Installing Fedora 23 on a ThinkPad X1 Yoga
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NOTE!
This is based on the x86-64 workstation version of Fedora 23 with the default GNOME desktop. Your experience with a different edition may be different.
Help needed
Not all models of this ThinkPad are equal, you may have a different WiFi adapter or display, or some options I did not have. If you tested them, please add their status down below.
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New in this release
New in this Fedora release, with regards to this model ThinkPad is the following;
- ...
Regressions;
- ...
Success Chart - Out of the box experience
| Item | Working | Notes | |
| Installation | Local CD/DVD install | unknown | did not test |
| Network Installation | unknown | did not test | |
| USB Installation | yes | but required passing the boot parameter intel_pstate=disable | |
| Display - Intel HD Graphics | Laptop Screen | yes | Requires a newer kernel to detect HiDPI display |
| VGA | unknown | I do not have the VGA OneLink+ dongle | |
| Displayport | unknown | did not test | |
| HDMI | yes | ||
| Power Management | Software Suspend (hibernate) | unknown | |
| Suspend to Memory (ACPI sleep) | yes | ||
| Audio | yes | ||
| Wireless | WiFi - Intel 8260 AC | yes | After installing a newer kernel |
| WiFi - Intel 18260 AC + WiGig | unknown | ||
| Bluetooth 4.1 | yes | ||
| WWAN - Sierra Wireless EM7455 | unknown | ||
| WWAN - Huawei 4G | unknown | did not test, but is detected | |
| Input | Keyboard | yes | |
| TrackPoint | partial | Yes, but does not get disabled in tablet mode! | |
| TouchPad | partial | Yes, but does not get disabled in tablet mode! | |
| Extra keys | mostly | see ThinkPad Extra keys section below | |
| Fingerprint reader | no | does not work | |
| Pen Pro (Wacom) | yes | ||
| Touch screen | yes | ||
| Automatic screen rotation | no | While the capability seems to be detected, it does not actually rotate | |
| Ports | Intel Ethernet | yes | via OneLink+ dongle |
| MicroSD reader | yes | ||
| USB | yes | ||
| TPM | unknown | did not test, but tpm kernel modules are being loaded | |
| Docking | unknown | Have not received the OneLink+ dock yet | |
Tested and Verified on Fedora 23
Information in this section has been tested and verified using Fedora 23.
BIOS
In the BIOS (F1 to enter during boot), be sure to disable secure boot.
Security > Secure Boot > Secure Boot = Disabled
Also, if your planning to run any kind of virtual machines, make sure you enable the CPU virtualization support.
Security > Virtualization > Intel (R) Virtualization Technology = Enabled
And while your in the BIOS setup you may also want to immediately change the default Function key behaviour. On this ThinkPad by default the function keys will not work as one would expect. When pressing F1 you do not get F1, but you get Mute. To get F1 you need to press Fn-F1 or you first need to enable the FnLk (Fn-ESC). To reverse this behaviour back to how to should be, change the setting in the BIOS.
Config > Keyboard/Mouse > F1-F12 as Primary Function = Enabled
Installation
By default, the installation will hang immediately after the bootloader with a black screen. It is necessary to edit the boot options and add "intel_pstate=disable" to the end of the line of options.
After this, installation is straight forward; you can follow the generic Fedora install instructions.
What you may notice is that during installation on the HiDPI display that everything is very small, and that WIFI does not work. For both of these it is necessary to upgrade the kernel and linux-firmware modules after installation.
Configuration
Kernel
As root, edit /etc/default/grub and adding the option intel_pstate=disable which will prevent a hang at boot. After adding this, update the grub configs with the following (assuming default uEFI setup);
grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/efi/EFI/fedora/grub.cfg
There is a work around for this BIOS bug in the 4.6 kernel, which is not available for Fedora 23 at this point.
X Server - Intel HD Graphics
Works out of the box, but HiDPI is not detected until you install a more recent kernel.
In addition, a HiDPI display has a whole lot of issues. Most of them are covered here; ArchLinux HiDPI.
Basically with the default kernel, everything is tiny but with a later kernel everything is quite large as it tries to scale everything 2x. In fact a bit too large to my liking. On the archlinux website there are some hints and tips on how to scale things down a bit again, but it is really a hack and far from ideal.
Also having a HiDPI primary display causes everything on external non-HiDPI displays to appear huge as they will receive the same scaling factor. This is a limitation of the X11 windowing system. The long term solution would be to switch to a Wayland desktop which should be able to handle multiple displays with various DPI settings, although right now this is not the case and support for this is likely to land in Fedora 24.
ThinkPad Extra keys
ThinkPad keys are handled by a mixture of the thinkpad_acpi, acpi button, acpi dock and acpi video drivers.
| Key | Function | Handled by | Event | Works | Notes |
| FnESC | FnLk | unknown | yes | Locks Fn key state | |
| FnF1 | Mute | yes | yes | ||
| FnF2 | Volume - | yes | yes | ||
| FnF3 | Volume + | yes | yes | ||
| FnF4 | Mic Mute | yes | yes | ||
| FnF5 | brightness down | yes | yes | ||
| FnF6 | brightness up | yes | yes | ||
| FnF7 | presentation mode | unknown | yes | Cycles through External Only, mirror and dual display | |
| FnF8 | Wireless Kill | yes | yes | No OSD, but kills wireless | |
| FnF9 | Settings | yes | yes | Opens Gnome settings panel | |
| FnF10 | Find | yes | yes | Opens Gnome find | |
| FnF11 | ? | unknown | unknown | Does not seem to do anything | |
| FnF12 | ? | yes | yes | Opens Gnome Places | |
| FnSpace | keyboard light | - | unknown | yes | no OSD. |
| Power | Power button | acpi button | yes | yes | Need to press button for ~1 second to trigger a Suspend event. |
| Volume keys on side | Volume | yes | yes | ||
| Lid | Lid button | acpi button | yes | yes | Triggers suspend event |
