I am strongly considering picking up a recent gen X1 Carbon. I really the like the idea of the device, having cellular data, working fingerprint reader and maybe even using it with an eGPU for some gaming. How possible is all of this on Linux? UPDATE: I managed to find a 9th Gen Carbon with LTE, I can’t wait it for it to get here. Arch Wiki indicates everything should work.
ArchWiki says that the 2022 X1 Carbon 10th gen has full WWAN and fingerprint reader support, the only thing not supported is the optional advanced webcam which should be easy to avoid. It also says that Thunderbolt eGPU is generally well-supported.
I have the recent Thinkpad T14s G3 and I can confirm USB4/Thunderbolt works properly, but I don’t have an eGPU.
Thank you, I should know by now to check the Arch documentation lol. I always forget to go there until someone else reminds me it exists.
I had a weirdo laptop (a Clevo N130-BU, I think,) and I could game with an eGPU, but I had to boot with it plugged in, and heaven help me if it came unplugged while I was in Linux. (Ubuntu… I wanna say 18.04) This was all a while ago, clearly. Anyways, I was able to use the eGPU, although it was quite fiddly.
I had a 6th gen Carbon and all the peripherals worked out of the box on Ubuntu. I never used an eGPU though.
I now have a Lenovo P14s (4th gen) and it was a bit rocky at first (power settings weren’t scaling correctly, amdgpu drivers were rough at first), but with the latest kernel and drivers, everything works great. Fingerprint sensor works every time.
You might have difficulty with the fingerprint reader, everything except that was pretty easy to set up on a fairly current yoga 6
