Lenovo Thinkpad Yoga 2nd Gen with Ubuntu 14.04

[darklordjohn]

Hi ragtag, I had the same problem - logout whenever the screen resolution and orientation changed. Seems like it's a newer screen than the other models and the drivers don't work in ubuntu 1404. What worked for me was to

a) Install ubuntu 1504
b) manually update the kernel to 4.0
c) use these scripts: https://github.com/admiralakber/thinkpad-yoga-scripts (run systemctl enable instead of systemctl start if you want to always run these scripts on startup). The spin script did not work for me, it would always turn the screen the wrong way round in 'stand' mode.
d) I kept getting errors along the lines of: `maximum number of clients reached, cannot connect to X server', I fixed this by editing the file /opt/thinkpad-yoga-scripts/tablet/tablet-mode.sh to change the xbindkeys -f ... command to `xbindkeys -n -f ...', i.e. I added the -n option to xbindkeys. UPDATE: scrap the -n option, it didn't actually work, I needed to update /opt/thinkpad-yoga-scripts/yoga-tablet.service to set the variable Restart to `no'. Sorry for the confusion!

I then also needed to install the chrome-beta because text selection in chrome was broken. The only thing that does not seem to work right now is the projector button and automatic suspend when I close the lid. Hope that helped!

PS: Scrolling on the touch screen works in chrome once enabled as described in the first post of this thread. I can confirm that I need quite a bit pressure to make lines appear in Xournal or Krita - I find it still usable though and pressure sensitivity still works. Would be nice to fix this.

[ragtag]

Thanks for the information. Since 15.10, which comes with kernel 4 so should work out of the box, is just a couple of months away, I decided to restore Windows 10 on it for now. It also gives me a chance to figure out how it's meant to work, before I get everything up in Linux again. For instance, the issue with the pen pressure registering a bit late, is also present in Windows, so it's probably a hardware thing. I just tested it on my old HP TC4400, and it takes about the same pressure there too for a stroke to register. I think I've become spoiled by using Cintiq's and Intuos tablets, that register a stroke with just 1 gram of pressure.

I'll definitely be going back to Linux though.

[mueller.pascal]

It's really a pain in the ass to set it up. I wouldn't recommend buying it if you want to run Linux.

I have the pro Dock, which nearly works okay but: If I unplug it while running and plug it back in -> doesn't work, I have to log out and log in again. but then, maybe the screen is turned off. Then, all my settings of the panels might get lost. It's all very weird. How can I set it up properly? I want to plug and unplug as often as I want and in any situation and it all should work perfectly. It's annoying if it doesn't.

Also, I'm using Kubuntu 15.04 because most of the other desktop GUI's aren't useable at all. I can't stand Unity and most of the others. Here, touchscreen doesn't work. What do I have to install? I just want to scroll with one finger, resize with too. I don't rly care about the rest.

Also, the sensor-hub probably is still not working thus needing some scripts, which also is just a cheap hack and not very nice.

I think I'm going to sell the Yoga and buy me another machine, since I stopped writing via Hand on it anyway. Noticed, that paper is still the best. I even stopped editing PDF's with the pen, since it's just as good via mouse.

Sry, I'm a bit pissed since I'm trying to get everything set up properly... but I can't, too nooby probably.

[ragtag]

I thought I would add some additional info to this thread, even though I've yet to get everything working smoothly on the Yoga. I'm running Ubuntu 15.10, and on it most things are working, but not all.

Installation
I needed to disable Secure boot, in BIOS to get it to install correctly, but otherwise it worked fine. I installed it along side Win10, without any major problems.

Special Keys
Most of the special keys are working, including keyboard light, volume (both on the keyboard, and on the side of the machine), mute, brightness, wifi. F12 opens the Home folder.

The following keys are not working: F7 (presentation mode), F9 (settings), F10 (search) and F11 (switch desktop).

Touch Screen
The touch screen just works. I installed Google Chrome, as it has better touch support. Touch works nicely in Evince too. Though, there is no two finger scrolling.

