I have a Thinkpad X1 Carbon that I run Fedora on, and I have a couple of struggles with it. Some of it is just poor battery life. But the main two that are killing me are how poorly the touchpad and mouse work (when I have a mouse connected). Even with the mouse sensitivity at the max and mouse acceleration turned off, it feels extremely unresponsive. Almost as if there’s a few milliseconds after I start moving the mouse for the cursor to move, and then when I stop, there’s another delay. It makes it very hard to click on things. Same with scrolling. I’m used to how scrolling works on my Windows machines, where it’s instantaneous. A bump on the scroll wheel is a rapid bump on the scrollbar. So far, on this device, it feels like molasses.
The touchpad has issues of its own for scrolling. It has the same weird lag/delay that the mouse does with everything, but on the touchpad, scrolling moves super super fast, which causes me to overshoot things a lot of the time. Compared to the accuracy of the trackpad on my work MacBook and the accuracy of other trackpads I’ve used, it makes it very difficult to get anything done.
Are there any tools or softwares that I’m missing that would fix this? Because it would appear that the default drivers in Fedora are just not capable of handling my hardware well.
Yup, definitely did not realize the name I put in would be exposed on the forum lol.
I’m on Gnome. I ran those three commands. First one said “Nothing to do.” Second one said “Metadata is up to date, --force to refresh again.” Third one said “Command Not Found. Use fwupdmgr --help for help.”
Thanks for the tip on tlp, I’ll look into that as well. Do you have further tips on the mouse and touchpad issues given that I seem to be up to date?
This issue (as well as problems with fractional scaling, at least at the time), is the reason why I currently run KDE Plasma on my laptop. Sure, you might be able to tinker your way around it somehow, but I didn’t want to stay on a desktop that requires tinkering for such simple issues. Issues that have been long solved elsewhere.
You could also try to get help on the Lenovo Forums or submit a ticket there as Lenovo say that their computers are compatible with Fedora - and maybe they should put in a bit more effort with that.
For others who may wish to help here, what ‘Gen’ is you X1 Carbon?
And if (re: Odoto) we are recommending other desktops, you will move on from beginnerterminaluser much quicker on Sway Windows Manager. You can easily install Sway with
sudo dnf install sway
Which might be an easy way to test if your issue is Gnome related or Fedora related. Welcome again Jacob
Sidebar: to be fair, I am not really recommending KDE, I just quickly needed something that “just works” on my laptop
To the main issue: You could boot up a fedora spin with a different, non-Gnome, non-GTK, desktop (for example Sway or KDE) from a usb drive to test if the issue persists in the absence of Gnome.
Thanks for the feedback. Ironically, the reason I switched over from Mint was because I preferred the layout of Gnome compared to the KDE DEs and Cinnamon DE. Whenever I’ve tried to install a different DE, I’ve always ran into weird compatibility issues that have caused me a headache, whether it’s multiple settings menus interacting with each other or weird inconsistencies in animations and fonts.
I may try a distro that uses KDE as the default. I was just hoping to make use of Fedora’s greater compatibility with more software (similar to what Ubuntu has) since not all Debian/Ubuntu derivatives like Mint have full support everywhere.
I’m sure someday I’ll be able to play around with it all more. But right now, the last thing I want to do is come home from my job of troubleshooting stuff and have to troubleshoot more…I just want something that works, like you mentioned.
And as I finished typing this out, it just occurred to me that there might be a Fedora KDE variant. And look at that, there is! I’ll try live booting that later. I’ve been through Mint, Pop, Zorin, and Fedora Gnome at this point…hopefully I’ll find a home soon. It’s getting exhausting, but I refuse to go back to that spyware, adriddled hellhole that Windows is now.
edit /etc/default/grub
add psmouse.elantech_smbus=0 to the GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX=
should look something like this
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX=“psmouse.elantech_smbus=0 rhgb …blah…blah…blah…”
I did try out Sway, and the input lag issue did still persist. I will still give that KDE live boot a try, but I’m becoming less hopeful, unfortunately.
When you make a suggestion like this it is wise to provide the full command to be used. Some users may not be fluent with usage.
