Laptop/Lenovo

From Wikipedia:

ThinkPad is a line of business-oriented laptop computers and tablets designed, developed and marketed by Lenovo, and formerly IBM. The line was originally sold by IBM until 2005, when a part of the company's business was acquired by Lenovo.

Since kernel 4.17, newer Thinkpads can leverage the natacpi API (part of the thinkpad_acpi kernel module) via TLP. Older (pre-Ivy-Bridge / pre-2011) models may require tp_smapi instead. Refer to its documentation for supported devices and installation details.

See also - Which external kernel module do I need for my ThinkPad?

Ultrabay was IBM's, now Lenovo's name for the swappable bay. It is possible to hotswap a ultrabay by just releasing the UltraBay eject lever or pressing hotkeys such as Fn+F9. Consult ThinkWiki's page for detail.

Battery Conservation Mode is a feature that limits battery charging to 55-60% of its capacity to improve battery life, being most useful when the laptop tends to run on external power much of the time. This works on many Lenovo laptops like IdeaPad and Thinkbook series. To check if your laptop is supported, try to set the battery conservation mode in the Vantage app on Windows. If it works on Windows, it can be enabled or disabled on Linux in the following manner:

• First make sure the ideapad_laptop kernel module is loaded, with the lsmod command.
• If it is, run the following command as root to enable Battery Conservation Mode:

  # echo 1 > /sys/bus/platform/drivers/ideapad_acpi/VPC2004:00/conservation_mode

• A 0 will in turn disable the feature.

If you use GNOME you can install the Ideapad extension to get an easy toggle (do not forget to configure sudo for it as well).

If you instead use KDE, you can similarly install the PlasmaVantage applet to get a toggle (you can also enable Password-less operation).

Some special buttons are not supported by X server due to keycode number limit, and may also not be recognized on Wayland. Listed below are the two most common ones, but others can be encountered.

You can remap unsupported keys so that they can be detected and mapped in X by creating the following configuration:

/etc/udev/hwdb.d/90-thinkpad-keyboard.hwdb

evdev:name:ThinkPad Extra Buttons:dmi:bvn*:bvr*:bd*:svnLENOVO*:pn*
 KEYBOARD_KEY_45=prog1
 KEYBOARD_KEY_49=prog2

Then follow the steps at Map scancodes to keycodes#Using udev.

Lenovo provides updates for firmware and BIOS updates for some of their devices via fwupd, supported devices can be found by searching on the fwupd website

To update other devices which Lenovo only provides Windows installers, you can manually download the firmware from Lenovo support website and install it by following the instructions in Flashing BIOS from Linux#Lenovo

Some IdeaPad and Legion models have some of the more advanced UEFI options locked. It may be useful to unlock them. There are a few known methods that may unlock the advanced options.

• Turn off OneKeyBattery mode in BIOS setup, if it is enabled, and save the BIOS settings.
• Power down the laptop.
• Type, with the laptop powered off: F1 1 Q A Z F2 2 W S X F3 3 E D C F4 4 R F V F5 5 T G B F6 6 Y H N.

If you notice the pattern, it is just going down the column from F1 to the letter in the last keyboard row, from F1 to F6. (You may need to replace some keys accordingly if you got a QWERTZ layout or similar alternative layouts).

• Boot the laptop with F2 pressed to get into BIOS as usual.

On some pre-2022 models, you can create an EFI variable, 6ACCE65D-DA35-4B39-B64B-5ED927A7DC7E-cE! and set it to 1 to enable the advanced options. The userspace efivar can be used to create this variable:

# echo 1 > param
# efivar --name '6ACCE65D-DA35-4B39-B64B-5ED927A7DC7E-cE!' --write --datafile=param
# rm param

The currently unmaintained tool SmokelessRuntimeEFIPatcher can be used to patch/inject at runtime. There are several patches provided here: https://github.com/quanbingyi/SREP-Community-Patches

For example

• Download or build the SmokelessRuntimeEFIPatcher EFI binary, then store the EFI on the ESP, e.g. /boot/efi/efi/srep/SREP.efi
• Find a suitable patch for your firmware in SREP-Community-Patches, save the patch as SREP_Config.cfg in the top-level directory of the ESP, e.g. /boot/efi/SREP_Config.cfg.
• Create a UEFI variable for executing SREP EFI binary.
• Select the SREP boot entry in the UEFI boot menu to run the UEFI setup utilities with the monkeypatched firmware at runtime.

