Troubles with X1 Carbon 2018 (X1C6) TouchPad and TrackPoint under Linux

[igtheflig]

Thanks for the reply Aaron. I decided to return the machine so I no longer have access to it.

Just too many things don't work, and when I finally got it all "working" enough to start work, dmesg is full of warnings about temperature throttling on the CPUs, the fans are always on, and the machine is slower than my old MBPr (because of this?) I'll probably come back to the x1c6 in 8-12months as it is the perfect form factor/spec/keyboard but just doesn't work for non-Windows OSes at present.

[wintermute42]

Unfortunately the issue still exists, at least with Ubuntu 18.04 beta2.

I have been running Linux on Lenovo laptops for the last 15 years and never had any major issues, but at this point I have to warn anyone thinking about buying this machine to run Linux on it. There are other big manufacturers which are actively working with the Linux community guarantee compatibility and offer comparable hardware, so today this seems to be the safer choice.

Also, it seems like the information posted here https://support.lenovo.com/de/de/solutions/pd031426 is wrong or outdated because the website does not mention the problems reported on this forum. It would be great if we could at least get some answers from Lenovo here.

[igtheflig]

It's true. The dell xps 13 works great out of the box, but it doesn't have a thinkpad keyboard…if you spend 8h+ a day working at a computer, you need a good keyboard…where is the "programmers" laptop?

[piehei]

Has anyone gotten the touchpad *and* the physical touchpad buttons to work?

psmouse.synaptics_intertouch=1 kernel parameter and disabling of the Trackpoint from BIOS were necessary for me to have the system usable. This, however, disables the physical buttons above the touchpad. How to get the buttons to work?

Running Kubuntu 18.04 latest & Linux 4.16.3-041603-generic #201804190730 SMP Thu Apr 19 07:32:02 UTC 2018 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux. I've got the NFC model and have disabled that, too.

[net_life]

It works for me with with X1Y3. I removed i2c_i801 from /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf, otherwise option psmouse.synaptics_intertouch=1 has no effect.

[wintermute42]

Great, thank you so much net_life. Removing i2c_i801 from blacklist.conf did the trick for me. I was missing this piece of information, so psmouse.synaptics_intertouch=1 didn't have any effect.
I also have a working touchpad and trackpoint now.

[piehei]

Have you gotten the physical touchpad buttons to work?

[wintermute42]

Yes, enabling both, touchpad and trackpoint in BIOS, removing said line from blacklist.conf and adding "psmouse.synaptics_intertouch=1" to the grub config got my touchpad and the physical buttons above the touchpad working under Ubuntu 18.04 with kernel 4.15.0-20-generic.

[schmoove]

I can confirm that removing i2c_i801 from /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf did the trick getting the trackpoint to work. Thanks @net_life.

[RedTailBullet]

Do anyone have the problem of the annoying hysteresis of the touchpad? While drawing a small circle the touchpad feels so unresponsive.