Finally!! My t440s has arrived :)

[Feathers McGraw]

I ordered it on 15th December, and Lenovo only just managed to get it to me.



Product Name: ThinkPad T440s

• 4th Gen Intel Core i5-4300U Processor (3MB Cache, up to 2.90GHz)
• T440s 14.0 FHD WWAN
• Intel HD Graphics 4400
• 12G 4G Base + 8G (1 SoDIMM)
• Keyboard Backlit - UK English
• No FPR w/NFC
• 720p HD Camera
• 256 GB Solid State Drive, Serial ATA3 eDrive Capable
• ThinkPad Battery 3 cell Li-Polymer (23.2Whr)
• ThinkPad Battery 3 cell Li-Polymer (23.2Whr)
• 65W Slim AC Adapter - UK
• Intel Dual Band Wireless 7260AC with Bluetooth 4.0

The most difficult thing about installing Kubuntu was backing up Windows before completely removing it...

Not even Ubiquity could mess things up, although I didn't attempt anything particularly challenging.

5GHz WiFi worked out of the box, which was a nice surprise. I'm using an Intel 7260ac chip, which is the same as what's in Intel's NUC. Someone else linked a story about it which suggested the driver was dodgy at the time of writing the article, but the free driver works very well now, no tinkering required.

Something else I wasn't expecting to work is the backlit keyboard controls (Fn + space to toggle). Works like a charm without any customisation.

The touchpad is a funny one, they've removed the discrete buttons at the top for trackpoint users and made the lot into one big slab. Personally, I'm not a trackpoint user so I'm unaffected by the removal of the top buttons, but I read a thread on Ubuntu forums where someone seemed to be struggling to configure clicking with the top. As far as normal use is concerned, the integrated buttons work fine, but i don't actually use them: I never actually click with the touchpad, but use one- and two-finger taps for left and right clicks. For my personal use, the big touch pad is great, although I'm not sure it's for everyone.

The only oddity I have discovered so far is that the screen brightness keys don't work. The default settings map them correctly, and I've tried re-mapping them, but pressing them has no effect.

Power management works really well, even with the two batteries (one integrated and one hot-swappable).

Feathers

[life0riley]

Nice! What Kubuntu release did you install?

[Feathers McGraw]

13.10

[GreyGeek]

Envy!

[Feathers McGraw]

Oh and the sleep function works properly, which it didn't on my old HP, which is nice!

[oshunluvr]

From what I've read, the Thinkpad backlights can be made to work, they just don't out-of-the-box.

A place to start:
http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/LCD_Brightness

[Feathers McGraw]

From what I've read, the Thinkpad backlights can be made to work, they just don't out-of-the-box.

A place to start:
http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/LCD_Brightness

Thanks, but I think you misread: the backlights are behind the keys on this model, not attached to the top of the screen like on some others, and they work exactly as they should, although I wasn't expecting them to. The screen brightness buttons are the ones that aren't working as they should, for some reason!

[oshunluvr]

Sorry: We're having a semantics disconnect.

In my world a "backlight" is any light that functions behind something it lights up. Your screen is lit from behind, therefore screen brightness is control via a backlight. The "x" commands that control screen brightness refer to "backlight" brightness. A lit keyboard, although indeed lit by a backlight, is a much less common feature than screen backlights which all non-CRT screens use. Therefore, my assumption when the word backlight is used by itself; is it refers to a screen backlight. For discussion about keyboard backlighting, I would expect "keyboard backlight" or "keyboard lighting," not backlight by itself.

So although you stated "screen brightness" and I commented on "backlights" - we were referring to the same thing. The link I posted has to do with screen brightness (via the backlight ).

[Feathers McGraw]

Ha! Thanks, my bad. I did skim the link but assumed it was talking about the old-style "front lights".

Is there a reason why the backlights don't tend to work in the same way for thinkpads? I would expect them to work similarly to other laptops... when is a screen not a normal screen? Lol...

[richb]

Ha! Thanks, my bad. I did skim the link but assumed it was talking about the old-style "front lights".

