experience with eOS and Lenovo Thinkpad x1 carbon

Question

as mentioned in a previous post I am testing elementary os in a VM for a couple of days now to test if I can leave Windows... hopefully forever :)

there are some small points which I already mentioned when it comes to eOS itself but other than that the distro is running perfect and I found applications for every purpase.

There are some things I cannot test with my VM. Especially when it comes to hardware compaptility. I want to go for a Lenovo Thinkpad x1 carbon 7th generation and I want to know if anyone here has experience with this laptop

things which are important to me:

• touchpad support with gestures (I already went throw a thread where I can install some libraries and also a GUI for configuring gestures, not sure where I have the link)

• fn keys support for music control etc.

and generall hardware support for Lenovo and the specific laptop. the other model will be a new XPS13 in case of any issues with the x1

every input is very welcome :)

Answer 1

That's a nice machine, and you'll be glad to know that it is certified to run Ubuntu 18.04. Since elementary OS Juno is based on Ubuntu, I foresee no issues in installing it. You might need a kernel update though, but there are also reports that it works just fine with elementary OS current kernel (4.15). This report also lists the recommended BIOS setup needed to enable various features, and a list of possible issues you might encounter. This Lenovo forum thread has comprehensive details on how to solve those issues.

A good start would be to create an elementary OS USB drive, and trying it live, without installing. Until elementary OS 5.1 is released, after the installation completes, you could try running sudo apt install --install-recommends linux-generic-hwe-18.04 xserver-xorg-hwe-18.04 to bump up the kernel to 5.0 and to bring improved hardware support.

For the touchpad gestures, I can recommend installing fusuma. It works great, but it does not have a GUI configuration tool.

As a rule of thumb, almost any Ubuntu 18.04 functionality tutorial/wiki (except the UI/UX) will also work for elementary OS.