (again, I would rather use AMD, but they like proprietary drivers and Broadcom chips).
    – fouric
    Oct 15, 2012 at 0:36
  • 2
    This is absolutely an important question. Anyone with an ounce of business sense should put a "Buy now" button on that recommended hardware list. I really hope that Canonical pays heed to your comment. I don't care so much for all the fancy features they keep adding to Ubuntu. What's important is that things must work smoothly right out of the box.
    – Heisenberg
    Nov 23, 2013 at 2:58
  • Lenovo X1 Carbon 2015 works excellent with a few tweaks askubuntu.com/questions/599477/…
    – Janning
    Oct 2, 2015 at 8:56

14 Answers 14

16

I just received a Lenovo X1 Carbon and installing Ubuntu 12.10 (64bit) then everything works out of the box without any tweaks, except for two minor things:

  • Finger print reader
  • Mute button for microphone

Everything else seems to work very well, including the WiFi and SD card reader. The laptop is amazingly light, runs very quite as it rarely gets that hot and the fan is very quiet on the one occasion it did come on (after several hours of video playback).

I have the i7 version with 8Gb RAM and a 180 Gb SSD. The laptop is very fast and Ubuntu desktop is incredibly responsive.

I am writing my experiences with this new laptop in detail on my blog: http://jr0cket.co.uk/tags/lenovo/

Thank you.

John.

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  • Can confirm this, running the same machine with 12.10 (64bit) and the only noticeable thing's that don't work are stated above.
    – Eddie
    Apr 2, 2013 at 4:28
  • How about mobile broadband? Nov 11, 2013 at 16:25
  • I've only tried it with the sime provide by Lenovo, but the Mobile Broadband hardware is detected by Ubuntu (I'm running 13.04). With the network indicator you can select a new GSM network. A wizzard will pop-up to help you choose your provider and set up your mobile broadband connection. Nov 12, 2013 at 20:37
  • hmm... I'm on ubuntu gnome, so I have a different network indicator. I managed to create the mobile broadband connection by adding a new connection and going through the wizard, but I can't find a way to connect to that network. Jan 25, 2014 at 17:14
14

This is the official list of Ubuntu certified hardware from Ubuntu.com's own certification program. It's possible that other vendors may provide their own certification that is separate.

The Thinkpad X1 Carbon is on the list, but for "pre-installed systems only".

That is, this laptop is available in some countries with Ubuntu pre-installed, and Ubuntu is officially certified for use on this laptop only if it is one of those pre-installed ones.

They say:

Standard images of Ubuntu may not work at all on the system or may not work well, though Canonical and computer manufacturers will try to certify the system with future standard releases of Ubuntu.

There are additional notes too. Check it out:

http://www.ubuntu.com/certification/hardware/201204-10913/

That said, just because Ubuntu is not certified doesn't mean it won't work. Ubuntu is intended to run on as much hardware as possible, especially traditional PC desktops and laptops.

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  • I have never had one single Lenovo/IBM laptop not work fully with Ubuntu, granted I have not used the x1 carbon, but my current ones are the T420 (similar hardware inside) and a Thinkpad edge. Both work completely including the fingerprint reader. I also have used t-40's, T-60s without any issues at all. Dec 19, 2012 at 14:31
  • 3
    Indeed - just because it's not certified by Ubuntu Certified Hardware doesn't necessarily mean it won't work. In most cases, most things will work. Dec 19, 2012 at 23:43
  • Have it now for about 3 months running on 12.10, never had an issue! Just installed it side by side the standard Windows installation. Camera, keyboard backlight, suspend, everything works out of the box. I don't know about the fingerprint reader though, haven't tried to get it to work.
    – panmari
    Jan 17, 2013 at 12:42
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I've installed Ubuntu 12.04.1 64-bit on my X1 Carbon. Smooth installation, everything is working fine, except this:

If the Fingerprint Reader can be fixed, the system will be perfect.

Updates: I've got some freezes with the system so I decided to try Ubuntu 12.10 32-bit, as I do not really need the 64 bit version. Everything works great: no need to fix WIFI after resume as there is no problem; and no more freezes. Guess that 32 bit version supports this machine much better. I did not try finger reader though.

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I have recently installed Ubuntu 12.10 on the X1 Carbon. Everything except two things work for me. First of all, the fingerprint reader is causing some trouble, I have managed to install 'Fingerprint GUI' and am even able to get it to register my finger print but the software is not storing the print. Secondly, Skype for linux crashes every time I send a message in chat while I'm in a video call.

I've experienced no problems with the WIFI card after standby and have just plugged in an SD card which was detected instantly. Overall, this is very impressive.

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Here is lot of info about experiences with linux and x1 carbon: http://x1carbon.wordpress.com/2012/10/16/install-linux-on-lenovo-x1-carbon/

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I've installed Ubuntu 12.04.2 64-bit on my X1 Carbon. Everything is working fine, except the Finger print reader. However, I found a ppa that fixes it. Tried and now I can unlock my computer using my finger print reader.

Directions/ppa are found here: FPrint

One other side note is bluetooth always turns itself on after a reboot which is annoying. You can search on the web and find a few different methods to stop it from turning on by itself.

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  • Pretty good addition.. FPrint looks nice! Aug 29, 2013 at 12:51
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I am writing this on an X1 right now. Running XFCE 13.10.

For the most part, things work.

The items which do not work for me are:

  • Suspend/Resume
  • The Ethernet port. (Wifi works fine)

Also, I had to wait for recent update to get sound to work.

