Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Extreme (Gen 3)

The Thinkpad X1E Gen 3 is workstation/multimedia laptop from Lenovo's 2020 ThinkPad X lineup.

See Laptop for generic laptop-related information, or ThinkPad for other ThinkPad laptops.

Secure Boot

Secure Boot with custom keys is fully and officially supported.

Install the sbctl package. In UEFI, enable Secure Boot and set Platform Mode to Setup Mode. Then, follow https://github.com/Foxboron/sbctl#key-creation-and-enrollment and https://github.com/Foxboron/sbctl#signatures.

Tip: See the tip in Unified Extensible Firmware Interface/Secure Boot#Using sbkeysync if write errors are encountered. Follow the chattr(1) suggestion in the tip before enrolling your keys.

Audio

Built-in audio

This laptop requires firmware in order for the soundcard to work. See Advanced Linux Sound Architecture#ALSA firmware.

Blacklist the snd_hda_intel and snd_soc_skl modules.

Configure PulseAudio's to load Alsa modules with the correct device and channnel settings, by adding these two lines to /etc/pulse/default.pa:

load-module module-alsa-sink device=hw:0,0 channels=4
load-module module-alsa-source device=hw:0,6 channels=4

Unmute the Master channel:

$ alsamixer -c 0

Then press m on your keyboard.

Video

The X1 Extreme comes with two graphics cards: the Intel CometLake UHD and Nvidia GeForce GTX 1650 Ti. The display is connected to the Intel card and the HDMI port is physically connected to the GeForce.

Xorg.conf with PRIME

Using the proprietary driver from NVIDIA, you can set the laptop to run on Intel and only use NVIDIA if triggered manually by running prime-run. To do so, the xorg.conf needs to explicitly define NVIDIA as a non–primary GPU:

Option "PrimaryGPU" "no"

No configuration for Intel is needed unless tweaking is required.

Follow PRIME for full featured setup.

Integrated webcam

The integrated webcam needs the uvcvideo kernel module to be loaded to work. See Kernel module for module-loading instructions.

Trackpoint and trackpad

It may be necessary to add the following to configure the psmouse module to get the trackpoint and trackpad to respond at all.

# rmmod psmouse
# modprobe psmouse proto=exps

To permanently make the change

/etc/modprobe.d/psmouse.conf

options psmouse proto=exps