I'm collecting notes related to this laptop, mostly regarding Linux support. I am running Gentoo Linux, but the information should be distribution agnostic.
Works out of the box
Works with extra effort
Works partly
Does not work at all
Not tested
| BIOS Update |
BIOS update CD/ISO-image BIOS-Update for Windows This laptop has no CD drive. If you have a dual boot system with Windows you can update there. If you have an external CD use that. Writing the BIOS update ISO to a USB stick is possible with these instructions and the geteltorito perl script. Please note that the BIOS update 1.17 fixes security vulnerabilities CVE-2014-4859 and CVE-2014-4860. |
| Hard disk | Lenovo mentions problems with earlier firmware versions of the HD and has a firmware update tool (Windows only). smartctl -a /dev/sda can show you the firmware version. In my system the SSD is called MZNTD512HAGL-000L1 and the current firmware version is DXT24L0Q. |
| CPU CFLAGS | gcc option -march=corei7-avx optimizes for the CPU. |
| Touchpad |
Xorg synaptics driver 1.8 got
better support for the touchpad. The current driver uses a deprecated PS/2 interface, it'd be better to RMI4 interface however it seems this is not ready yet. |
| GPU/Backlight | The xf86-video-intel driver is lately in really bad shape, so it
is recommended to use xf86-video-modesetting instead. However the modesetting driver does not support controlling the backlight yet. There's a perl script called ybacklight that uses an alternative sysfs interface and works with the modesetting driver. Alternatively there's cbacklight written in Python 3. |
Mako: Installing GNU/Linux on a 2014 Lenovo Thinkpad X1 Carbon
Arch Linux Wiki: Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon (Gen 2)
