User:Mutante/Debian on Thinkpad X1 Carbon Gen 12

X1 Carbon - generation 12

In early January 2025 I received a replacement for my previous WMF laptop from ITS

It was now a Lenovo Thinkpad X1 Carbon Gen 12, jumping several generations.

Debian bookworm and WiFi issues

At first I attempted to install Debian 12 (bookworm) and ran into (the expected) issue with the WiFi chipset needing non-free drivers (iwlwifi).

With previous hardware generations the fix to this had always been to use an installer ISO including nonfree or copy the nonfree iwlwifi drivers to a second USB flash driver that is inserted during the install. Or to install using the Ethernet adapter and a physical cable, fetch nonfree drivers and then start using WiFi.

In this case though with gen 12 and even newer WiFi chipset this did not fix the issue. Unfortunately I had also just gotten rid of my home router as an experiment to see if I could live with only a personal hotspot so I had nothing to physically plug in.

Eventually I just bought a USB-WiFi dongle off of Amazon making sure it's supported by the Linux vanilla kernel out of the box, without needing nonfree. I picked the Panda Wireless® Ultra WiFi (b/g/n) 150Mbps Wireless-N 2.4GHz USB Adapter [1] for under 20 dollars.

With this plugged in the install went smoothly without hassle and without having to use nonfree.

sound just works

Unlike in the past sound (out of the laptop speakers) just works! This had been a constant hassle in the past that I had worked around by buying a USB headset and simply giving up on making audio-out and speakers work. Now this was simply not an issue anymore. No more debugging pulseaudio/alsa.

Debian trixie fixes touchpad issue

After the original install I ran into one more issue: the touchpad incl the mouse buttons above it would simply not work.

I tried installing Debian testing (trixie, 13 as of this time) just to see if that fixes it and .. it did. With trixie the touchpad just works and I did not run into any issues so far.

Matching previous experience from the past using testing on a laptop is just fine.

battery life better than ever

The biggest advantage I really feel in everyday life is the battery. It feels as if battery life has doubled! I can now work an entire day without plugging in. I never had a laptop that could do this before in my life.