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

Thanks for creating this consolidation.  Your sollutions for the trackpad and volume worked well, much appreciated.

I am running Mint 19.1 and had to upgrade to kernel 5.0.0-20 to get the trackpad identified.

I also had to fix the brighness function buttons on my X1C7 using this: https://itsfoss.com/fix-brightness-ubuntu-1310

My remaining problems are:

• the microphone not being recognized
• I had to install Mint 19.1 in legacy mode as it would not boot in UEFI mode and instead only gave a black screen (and I tried the nomodeset boot parameter).

The other oddity I have is related to your mentioning using fwupdmgr update, if I try that I get:

detritus:~$ fwupdmgr update
cannot handle firmware requirement not-child

I hope you/others can help ... the laptop otherwise is wonderful

Thanks, I added your brightness fix for those that might need it.

If you use the SOF code from the 5.3 kernel and firmware from github (Connon Lake) you can get the microphone to work but my sound is running with only two speakers, I have not been able to get 4.1 audio and the microphone to work at the same time

Thanks Dave, that's basically the gist of the kernel bugzilla link I posted in the edit at the top. Glad to see it's being worked on and will *hopefully* work in the 5.3 kernel...

There is an outstanding issue on the SOF github page about really low volume from the digital microphone: https://github.com/thesofproject/sof/issues/1675

As an aside, I can't seem to edit the top post anymore, is there a time limit on editing? I'd like to be able to keep it updated to save people having to read the whole thread...

4.1 Audio? do you mean 2.1 or 4.0? I don't see any options for 4.1 in pavucontrol.

For now I'm mostly concerned with speakers. When I set to 2.1, the volume is rather low. Stereo and 4.0 are louder, but the volume control doesn't work. What's the correct setting for this laptop: 2.1, 4.0, 2.2?

EDIT: So it seems there are only 4 channels in ALSA, so pulseaudio ignores surround41 mode. It doesn't really make sense to call the speakers on the bottom "surround" but we do want mid frequencies on all speakers, so I think the following line in /etc/pulse/default.pa is better than the 2.1 solution above, which splits the signal.

load-module module-remap-sink sink_name=stereo remix=no master=alsa_output.pci-0000_00_1f.3.analog-stereo channels=2 master_channel_map=front-left,front-right channel_map=front-left,front-right
set-default-sink stereo

My linux mint ceased to detect any output devices after I appended this line to the file and rebooted.

Analog surround 4.0 still not working.

After applying the fix from the main message I got subwoofer working. But then I set the sound to low level only subwoofer works and common speakers doesn't, also on high level, works only speakers without subwoofer

Thanks @akvadrako until we get the speakers working better your solution seems to work better.  I can now control the total volume with the keyboard keys rather than just the highs/mids, or only 100% or 0% (which were the only options before).

I've found a fix for the CPU throttling without having to run and install

throttled

You need to create a shell script, I put mine in /usr/sbin/throttle_fix.sh

#! /bin/sh
echo 63BE270F-1C11-48FD-A6F7-3AF253FF3E2D >/sys/devices/platform/INT3400:00/uuids/current_uuid
echo enabled >/sys/class/thermal/thermal_zone1/mode

This sets the battery setting to "adaptive performance" and then enables the thermal monitoring (or something)

Then you need to make sure that systemd runs this at boot,

create /usr/lib/systemd/system/throttle_fix.service

[Unit]
Description=Fix throttling

[Service]
User=root
Type=oneshot
ExecStart=/usr/sbin/throttle_fix.sh

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Finally, run 

sudo systemctl enable throttle_fix.service

this will symlink it to the correct directory so it runs on boot.

Prior to this fix the computer massively slowed down and blasted the fans when doing a video call in order to keep the temperature below 80°C, after the fix I was able to play a youtube video, run a video chat just fine.  I monitored the temperature and fans with powertop during, and the CPU peaked at 85°C and the fans peaked at 4100 rpm but then everything stabilized.

Still not microphone, and the trackpad is hit or miss on boot (once it's working it seems to be fine through suspend/resume cycles).

Thanks for this list.  Here's a few things I've found on Ubuntu 18.04 (running Cinnamon, if that makes any difference)

With the touchpad, I also found that tap-to-click would disable itself sporadically.  This sorted all issues:

sudo apt install xserver-xorg-input-synaptics-hwe-18.04

sudo nano /usr/share/pulseaudio/alsa-mixer/paths/analog-output.conf.common

Add the following lines before the [Element PCM] block:

[Element Master]
switch = mute
volume = ignore