Is there a reason why the backlights don't tend to work in the same way for thinkpads? I would expect them to work similarly to other laptops... when is a screen not a normal screen? Lol...

I understood what you meant.

[oshunluvr]

AKAIK, there are some differences in the way the brightness controls were implemented via acpi. I don't think it effects all models. Anyway, my point was just that I've seen this issue addressed before and there were a couple different ways it was handled. You should be able to find the solution somewhere.

[SteveRiley]

I ordered it on 15th December, and Lenovo only just managed to get it to me.

In the photo, I see you forgot to remove the warning label in the lower left corner.

The most difficult thing about installing Kubuntu was backing up Windows before completely removing it...

Here's what I would have done:
1. Boot the machine with GParted Live
2. Shrink the C: partition to as small as possible
3. Get a USB drive slightly larger than this newly-shrunk size
4. Bit-copy the hard drive to the USB drive: dd if=/dev/sda of=/dev/sdb (assuming /dev/sdb is the USB drive)
5. Wipe the hard drive and proceed with Kubuntu

Not even Ubiquity could mess things up, although I didn't attempt anything particularly challenging.

Ubiquity is fine when you don't try to challenge it, heh.

Something else I wasn't expecting to work is the backlit keyboard controls (Fn + space to toggle). Works like a charm without any customisation.

Same with my X1. From what I can tell, the keyboard backlight isn't controlled by the operating system at all. Fn+Space is trapped by the firmware and acts as a switch for the backlight.

The touchpad is a funny one, they've removed the discrete buttons at the top for trackpoint users and made the lot into one big slab. Personally, I'm not a trackpoint user so I'm unaffected by the removal of the top buttons

My T520 is of the older design, with buttons two buttons below the trackpad and three above it; my X1 has a larger trackpad without the lower buttons but still has the upper three. My daughter's IdeaPad 510p has the same configuration as you. I must say I don't like the new layout at all. Discrete buttons above the trackpad are, for me, very thumb-friendly, reachable as they are from the keyboard. I operate all three buttons with my left thumb while sliding a finger or two from my right hand on the trackpad. When I need to work on my daughter's computer, I find it a real struggle to adapt to the "seamless" buttons. The new design is unwieldy and suboptimal, but probably cheaper.

The only oddity I have discovered so far is that the screen brightness keys don't work. The default settings map them correctly, and I've tried re-mapping them, but pressing them has no effect.

Try the following kernel parameter:

thinkpad_acpi.brightness_enable=1

(source)

[Feathers McGraw]

Thanks, I'll have a look. At first I thought it was a bug in 13.10 similar to the one I found with the print screen key on my old laptop. That was just weird!

[oshunluvr]

See? Told ya...

[Feathers McGraw]

I can't work out where to add that kernel parameter, do I create /boot/grub/menu.lst?