Wacom Pen
The Wacom pen works out of the box in Gimp (after enabling it in Gimp), Krita and MyPaint, though calibration is a bit wonky. It seems to get more offset, each time you calibrate. Running "xsetwacom --set 10 ResetArea", rests the calibration, but I need to look into this further, to figure out what is going on.

I'm also not fully happy with the pen. The one that comes with the Yoga, is too skinny, so I got the Bamboo Feel pen. It seems to register with less pressure, which is great, but I'm not happy with the pressure curve (both under Windows and Linux). It seems to lack the mid range. It's seems to go very quickly from 10% pressure to 90% pressure, so it's hard to work in the mid range. I've tried adjusting it, but not found a result I'm happy with. For comparison, I find the pressure curve on my Cintiq 13HD to be much nicer, it detects with almost no pressure, and has an even pressure range from no-pressure to 100% pressure.

Power Management
I ran the following, and it did wonders for the battery life. Now it's the same as under Windows 10, around 7 or more hours if not under too heavy use.

sudo apt-get install powertop tlp tlp-rdw tp-smapi-* acpi-call-dkms
sudo tlp start

Tablet Mode
This is where things get painful. I made a fork of wdbm's spin tool, to try and get everything working as smoothly as under Windows. You can find it here https://github.com/ragtag/spin/tree/yoga12-2nd-gen (note, it's very much work in progress, and not complete yet). I updated the code that detects the orientation of the tablet, to make it more stable. But there are other issues.

The Rotate Lock key on the side of the screen is detectable through ACPI, but registers two presses each time you press it, and presses Super-o, so the Unity Launcher pops up when you press it....wich is kind of annoying if you just want to use it to toggle rotation locking.

Secondly, I've yet to figure out how to correctly detect when it goes from tablet/tent mode to laptop mode. When I'm reading from the accelorometer, the screen position detector triggers twice, once when entering/leaving tent mode and once when entering/leaving tablet mode, but with the same signal. This means I have no way of knowing if the laptop went from tent mode to tablet mode, or tent mode to laptop mode. When I'm not reading from the accelorometer, it only registers, when leaving/entering tablet mode, but I want to get full functionality...so really want to get this working.

I've found that the screen position detectors outputs unknown keycodes e058 and e059. The e059 is only triggered when going from tent to laptop mode, which is what I need. The only problem is, I've yet to figure out a way to get these keycodes to trigger a script, so I can do something usefull with them. See http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.p...inkpad+yoga+12

Thirdly, I've found some issues with switching the screen rotation too quickly. When the screen is rotated, the touch interface gets disabled for a second or two. I've added support for this in my version of spin.py, to wait for the touch interface to respond, before attempting to rotate it. What is worse, is that sometimes...seemingly at random...I get gconf/dconf error when I rotate the screen. I'm not exactly sure what causes this.

I did a hacky GUI workaround for the screen rotation, so you could do it manually, but I don't really like it, and would like to get everything working smoothly as it does under Win10....though I've found a couple of small bugs there too.

Anyways....I'll still try to figure out the tablet/laptop mode issues, and the calibration stuff, and will post any solutions I find here...and probably make a long post on my blog about how to set everything up. But first I need to get to a point where I've got everything working, so any help or suggestions are appreciated.

p.s. If you use Spotify under Ubuntu 15.10, you need libcrypto.11.so, which you can get from earlier versions of Ubuntu.

[ragtag]

A big update here.

I've got my ThinkPad Yoga 12 more or less working the way it should. I forked spin.py, and did a lot of changes, to get it working almost as smoothly as under Windows. You can find my fork of spin.py here https://github.com/ragtag/spin

It includes:
- Palm rejection when using the stylus
- Automatic screen rotation, when in tablet mode, using the built in accelorometer
- Rotation lock, to disable the automatic screen rotation when needed
- On screen icons for toggling between laptop and tablet mode, which can be put in the Unity launcher for easy access

I've not tested it extensively yet, but it seems to work fine so far.