To use the amd_pstate driver, CPPC must be enabled, see CPU frequency scaling#Scaling drivers for details on how to enable CPPC.

See Chrome OS devices/Chromebook#Hardware comparisons.

# echo 0 > /sys/bus/pci/devices/0000:01:00.0/d3cold_allowed

echo 0 > /sys/bus/pci/devices/0000:01:00.0/d3cold_allowed

On some recent Lenovo ThinkPads (e.g. T16 Gen 2, AMD), custom UEFI boot entries created with efibootmgr(8) may disappear after reboot, with the firmware restoring only Windows Boot Manager and Lenovo entries (Diagnostics, PXE, Recovery, etc.).

Disabling the UEFI option Restart > OS Optimized Defaults prevents this behavior and allows custom boot entries such as systemd-boot to persist.

To resolve the touchpad not working after waking from suspend, create the following systemd unit:

/etc/systemd/system/touchpad-after-wake-fix.service

[Unit]
Description=Run command on resume
After=suspend.target
[Service]
User=root
Type=simple
ExecStart=/bin/bash -c "rmmod rmi_smbus && modprobe rmi_smbus"
[Install]
WantedBy=suspend.target

And then enable/start touchpad-after-wake-fix.service.

Missing IVRS map in ACPI Table, add amd_iommu=pt ivrs_ioapic[32]=00:14.0 in kernel parameters.

In order to get X to work correctly, add iommu=soft in kernel parameters (Linux 4.20 only). On Linux 5.2, add iommu=pt to prevent render artifacts on X.

In order to get microsd (SDHCI) working, echo 'options sdhci debug_quirks2="0x8000"' > /etc/modprobe.d/sdhci.conf and change module load order MODULES=(sdhci sdhci_pci) in /etc/mkinitcpio.conf (line 7). Do not forget to run mkinitcpio -p linux afterwards.

If Wi-Fi does not work on RTL8822BE adapter models, create a file /etc/modprobe.d/wifi.conf and add the following lines:

/etc/modprobe.d/wifi.conf

blacklist rtw_pci
blacklist rtwpci

Then, install rtw88-dkms-git ^AUR and reboot.

To solve all these issues mentioned here easier just install the latest BIOS update from Lenovo support website. Missing IVRS map in ACPI Table, add amd_iommu=pt ivrs_ioapic[32]=00:14.0 in kernel parameters. In order to get X to work correctly, add iommu=soft in kernel parameters (Linux 4.20 only). In order to get microsd (SDHCI) working, echo 'options sdhci debug_quirks2="0x8000"' > /etc/modprobe.d/sdhci.conf and change module load order MODULES=(sdhci sdhci_pci) in /etc/mkinitcpio.conf (line 7). Do not forget to run mkinitcpio -p linux afterwards. Bluetooth does not work until a suspend/resume cycle occurs.

Update the BIOS, if missing IVRS map in ACPI Table.

BIOS update can help if Ethernet is not working.

MicroSD does not work out of the box, see #ThinkPad E585 to fix it.

Resume from hibernate will not work until intel_lpss_pci is added to MODULES() in /etc/mkinitcpio.conf. See Power management/Suspend and hibernate#Suspend/hibernate does not work, or does not work consistently for details.