feathers-mcgraw@Hobbs-T440s:~$ lsmod | grep thinkpad_acpi
thinkpad_acpi          81113  1 
nvram                  14362  1 thinkpad_acpi
snd                    69141  22 snd_hda_codec_realtek,snd_hwdep,snd_timer,snd_hda_codec_hdmi,snd_pcm,snd_seq,snd_rawmidi,snd_hda_codec,snd_hda_intel,thinkpad_acpi,snd_seq_device,snd_seq_midi
feathers-mcgraw@Hobbs-T440s:~$ cd /boot/grub/
feathers-mcgraw@Hobbs-T440s:/boot/grub$ ls
fonts  grub.cfg  grubenv  locale  unicode.pf2  x86_64-efi
feathers-mcgraw@Hobbs-T440s:/boot/grub$ ls x86_64-efi
acpi.mod          functional_test.mod  lspci.mod            reboot.mod
adler32.mod       gcry_arcfour.mod     lssal.mod            regexp.mod
affs.mod          gcry_blowfish.mod    luks.mod             reiserfs.mod
afs.mod           gcry_camellia.mod    lvm.mod              relocator.mod
ahci.mod          gcry_cast5.mod       lzopio.mod           romfs.mod
all_video.mod     gcry_crc.mod         mdraid09_be.mod      scsi.mod
aout.mod          gcry_des.mod         mdraid09.mod         search_fs_file.mod
appleldr.mod      gcry_md4.mod         mdraid1x.mod         search_fs_uuid.mod
ata.mod           gcry_md5.mod         memdisk.mod          search_label.mod
at_keyboard.mod   gcry_rfc2268.mod     memrw.mod            search.mod
backtrace.mod     gcry_rijndael.mod    minicmd.mod          serial.mod
bfs.mod           gcry_rmd160.mod      minix2_be.mod        setjmp.mod
bitmap.mod        gcry_seed.mod        minix2.mod           setpci.mod
bitmap_scale.mod  gcry_serpent.mod     minix3_be.mod        sfs.mod
blocklist.mod     gcry_sha1.mod        minix3.mod           sleep.mod
boot.mod          gcry_sha256.mod      minix_be.mod         squash4.mod
bsd.mod           gcry_sha512.mod      minix.mod            tar.mod
btrfs.mod         gcry_tiger.mod       mmap.mod             terminal.lst
bufio.mod         gcry_twofish.mod     moddep.lst           terminal.mod
cat.mod           gcry_whirlpool.mod   msdospart.mod        terminfo.mod
chain.mod         geli.mod             multiboot2.mod       test_blockarg.mod
cmp.mod           gettext.mod          multiboot.mod        testload.mod
command.lst       gfxmenu.mod          net.mod              test.mod
configfile.mod    gfxterm.mod          newc.mod             tftp.mod
core.efi          gptsync.mod          nilfs2.mod           tga.mod
cpio_be.mod       grub.efi             normal.mod           time.mod
cpio.mod          gzio.mod             ntfscomp.mod         trig.mod
cpuid.mod         halt.mod             ntfs.mod             true.mod
crc64.mod         hashsum.mod          odc.mod              udf.mod
cryptodisk.mod    hdparm.mod           ohci.mod             ufs1.mod
crypto.lst        hello.mod            part_acorn.mod       ufs2.mod                         
crypto.mod        help.mod             part_amiga.mod       uhci.mod                         
cs5536.mod        hexdump.mod          part_apple.mod       usb_keyboard.mod                 
datehook.mod      hfs.mod              part_bsd.mod         usb.mod                          
date.mod          hfsplus.mod          part_dvh.mod         usbms.mod                        
datetime.mod      http.mod             part_gpt.mod         usbserial_common.mod             
diskfilter.mod    iorw.mod             partmap.lst          usbserial_ftdi.mod               
dm_nv.mod         iso9660.mod          part_msdos.mod       usbserial_pl2303.mod             
echo.mod          jfs.mod              part_plan.mod        usbtest.mod                      
efifwsetup.mod    jpeg.mod             part_sun.mod         video_bochs.mod                  
efi_gop.mod       keylayouts.mod       part_sunpc.mod       video_cirrus.mod
efinet.mod        keystatus.mod        parttool.lst         video_fb.mod
efi_uga.mod       ldm.mod              parttool.mod         videoinfo.mod
ehci.mod          linuxefi.mod         password.mod         video.lst
elf.mod           linux.mod            password_pbkdf2.mod  video.mod
exfat.mod         loadbios.mod         pata.mod             videotest.mod
exfctest.mod      load.cfg             pbkdf2.mod           xfs.mod
ext2.mod          loadenv.mod          play.mod             xnu.mod
extcmd.mod        loopback.mod         png.mod              xnu_uuid.mod
fat.mod           lsacpi.mod           priority_queue.mod   xzio.mod
fixvideo.mod      lsefimmap.mod        probe.mod            zfscrypt.mod
font.mod          lsefisystab.mod      raid5rec.mod         zfsinfo.mod
fshelp.mod        lsmmap.mod           raid6rec.mod         zfs.mod
fs.lst            ls.mod               read.mod

Also, if I was going to install rEFInd, where would it go then?