Thinkpad X13s

Page to keep track of Linux support development for Thinkpad X13s (SoC codename sc8280xp), the first Thinkpad with an Arm CPU.

Most of the following information comes from #aarch64-laptops on OFTC, #fedora-arm on Libera.chat and arm[AT]lists.fedoraproject.org. Upstream information changes daily, so this page may be outdated.

Installing an image

Fedora 41 GA works relatively well OOTB. Unfortunately the Workstation Live ISO isn't available because there are some issues building it (described on this email thread). Alternatives are the netinst image or the Workstation raw image.

For the time being, the easiest way to install Fedora is to:

dd the raw image to a USB thumb drive
boot the x13s using the instructions below
dd the raw image to the internal nvme drive.

Prerequisites

A recent firmware (BIOS) must be on the machine:

Minimum: Version: N3HET84W (1.56)
Latest: Version: N3HET91W (1.63)

Instructions for how to update the firmware without Windows are on this GitHub repository.

BIOS configuration:

Secure Boot should be disabled (Security > Secure Boot > Secure Boot)
Linux Support should be enabled (Config > Linux > Linux Boot (Beta))

Booting

You must change the grub options to boot the workstation raw image successfully.

Add the kernel parameters arm64.nopauth clk_ignore_unused pd_ignore_unused.

You also need to load the device tree (DTB). The workstation raw image already has the DTB included, add the line devicetree /dtb/qcom/sc8280xp-lenovo-thinkpad-x13s.dtb.

Tip: You can tab complete the filename in grub to avoid typo-ing the DTB name. Alternatively, after dd-ing the raw image to the USB drive, mount the /boot partition from the USB drive and add the needed kernel options to the /boot/loader/entries/* files.

If Fedora fails to boot with drive issues (eg BTRFS read errors), try adding modprobe.blacklist=qcom_q6v5_pas to the kernel commandline to prevent the USB subsystem from being reset during the boot. (This is needed for Fedora 40, but Fedora 41 should have fixed this behaviour.)

Installing

Once the image has booted, you can dd the raw image to the internal drive.

You can dd the image you just booted, but it's recommended to dd a clean copy of the raw image.

Do not reboot once the dd is complete, you should configure grub to avoid needing to add the kernel options at every boot.

Loading the Device Tree by default

There are two ways to load the correct device tree:

1. Tell grub about the correct DTB so that you don't have to manually copy the DTB to the ESP. This approach will let you install newer kernels via dnf.

Add a the following line to the /boot/loader/entries/* file(s):
```
devicetree /dtb/qcom/sc8280xp-lenovo-thinkpad-x13s.dtb
```
Edit /etc/default/grub:
- Add the kernel parameters listed above to GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX.
- Add a new line:
```
GRUB_DEFAULT_DTB=/dtb/qcom/sc8280xp-lenovo-thinkpad-x13s.dtb
```
Edit /etc/kernel/cmdline and add the kernel parameters listed above. (Arguably only needed if using systemd-boot, just covering all options)

2. Alternatively, enable the Linux Support boot option in the firmware boot menus and copy the /boot/dtb/qcom/sc8280xp-lenovo-thinkpad-x13s.dtb file to the root of the ESP partition.

Debian has instructions on how to do this from windows

After major kernel updates, you should update the dtb by running

sudo cp /boot/dtb-`uname -r`/qcom/sc8280xp-lenovo-thinkpad-x13s.dtb /boot/efi

Post-Install

Once you reboot and run off the internal NVMe drive, installing the x13s copr will pull in the remaining dependencies and correct a few configuration items:

sudo dnf copr enable jlinton/x13s
sudo dnf install x13s
sudo reboot

You can also resize the BTRFS partition at this point to use all of the space available on the NVMe drive.

Known Problems

TPM support is missing
5G Modem
- Need to follow the documented steps to unlock the modem
Virtualization is not available. The UEFI is not yet exposing the EL2 (exception level), which is required to run VMs
- There has been some work done to unlock it with https://github.com/TravMurav/slbounce. YMMV
The system does not suspend correctly so you need to poweroff if leaving unused
Camera is not working. There are patches going upstream. You need to add cma=128M
Bluetooth doesn't always work

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