Hi all, it’s time to upgrade from my old-timer Schenker running Manjaro. The Lenovo X1 2-in-1 looks interesting especially the possibility of using the stylus in tablet mode. After some research it looks like Fedora is the go for anything Lenovo.
My question is - can anyone speak to the actual experience of a gen 9 or even the new gen 10 running Fedora? Does everything work and work well? Such as haptic touchpad, fingerprint sensor, web cam, power management, and especially the tablet mode with stylus?
I haven’t used Windows as my main OS for at least 20 years now, hoping I won’t need to switch back to get the most out of a new ThinkPad X1.
The F7, F8, F10, F11, and F12 media keys all seem broken: they have little icons that indicate they should do stuff, but they don’t seem to be hooked up to anything in the operating system.
I think my fingerprint sensor is broken: the fingerprint reader is detected and I can see the fingerprint registration user interface in gnome-control-center, but I can’t figure out how to actually make it work and am not able to pass the registration step. Caveat: I manually replaced the laptop’s original touchpad with the fancier haptic touchpad, which required replacing the ribbon cable that connects to the fingerprint sensor. I think I performed this successfully because I would expect the fingerprint sensor to just not be detected at all if I installed the ribbon cable improperly, but… maybe not? I didn’t test the fingerprint sensor before I performed this operation.
I have the cheap webcam, which is not very good, but works out of the box. I’m not sure if the more expensive webcam will work or not; it might require RPM Fusion? Relevant: blog post one, blog post two
Power management is excellent. It uses less power while playing videos than my previous laptop did when idle. The battery is at 97% capacity after 39 charge cycles.
I have not tested the tablet mode with stylus. Is there something in particular you’d like me to check? Maybe try some particular drawing application? It can certainly fold into a tablet and seems pretty sturdy, but it’s also a bit awkward, and you might prefer an actual tablet if this is something you’d be doing frequently.
This is great info mate, thanks. You replaced the touchpad yourself? That’s pretty sweet, clearly you know your way around hardware Does the haptic version work well under Fedora? Which DE are you using?
I’ll check out libcamera for webcam support. And surely the F keys should be fixable if they aren’t physically broken, but good to know they may not be supported out of the box. Let’s see if anyone else has success with their fingerprint sensor…
Great news about the power management. As far as tablet mode, I’m thinking I’ll be using it 20% max for that, unless it’s really good and I use it more than expected. I would be using Krita, Xournal++, and Obsidian (Excalidraw plugin). If you could give one of those a go and see what your impressions are about latency, pressure sensitivity, and button support… That would be magic.
Nope, I actually had no clue what I was doing and had never done anything comparable before. But Lenovo had good instructions and also a parts store. I also sort of destroyed the original touchpad by accident during this operation; the connector is a little fragile and it was just too hard to reinstall the ribbon cable without breaking the connector. The haptic touchpad has a bigger ribbon cable and a bigger connector that is much easier to install.
Recommendation: absolutely do not try this at home.
It works fine in Fedora Workstation. I don’t know if it actually works better than the cheaper touchpad; if it can do gestures or whatever that the cheaper touchpad cannot, I haven’t noticed. But it is prettier. Except it attracts more fingerprints, which is not great.
Well I’ve just spent half an hour trying to figure out how to pair the stylus with the laptop, and I’m giving up now. I’ve failed to find usable instructions on the internet, and might have to contact customer support.
Does the haptic version work well under Fedora? Which DE are you using?