I wrote about installing Linux on the Lenovo ThinkPad T490 last month and one of the biggest challenges was getting graphics working properly. The T490 comes with an option where you can get a discrete Nvidia MX250 GPU and it packs plenty of power in a small footprint.
It also brings along a few issues.
Awful battery life There are many times where it would be helpful to fully disable the Nvidia card to extend battery life when graphics processing is not needed....
馃敤 WORK IN PROGRESS! I鈥檓 still finding some additional issues and I鈥檒l write those up here as soon as I find some solutions.
Thinkpad T490 With my 4th Gen X1 Carbon beginning to age (especially the battery), it was time for an upgrade. I now have a T490 with a 10th gen Intel CPU and a discrete NVIDIA MX250 GPU. This laptop spec was just released on Black Friday!...
My new ThinkPad arrived this week and it is working well! The Fedora 25 installation was easy and all of the hardware was recognized immediately.
However, there was a downside. The display looked washed out and had a strange tint. It seemed to be more pale than the previous ThinkPad. The default ICC profile in GNOME didn鈥檛 help much.
There鈥檚 a helpful review over at NotebookCheck that has a link to an ICC profile generated from a 4th generation ThinkPad X1 Carbon....
My upgrade to Fedora 22 on the ThinkPad X1 Carbon was fairly uneventful and the hiccups were minor. One of the more annoying items that I鈥檝e been struggling with for quite some time is how to boot up with the wireless LAN and Bluetooth disabled by default. Restoring wireless and Bluetooth state between reboots is normally handled quite well in Fedora.
In Fedora 21, NetworkManager saved my settings between reboots. For example, if I shut down with wifi off and Bluetooth on, the laptop would boot up later with wifi off and Bluetooth on....
The X1 Carbon鈥檚 touchpad has been my nemesis in Linux for quite some time because of its high sensitivity. I鈥檇 often find the cursor jumping over a few pixels each time I tried to tap to click. This was aggravating at first, but then I found myself closing windows when I wanted them minimized or confirming something in a dialog that I didn鈥檛 want to confirm.
Last December, I wrote a post about some fixes....
Although the X1 Carbon has a much better looking display than the T430s, it still looked a bit washed out when I compared it to other monitors right next to it. The entire display had a weak blue tint and it was difficult to use for extended periods, especially at maximum brightness.
A quick Google search took me to a LaunchPad entry about a better ICC profile for the X1 Carbon....
This post covers the second half of my experience moving back to a Linux desktop but I figured it was a good opportunity to focus on the ThinkPad T430s itself as well as the Lenovo ordering experience. If you follow me on Twitter, you know about my service experience. I鈥檒l save that for the end of this post.
This post is a little on the long side, so here鈥檚 a TL;DR for you if you鈥檙e in a big hurry:...