Please let me know if you find any bugs with it, or are having problems with using it.

[ragtag]

I've written a longish blogpost about how to configure the ThinkPad Yoga 12, under Ubuntu 15.10 here. http://ragnarb.com/configuring-think...-ubuntu-15-10/

I hope you find it usefull.

[e7ail]

I've just joined the forums to say that you guys have inspired me to give Ubuntu a go on my TPY15". I've had win 10 running for a bit, and while it's "okay", I've been wanting to try something different. I am sure you'll see me in here with many questions. Thanks for the inspiration!

[nikola8]

Hi there, just another person switched the windows to linux (ubuntu 15.10). I saw ragtag installed powertop and tp smapi and acpi call, I looked at the tlp stats and saw that the smapi was disabled, then looked at the smapi support devices page and saw that the thinkpad yoga is not one of them. So I've ignored them, has anyone seen any benefit of smapi and if so, how you managed to run it. Also I would like to share my experience with the bluetooth module. As I use the laptop connected to an external monitor sometimes I want to login with BT keyboard and mouse, but the Thinkpad bluetooth keyboard and the microsoft designer mouse were not able to connect at first.
Altough in launchapd is said that bluez-5.35 solves the problem with bluetooth v4.0 devices it really didn't work out of the box for me.
with help from askubuntu user's answer:

1. Comment out the only non-commented line in file /lib/udev/rules.d/50-bluetooth-hci-auto-poweron.rules
2. Uncomment lines [Policy] and AutoEnable=true (originaly there is =false, change it) in /etc/bluetooth/main.conf
3. Reboot
4. Search and pair your mouse. If cursor is not moving, try pairing again.

commenting the line in the file 50-bluetooth-hci-auto-poweron.rules , disables the bluetooth at boot. So, if you need as me to log in via bluetooth keyboard you would want to uncomment it once you've connected the device. Then after reboot/shutdown the keyboard connects and I am able to log in.

Also want to point out that I also got non working fans at some point. As it happened before on windows, just updated the bios, now running 1.2 with no problems (for now). I used a usb stick to do it.

For the note taking, I use xournal as it allows me to take handwritten notes, which is really important to me.


Will post here another problems that I encounter.

[cheflo]

Ah why have I not gotten notifications of all the interesting updates here?? Thanks for all the improvements to spin @ragtag, it is easier to run palm rejection without a GUI now, which is my main use of it. I am on Arch with Gnome now and the experience is pretty much the same as on Ubuntu. For spin, I had to remove "stylus" from the end of line 393 as the name of the pen in xinput is "Wacom ISDv4 EC Pen" for me. I can also not get the autorotation to work, but I don't mind that (I think it was something with acpi display_position_change being an unknwon command, your github fork doesn't allow opening new issues so I couldn't comment there).

For the pressure curves, I agree that the default curve in gimp works better with an external pen (I have a bamboo with soft tip), but I find that it works ok with the included stylus also after adjusting the curve to a more sigmoid shape. Although, keep in mind that I only use it for note-taking and can barely draw stick figures, so you probably have much higher standards than I do. For what it is worth, I am including a couple of screenshots of my setup.

Included pen:
Screenshot from 2016-01-27 11-15-28.jpg

Bamboo:
Screenshot from 2016-01-27 11-19-06.jpg

[cheflo]

Another user reported the same acpi problem running Ubuntu. The error message is

Triggered acpi_listen with unknwon mode display_position_change
Triggered acpi_listen with unknwon mode unknown
Triggered acpi_listen with unknwon mode unknown
Triggered acpi_listen with unknwon mode display_position_change
Triggered acpi_listen with unknwon mode display_position_change
Triggered acpi_listen with unknwon mode display_position_change
Triggered acpi_listen with unknwon mode display_position_change
Triggered acpi_listen with unknwon mode display_position_change
Triggered acpi_listen with unknwon mode display_position_change