2

I installed Ubuntu 14.04 on my new Carbon X1 2nd_gen and it works like a charm.

There is a solution to the Suspend problem (that it won't recover from it) that is upgrading the Bios to the 1.13 version. Link is here

[Problem fixes]

  • Fixed an issue where the computer might not resume normal operation from sleep state on Linux.

There are some tweaks for the touchpad (to make the pushing touchpad work) and some thinkpad_acpi modification (that I hope it arrives to the kernel soon) for the function key to work (Fn) but besides the suspend issue (solved) I did not find any major problem.

Hope it helps!

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linlap says nothing about linux support and X1 Carbon http://www.linlap.com/lenovo_thinkpad_x1

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I have the 1st gen X1 Carbon and have been running Ubuntu on it for two years now. With 14.04 the fingerprint reader works. That was the only piece of hardware that didn't work in 13.10. It's a fantastic machine. Use powertop to find which settings are killing your battery life and you'll be much happier. I can get >5hrs

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I just got my 3rd gen X1 machine. As I'm writing this, Ubuntu 14.10 is running from a USB pen drive. So far I can say that this is not a "zero glitches" solution:

  • mouse key buttons above trackpad don't work
  • screen brightness keys don't work

Full story at http://fredrik.wendt.se/2015/02/24/lenovo-thinkpad-x1-carbon-3rd-gen/

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  • I would like to know more about your (mis?)adventures with X1C 3rd gen and Ubuntu. Are you planning to post more updates in your blog?
    – aa8y
    Mar 18, 2015 at 21:53
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I have an X1 Carbon 3rd gen from 2015 with IPS Display and I am completly satisfied.

It is the best laptop I ever had. I really love it running ubuntu 14.04.

I modified ubuntu 14.04 with a few tweaks to get really everything working. See Lenovo X1 Carbon 2015 3rd gen 20 BS - trackpoint, clickpad and wifi

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I would suggest looking into System76 If you don't want to go that route. I would strongly suggest grabbing the

Asus x550la Intel core i7 haswell

or a similar model.

Ubuntu runs flawlessly out of the box and incredibly stable. All hardware drivers work without any issue. I have customized my build exactly how I want with no issues as well. Ubuntu runs like it was built for this exact ISA.

You will not be able to use some of the hardware features the Lenovo Thinkpad is equipped with.

-2

This answer received a few down votes, because some people stumble upon this question when they seek for an answer to hardware recommendation. However this answer also (or may be mostly) deals with the ideological part of the initial question.


The SD card reader and the fingerprint reader will not work (fingerprint readers are for convenience and don't improve security). All in all, there is no big difference to the T530 base configuration I am currently using with 12.04. It's mostly the Thinkpad 2012 platform with an Intel processor in the smallest chassis.

From my experience with my T530 booting in UEFI mode works fine. Hibernate and resume work fine and fast with an mSATA SSD, but you should always save your work. Input devices work fine, you may just have to configure the behavior (pointer speed) to match that from the other operating system.


You want to have control over your computing devices, which is good and GNU licensed software – like Linux – that protects your four kinds of freedom is a good direction and starting point.

However bringing an attitude that is focused only on consumption to the community isn't healthy. The ideal situation, of course, should be that everything works right out of the box. However unless you have a support contract with someone you cannot expect that your demand for such a thing is instantly fulfilled and it's in your best interest to get involved. (Your friend should have done the same.) Otherwise, if you have a support contract, please use the contacts provided in the contract.

Given that users and developers care to contribute and take responsibility, a free and libre software ecosystem can deliver great software quality and user experience where several companies not committing to work together may be unsuccessful and patronize users. But this is more of an ideal and making a purchase decision on what's currently available on the market, probably heavily marketed and labeled as "cutting edge" or latest generation, is the first step of degrading this ideal to a bad compromise, which will get worse when you keep the consumer attitude and don't get involved with the community.

You need to realize that too many manufacturers on the market don't respect your rights because their primary goal is to be profitable, not a charity. You shouldn't feel constrained to buying products that don't improve your quality of life by the amount you expected, just because the market doesn't care.

I know many would rather choose lifestyle and state of the art patented and dongled technology over pure free hardware designs. Initially the concept of patents was to protect the inventor while allowing access for others but mostly gets negative press due to abuse. On a similar note getting funding for science and research apparently got more difficult and is somehow set up with wrong incentives.

It's up to the consumer to decide how slow the industry moves towards respecting your freedom and free hardware designs that work flawless with free software and it requires more than just replacing one brand with another.

Regarding this topic I would currently recommend watching the talk from Richard Stallman from the Chaos Communication Congress of 2014: 31C3 - 6123 - Freedom in your computer and in the net.

It's not as mean-spirited as one would expect, because that wouldn't be helpful at all. (Some people in the audience got their share later that day, 6205) While his introduction may leave many puzzled and one may find him awkward, it's more convincing to try to use devices that respect your freedom than the every now and then failure in escapism of someone trying to write an article about her/his experience on living without a certain device or service. Never forget that devices that respect your freedom are vital to protect and fight for your rights, civil rights, everything you take for granted or were unaware of (like rights of people that don't live in your state or country).

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    -1 for low information density. Your analysis would probably make up for a good blog post, but on the Q&A site it's just opinionated noise begging for a huge [citation needed] tag. You covered no factual experience of yourself relevant to the question, the links you shared don't provide any foundations for other facts you asserted. I'm sorry if this offends you, but it seems that you might be able to extract some advice from this kind of negative feedback.
    – ulidtko
    Jun 30, 2013 at 23:32

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