Lenovo Thinkpad X1 Carbon support
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".
Solution 1:
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.
Solution 2:
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.
Solution 3:
I've installed Ubuntu 12.04.1 64-bit on my X1 Carbon. Smooth installation, everything is working fine, except this:
Fingerprint Reader (not working at all)
WI-FI card : sometimes it does not work after suspend/resume. This problem seems to be common for Ubuntu and there exists a fix here: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2004690
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.