After recovery from suspend, shortly thereafter, system reboots without user interaction. A workaround is available if you are willing to sacrifice suspend-to-ram for suspend-to-idle. The BIOS has two "Sleep State" options, called "Windows" (suspend-to-idle) and "Linux" (suspend-to-ram), which you can find in at Config -> Power -> Sleep State. If you change the setting to "Windows", this will change the state from suspend-to-ram to suspend-to-idle. You can see this if you run cat /sys/power/mem_sleep before and after the change.

The trackpoint and physical buttons will stop working after resuming from hibernate. Use modprobe -r psmouse followed by modprobe psmouse to get the functionailty back

Fingerprint reader is unsupported. Neither fprintd nor libfprintd-tod will work.

If the Fn keys do not work, to update the BIOS, download the "Bootable CD" of the BIOS Update, and use geteltorito ^AUR to extract the .img from the .iso with geteltorito.pl -o bios.img downloaded.iso, then use etcher / mintstick ^AUR / dd to make a bootable USB. See [7] for details.

• Fingerprint sensor: Requires the proprietary libfprint-2-tod1-goodix libfprint-2-tod1-goodix ^AUR driver.

• ClickPad: the whole trackpad clicks, and disabling the trackpad using older versions of synclient makes the trackpoint essentially unusable. This has been resolved in newer versions of xf86-input-synaptics .
  • See [8] and its previous version, [9].
  • Install xf86-input-mtrack ^AUR for alternative drivers.
• Audio:
  • HDMI audio is the default audio output device. Consult the ALSA page for details on changing the default.
  • As the X100e/Mini10, it is possible to mute the headset and speaker outputs separately to the master. Muting the speaker output improves bass output on the headset port.
  • If the system fails to wake from sleep, it can lose sync with the internal audio card and speakers/headphones may fail to work. In this case, put the system to sleep, and wake it again and audio functionality should be restored.
• The fingerprint sensor is a Validity VFS5011, available in fprint.
• thinkpad_acpi:
  • To toggle Fn-Lock, press Fn + Esc, this will toggle the LED on the keyboard. While the Fn LED is on all Fn functionalities work as intended out of the box.
  • Controlling the 'glowing I' LED is apparently not possible.
  • fan control does not seem to work.
• Graphics and Video:
  • With the integrated GPU, xrandr can crash while attaching or detaching displays connected via the dock.
  • The built-in miniDisplayPort will sometimes spew I2C issues into the kernel log.
  • Hardware video acceleration is highly recommended as it performs significantly better than CPU decoding of large media files.
  • The BIOS should not be upgraded past version 1.14, as newer BIOSes cause memory corruption when used with Bumblebee. See Bumblebee GitHub
• Connectivity:
  • Bluetooth is extremely fragile. The controller works fine most of the time, but can cause the system to wedge totally on sleep/wake cycles, especially if a connection was active at sleep. Disable the controller using bluetoothctl before sleeping.

Panel Self-Refresh (PSR) can cause the screen to randomly freeze every few minutes. This can be fixed by disabling PSR.

See https://reddit.com/r/archlinux/comments/gu0a8a/ for more details.

On some models an issue has been observed, where they operate at a TDP much lower compared to Windows, even when using the performance CPU governor. The result is severe CPU throttling - see issue [10]. The solution is to install throttled and start/enable the throttled.service systemd service.

The subwoofer needs https://gist.github.com/BXZ/48cd8173807676a1402cf4bc7928c0c0 to get it working.

Touchpad fixed in recent kernels(or is it systemd, i have lost overview)(1-2 months ago or so i think and the date now is: 19.03.2023) so disregard the below if you have updated your system recently

Passing pci=nocrs as kernel parameter fixes the touchpad. Unfortunately this also disabled my Wi-Fi (it was seen by iwctl but never presented a station no matter what i did). I see others online also have this problem(various posts on stackexchange etc). I finally managed to fix it by also passing pci=realloc so the full line is:

pci=nocrs pci=realloc

for getting both Wi-Fi and touchpad working.

