I just got my X1C7 and I wanted to have a central place to collect all the small fixes and modifications I've been making to enable all the features on the device.
I have high hopes for eventually everything working (this model is Ubuntu certified after all: https://certification.ubuntu.com/hardware/201904-26993/) but for now a considerable amount of modifications are necessary and not everything is working yet.
Just for reference my model is the 16gb RAM, 512 GB SSD, 4k screen, core i5. I installed Ubuntu 19.04.
I'll try and watch this thread and update it if anyone has tweaks to add...
**Outstanding issues:
- Microphone does not work (potential fix in the works)
- On resume sometimes trackpad doesn't work (needs restart)
Firmware:
Upon initial install I ran
fwupdmgr update
and it downloaded and applied a BIOS update on the next restart, haven't noticed anything different.
The tool currently reports this:
No upgrades for UEFI Device Firmware, current is 0.1.3: 0.1.03=same
Sleep:
Seems to work out of the box.
> dmesg | grep -i "acpi: (support"
[ 0.575836] ACPI: (supports S0 S3 S4 S5)
I didn't change any BIOS related sleep options.
[Partial Fix] Trackpad:
On initial install the trackpad didn't work.
I was able to fix this by creating a new file.
/etc/modprobe.d/psmouse.conf
options psmouse synaptics_intertouch=1
on restart the trackpad works fine (along with the trackpoint).
Caveat: Sometimes when resuming from the sleep the trackpad doesn't work anymore (trackpoint still does).
[Partial Fix] Volume buttons:
The keyboard volume buttons only offered 100% or 0% volume control.
I uncommented two lines in the file:
/etc/pulse/daemon.conf
enable-lfe-remixing = yes
lfe-crossover-freq = 250
then I enabled "Analog Surround 2.1 Output + Analog Stereo Input" in the Configuration tab of the utility "pavucontrol" (not installed by default).
This fix enables the subwoofer as well. I'm not sure if this is the best option, and am toying with also changing additional ALSA configurations to control which volume channel is goverened by the volume keys (see: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gnome-media/+bug/322909 #29 and #30).
Screen Brightness:
Changing the brightness worked out of the box in Ubuntu (500 nits is super bright!). But if you're installing another linux distro then you might need to make modifications: https://itsfoss.com/fix-brightness-ubuntu-1310 (thanks to @berbmit).
[No Fix] Microphone:
I tried (briefly) to get the microphone to work, I read on another thread to modify this file:
/etc/pulse/default.pa
with this line
load-module module-alsa-source device=hw:0,0
but that hasn't changed anything yet.
It seems like the might be a fix in the works, the issue stems from the fact the MIC is actually not part of the sound card and is a digital microphone running as a separate device. The Sound Open Firmware project seems to have published new firmware that supports this general configuration, and there's an active kernel bug report where people have gotten the mic to work. Follow the discussion here: https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=201251#c66