Thinkpad X1 - 7th gen: Ubuntu 20.04 (pre-release)
Last update: 15 Feb 2020
I recently bought a new laptop: a 7th Generation Lenovo Thinkpad X1 Carbon. This page documents the steps to get the in-development release of Ubuntu 20.04 running smoothly on it.
Specs:
Audio
Out of the box, audio output worked fine for me. I did have to go into Settings and change the Output Configuration to Analog Surround 4.0 Output to take advantage of all four speakers.
Input is another matter. The Intel chipset uses a digital microphone that, as of yet, I haven’t been able to get working.
Fingerprint Scanner
Official support for the fingerprint scanner is in the works and will be delivered via a firmware update.
To enroll, run fprintd-enroll:
$ fprintd-enroll
list_devices failed: No devices available
Firmware
fwupdmgr is supposed to allow for firmware updates, but for some reason it hasn’t worked for upgrading the firmware but it is useful to see if your firmware is out of date by running fwupdmgr get-updates.
In the interim, you can download firmware updates via the Lenovo drivers page as a bootable CD image and flash that to a USB stick.
Suspend/Resume
By default, suspend/resume hangs on the 5.4 kernel (5.4.0-14-generic). To get this working, we need to add a kernel parameter to grub:
sudo vim /etc/default/grub
Append snd_hda_intel.dmic_detect=0 to GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT.
# Exit vim with :wq!
sudo update-grub
sudo reboot
BIOS
The BIOS supports two sleep options: Windows or Linux. In your BIOS, go to Config -> Power -> Sleep State. Linux uses the traditional S3 power state, which powers off everything but RAM, while Windows uses a software-based “modern standby” which works on Linux despite the name.
Modern standby may resume faster but can also increase the power usage while asleep.