Lenovo ThinkPad X250
The Lenovo ThinkPad X250 is the successor to the Lenovo ThinkPad X240. Major differences include the physical TrackPoint buttons above the touchpad mouse as well as the Broadwell line of Intel CPUs.
Contents
Tested Configurations
Feature | Configuration 1 | Configuration 2 |
---|---|---|
CPU | Intel i5-5200U | Intel i7-5600U |
Graphics | Intel HD 5400 | Intel HD 5500 |
RAM | 8 GB | 8GB |
Disk | unknown 180 GB SSD | SanDisk X300 256GB |
Display | 12.5" IPS FHD (1920x1080) non-touch | 12.5" IPS FHD (1920x1080) non-touch |
Wireless | Intel Wireless 7265 AC | Intel Wireless 7265 AC |
Built-in Battery | 9 Cell | 9 Cell |
Additional Pluggable Battery | 6 Cell 19+ | 6 Cell 19+ |
Backlight Keyboard | Yes | Yes |
ThinkLight | No | No |
Fingerprint Scanner | Yes | Yes |
Bluetooth | Yes | Yes |
Camera | Yes | Yes |
WWAN | ? | Sierra EM7345 |
Smartcard reader | ? | Yes |
System Configuration
Mouse
With kernels > 4.0.5 TrackPoint and touchpad work out of the box.
Fingerprint
The fingerprint reader works out of the box with fprintd.
Backlight and Keyboard
In order to get the backlight to work, I added options thinkpad_acpi force-load=1
to /etc/modprobe.d/x250.conf
. This forces the thinkpad_acpi module to load, which is needed for controlling the backlight via xorg-xbacklight as well as enable some of the extra media keys.
Although a dedicated Pause-key is missing, it can be input using the key combination Fn
+ P
Sound and Volume Control
In order to get control of the audio from Intel hdmi, you have to disable it and force alsa to use Intel PCH. See ALSA#Set the default sound card to set the default sound card to Intel PCH (speakers and headphones).
/etc/modprobe.d/thinkpad-x250.conf
options snd_hda_intel index=1,0
With acpid and alsa-utils installed, you can map the volume buttons to change the volume. Here are some samples:
/etc/acpi/events/volumemute
:
event=button/mute action=amixer -c 1 sset Master toggle -q
/etc/acpi/events/volumedown
:
event=button/volumedown action=amixer -c 1 sset -M Master 5%%- unmute -q
/etc/acpi/events/volumeup
:
event=button/volumeup action=amixer -c 1 sset -M Master 5%%+ unmute -q
/etc/acpi/events/mutemic
:
event=button/f20 action=amixer -c 1 sset Mic toggle -q
PulseAudio and pavucontrol are also great tools for fixing volume issues.
Bluetooth
Bluetooth works out of the box with bluez and gnome-bluetooth. When you use i3-wm, you can use blueman in order to have a working bluetooth connection to and from the device, including a tray icon you can start by adding blueman-applet
to you i3-conf.
BIOS updates
In order to get a working and bootable usb dongle to flash a current BIOS it may be necessary to follow these steps:
1. Download newest BIOS update tool (ISO) from Lenovos x250 downloads section[1]
2. Install geteltoritoAUR or find another way to extract the hidden image. With geteltorito you just do geteltorito -o thinkpadbios.img xyz.iso
3. Copy the extracted image to a usb dongle with dd: sudo dd if᐀thinkpadbios.img of᐀/dev/sdX bs᐀1M
4. Just in case run sync
once.
5. Reboot
6. Press enter at the Lenovo screen, chose your usb dongle
7. Flash the BIOS update following the description on your screen. You need to have a charged battery and a connected ac adapter in order to run this tool successfully.
Tipps and tricks
Battery
Some x250 come with dual batteries: One build-in and one detachable. Applications like cbatticon, a battery monitor for system tray, cannot handle dual battery setups. One way to check the batteries statuses is via conky with BAT0 and BAT1 as variables.