Note: I am using refind as boot manager(holy cow so much more straight-forward and less confusing than grub2) and i seem to recall being unable to boot with pci=realloc using grub2. This could just be me dreaming though so it probably bears testing first.

Everything else works, except the brightness keys -- which sometimes work, and sometimes do not. I have not figured out in which instance they work or not yet. I managed a fix which was to bind ctrl+f11 and ctrl+f12 in KDE to be able to set the brightness(up/down) all the time.

• UEFI:
  • to be able to disable Secure Boot (necessary for dual boot, not needed for Linux only), you have to switch from "UEFI first" to "UEFI only" (or something like this) in UEFI setup menu; the Secure Boot option appears then on the Security tab
  • after UEFI update having Linux and Windows installed, the Linux boot loader ceased to be the default one, UEFI started to load Windows by default and it was impossible to select the Linux one in the UEFI boot menu and in the UEFI setup - reinstalling the boot loader helped; having no access to a boot media that supports UEFI, a solution might be also replacing the Windows EFI boot loader file with a Linux one temporarily, in order to be able to boot Linux from HDD
  • for the UEFI update, a Windows OS is needed
• Touchpad:
  • Synaptics - works after installing Synaptics drivers from repo, possible to change behaviour (like reaction for double tap) according to your wish
• Video:
  • in laptops with dual video card (Intel and ATI) - detects both, Intel is active as a default, not checked if it is possible at all to switch between them

When you install an SSD in the place of the HDD and you want to have your HDD still inside the laptop, it is possible to install it in the place of the optical drive in a special "HDD caddy". The optical drive is of 9 mm height, but a 9,5 mm caddy (ultra slim) fits in the slot. A caddy with a SATA interface is needed. It is difficult to separate the front bezel from the original optical drive (and opening its case does not help, but brings a danger of making a mess in the opening mechanism; the only option is just to pull the bezel using a bit of force, but you risk breaking the latches).

While the HDD installed instead of the optical drive operates flawlessly in Windows, it was not going to work out of the box in Linux, at least in one case. The kernel tries to establish a connection with the disk, but fails to do it (SATA link down entry in /var/log/messages). The solution is to force a 1.5 Gbps transfer speed (instead of 6 Gbps) by adding a libata.force= kernel parameter. See [11] for details.

Sound: You may have to append options snd_hda_intel model=lenovo to /etc/modprobe.d/modprobe.conf for sound to work.

Tested with broadcom-wl-dkms 802.11 wireless driver

There is an issue with tpacpi-bat not reporting the right value for the stop threshold. This seems to be related to a buggy BIOS and can not be fixed application wise.

See https://github.com/teleshoes/tpacpi-bat/issues/44

The driver for the internal microphone for the IdeaPad laptops using the "Pink Sardine" platform is not loaded by default. First of all, identify the PCI audio device:

# lspci -knnd ::0480

35:00.5 Multimedia controller [0480]: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] ACP/ACP3X/ACP6x Audio Coprocessor [1022:15e2] (rev 63)
	Subsystem: Lenovo ACP/ACP3X/ACP6x Audio Coprocessor [17aa:3888]
	Kernel driver in use: snd_pci_ps

To ensure the kernel module snd_pci_ps is properly loaded, create:

/etc/modules-load.d/sound.conf

snd-pci-ps
snd-soc-ps-mach

Then reboot to confirm the microphone is now working.

It has been observed with consistency that Windows updates are what triggers the laptop's BIOS to enter an inconsistent state that makes it impossible to enter suspend.

An obvious tell is if the power button starts flashing

Keyboard needs at least i8042.dumbkbd, but you may also consider adding i8042.nopnp i8042.noaux kernel parameters. If it is still not working, make sure you have the latest firmware drivers from Lenovo (keyboard is working on version SHCN32WW, released 7 of May 2026) - you might need to boot on Windows for that.

• ThinkWiki

• Lenovo

• Pages or sections flagged with Template:Style