I recently purchased and received a Lenovo ThinkPad x250 and immediately proceeded to install Ubuntu over whatever version of Windows it came with.

Unfortunately, not everything works out of the box (multiple monitors using the ultradock, sound with external speakers and the ultradock, 3d video, and the trackpoint buttons). It's not very surprising, as these machines were just released in the US last week, and I'm sure the next version of Ubuntu will have much better support for them. In the mean time, however, I did get some things to work, and I'm providing some instructions for those here.

Multiple Monitors using the UltraDock ¶

I've always loved ThinkPads, and most of my laptops have been one, but it's only been recently that they've been enough to replace my desktop needs. That happened for me because of the UltraDock, which allows you to use multiple monitors with your laptop. On my T410 (which had a different ultradock), it just worked out of the box. With the x250 and it's dock, X would see both monitors as one large monitor. This is because the new dock uses a DisplayPort 1.2 feature, which didn't make it into the Linux kernel until 3.17 (Ubuntu 14.10 uses 3.16). Following this guide fixed the problem for me, with one change. I used the 3.18.7 kernel instead of 3.17.1 as he describes in the article, because 3.18 just happens to help fix the trackpoint button problems as well.

Trackpoint Buttons ¶

Doing what I describe here will make the trackpoint buttons work (including middle click scrolling), but it will completely disable the touchpad. I'm ok with that, touchpads aren't my favorite. First, follow this guide to update your kernel, but instead of 3.17.1, use kernel 3.18.7 instead. (If you're feeling brave, I've got precompiled debs here. Edit /etc/modprobe.d/psmouse.conf and add the following line:

options psmouse proto=imps

Update: Putting options psmouse=imps in /etc/modprobe.d/psmouse.conf seems to do nothign. Instead, add psmouse.proto=imps to your kernel cmdline, as directed below in the "Volume Control and Backlight Brightness Keys".

Then, create a file at /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/90-evdev.conf

Section "InputClass"
  Identifier "Touchpad/TrackPoint"
  MatchProduct "PS/2 Synaptics TouchPad"
  MatchDriver "evdev"
  Option "EmulateWheel" "1"
  Option "EmulateWheelButton" "2"
  Option "Emulate3Buttons" "0"
  Option "XAxisMapping" "6 7"
  Option "YAcisMapping" "4 5"
EndSection

Restart your X server, and your trackpoint buttons should work as expected.

Volume Control and Backlight Brightness Keys ¶

To get the volume keys to work, I had to pass acpi_osi=Linux to the kernel boot options. Also, to get backlight control to work, add acpi_backlight=vendor as well. In /etc/default/grub, my GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT looks like this:

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash acpi_osi=Linux acpi_backlight=vendor psmouse.proto=imps"

After making those changes, run update-grub and reboot. This made the multimedia keys work for me, but the brightness controls still did not work. I installed a program called xbacklight and mapped the brightness controls to xbacklight -dec 10 and xbacklight -inc 10. There's some more work that could be done here (like automatically setting it to full brightness on AC power, etc), but this is good for now.

In Progress... ¶

1. The audio out jack on the Ultradock doesn't work at all, though the speakers on the laptop and the headphone port do work.

Update, Feb 21, 2015 ¶

I found the Padoka PPA here: https://launchpad.net/~paulo-miguel-dias/+archive/ubuntu/mesa/. Adding this PPA, running apt-get update && apt-get dist-upgrade eliminates the need to compile xf86-video-intel as directed in the "Multiple Monitors using the UltraDock" instructions, and makes 3d video work .

Still not working: the sound port on the UltraDock.

Update, Mar 01, 2015 ¶

I got the audio port on the ultradock working!

To make this work, create a file at /lib/firmware/x250.fw with the following contents:

[codec]
0x10ec0292 0x17aa2226 0

[pincfg]
0x16 0x21211010
0x19 0x21a11010

... then, create a file called /etc/modprobe.d/hda-intel.conf with the following contents:

options snd-hda-intel patch=x250.fw,x250.fw,x250.fw

Reboot, and the audio port on your dock should work. I imagine the process is the same for any of 2015 thinkpads. With each thinkpad, the only number that changes is the second one under the [codec] heading (in this case, 0x17aa2226). That information can be found by downloading this script: http://www.alsa-project.org/alsa-info.sh, and running it via bash alsa-info.sh as root. Search fo 0x17aa in the output, and you'll find the other half of the number you need.

Update Mar 2, 2015 - Fingerprint scanner works ¶

Following the instructions found in this gist, I was able to get the fingerprint scanner to work. It doesn't work very well. I often have to try more than once to get it to recognize my fingerprint, and there doesn't seem to be any way to scan multiple images of your finger to improve reliability.

Coupled with the fact that the things are easy to fool, I will be disabling it.