That particular command would have been sudo grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/grub2/grub.cfg
As I want to support leaving behind Windows as much as possible, here are my two cents:
I feel like changing the distro because of the DE should not be necessary for the major distros. Maybe for some very specialized ones. Personally I would not hinge my distro pick on their default DE. Regarding the distro figure out how bleeding edge you wanna be and which packet management system appeals to you. If you are somewhat new stick to a bigger distro because they tend to have more helpful information available around the internet.
I personally liked ubuntu for a long time but nowadays I prefer a rolling release where I get the new stuff quickly. Also I really do not like snaps
At work we are mostly using ubuntu LTS because of stability and official support by some commercial software we need.
At home I am happy with fedora, currently using it with KDE on my laptop and Gnome on my desktop. Although I am planning to have a look at Sway, Hyprland and maybe even niri at some point. Also might have a look at Cosmic when it is at least in beta.
As you figured out (and I tried to allude to with fedora spins) the larger distros usually come prepared to be used with most major DEs. Fedora even has a Sway one in case you want to see if a tiling one is to your liking. It should also be mostly fine to have multiple DEs installed, but as you figured out some weirdness may arise. At the very least you might end up with a bunch of different terminal emulators and file browsers
I wish you the best of luck staying away from Windows. As a gamer I stuck to Windows for way too long, only using Linux on my laptop. But mid 2023 I got lucky and my Windows installation broke somehow. I took that opportunity to install Linux on a second drive and never looked back. Never even tried to reinstall windows on my desktop.
Like you I went through a bunch of distros. Some of them I just installed, tried for a few hours and then reconsidered. The ones I can remember trying for longer were Manjaro and Nobara. But I quickly figured out that I much prefer the originals rather than fancy derivatives. The added stuff on these distros is nice and all and makes for a good first impression. But in both cases I got tangled up in all that added stuff when trying to change or fix something under the hood. I decided to use vanilla fedora instead and just add what I want myself. The preinstalled gaming stuff on Nobara was nice, but can easily be installed on fedora as well. I remember liking the styling of the Manjaro terminal, so I just figured out what they are using to do that and did a similar thing on fedora.
I guess if I wasn’t using Fedora right now I’d probably be using Arch. Not really a thing for beginners though.
I suggest you try out a bunch of the fedora spins to get a feel for which DE you like. You don’t even have to install it, just boot it live from USB.
Regarding the touchpad scrolling will likely be too fast in KDE as well. But in KDE you can go to the settings, find the “Mouse & Touchpad” menu, select the touchpad and then use a slider to reduce the scrolling speed.
Overall you will probably find KDE the most familiar coming from Windows. But it can also be fun to switch to something entirely different like Sway.
I think a common way to decide on a distro and / or a DE is to try out a bunch of them for a few days each. Get feel for it, try out the things you usually do on your computer. Have a look through the settings and customization options. Install and uninstall some software. And remember, it is not windows. It usually is quite doable to move your stuff over to a new installation without much hassle. So even if you reconsider after a while it is not the end of the world.
As we are sort of diverting the thread, do try out Einer’s suggestion with Jeff’s addendum.
I distro-hopped for ages, looking for the perfect Linux. I even tried OpenBSD and looked at Plan9.
I settled into Fedora, and have found since ironing out my bugs that it is less work to stay on a mainline distro that to keep searching. The Fedora community is usually responsive, and doesn’t ‘make things up and isn’t full of …it’. Having Red Hat engineers contribute to Fedora (often in ways that are not apparent here on the forums) means important issues get addressed in a timely and professional manner.
I am on Sway due to the level of control I have, and even my kids use Sway. They game via Lutris and GOG games open in the terminal. Sway also has no bloat. Gnome and KDE are fantastic for drop in M$ replacements - but I don’t need a M$ replacement, I need a single system I can run web-servers, deploy Python, browse the web and game on. I need a system that works on servers, el-cheapo laptops (Lenovo IdeaPad) and beasty boxes. I always set up my systems from a minimal install and then bring in what I need as I need it.
After you sort out your mouse issue, I think you will have very little to ‘fix’ on an ongoing basis.