These are my notes from the installation of Manjaro linux on a Thinkpad X390 with Intel i5-8365U. This is my new personal laptop and as it is a true laptop (not ultraportable with passive-cooled m7 cpu) I wanted to install on it Manjaro as a main OS, as well as Windows 11 for stuff that can't be easily done on Linux (I'm pretty sure it won't be often used xD). As for now I only installed Linux and prepared an SSD for Windows installation.
- Host: Lenovo Thinkpad X390
- Resolution: 1920x1080 (touch)
- CPU: 8th gen Intel Core i5-8365U
- GPU: Intel UHD Graphics 620
- Memory: 16 GB (soldered)
- SSD: 1TB (Lexar NM620)
- Network: Intel Cannon Point-LP CNVi [Wireless-AC]
I've chosen Manjaro as it is my go-to Linux distro and the installation on this device is just a clone of my installation on HP Folio. It seems to work just fine. As I want to install Windows alongside Linux later on I've already prepared the drive with Linux installation taking only 25% of the drive and EFI partition of 300MB.
As Windows still doesn't like Linux, it requires some steps to restore and properly setup GRUB after Windows installation. The easiest way to do it is just boot the PC with live Linux and chroot into you current Linux installation. More on that in the tutorial on Manjaro wiki or in this gist. Basically you just need to chroot, run grub-install and then update-grub.
Another issue connected with the Windows and Linux being used on one machine is the issue related to the BIOS time. Basically Linux expects the BIOS time to be in UTC while Windows exppects it to be in your local time zone. The easiest way to fix it is to tell Linux to behave as Windows (because changing Windows behavior is a lot harder as you could expect) with the following command:
timedatectl set-local-rtc 1Turns out none of the fixes done for Folio was needed for this PC (obviously) so all changes has been reverted (namely special kernel params for Intel as well as BadRAM config).
My testing didn't show anything that wouldn't work under Linux or that would require special config. Keep in mind that I didn't try to set up the fingerprint reader (because my previous experience with fingerprint reader on Linux shows that it's just not worth it).
All the special keys works correctly with Linux beside F11 and F12 which are the keyboard settings button and user defined button. I'm pretty sure there is a way to configure those button to something as well, but as for now I don't really need it.
As I'm working 100% remote I have a setup with a professional company dock for my company Thinkpad P14s which works over Thunderbolt 4. I've recently checked and it works correctly with this laptop as well making it in full desktop PC. I was able to use it with 3 external 1080p@60Hz displays (or 2 external and 1 internal, couldn't set up 4 screens because of GPU limitations), some USB devices (keyboard, mouse, headset), ethernet connection and obviously power. It seems that this kind of setup is completely OK for Thunderbolt 3 devices and it works out-of-the-box with Linux (the only thing that needs to be set up is the display layout) on this machine.
If you can't get to work the dock or you're stuck with just 2 external displays while the internal one is turned off make sure that the dock is connected to the Thunderbolt port (the second one on the left side) and not the normal USB-C port (the first one). In my case my dock worked OK when connected via the normal USB-C port but refused to work after activating the third external display. After connecting to the correct Thunderbolt port I could set up 3 external monitors without any issues (given the internal one is turned off).
Looks like the experience with Linux on this device is pretty solid. I will update this note when I have more findings, but as for now everything works flawlessly. The laptop itself seems to be a decent one and tbh the only downside I can see is the fact that it has a soldered in RAM which can't be replaced when broken. Beside that I kinda hoped it would be a little bit lighter - my version weights 1.32kg which is mostly because the touch version uses different type of material for the chassis (I didn't know that before buying) and the whole laptop is 100g heavier than the reference version (Lenovo advertises this laptop to weight 1.2kg).