The plan to provide official support for the Arm-based Lenovo ThinkPad X13s Gen1 laptop in Ubuntu 24.04 LTS did not materialize. However, running Ubuntu 24.04 on this laptop powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8cx Gen3 processor will still receive partial support.
Ubuntu developer Juerg Haefliger has been working hard to get Ubuntu running on the Lenovo ThinkPad X13s Gen1 laptop. Upstream work for this laptop and the Snapdracon 8cx Gen3 SoC has been extensive, with various Linux distributions focusing on its compatibility due to its relative availability and Lenovo's overall device quality. While most compatibility issues have been addressed over the past few months, some work is still ongoing.
In a recent status update, Juerg mentioned that the overall status of the Ubuntu 24.04 with Linux 6.8 kernel on this laptop/SoC is good. A new "ubuntu-x13s-settings" package is available to provide specific configurations for the X13s, currently in a PPA. However, the current Ubuntu 24.04 installer ISO for this laptop is broken, so using the older Ubuntu 23.10 installer ISO and then upgrading is necessary for now.
Known issues when installing Ubuntu 23.10 on the Lenovo ThinkPad X13s Gen1 and upgrading to Ubuntu 24.04 include non-functional webcam, low audio volume, issues with sleep and suspend, virtualization problems, and potential non-functionality of features like TPM and fingerprint reader.
Hoping to see improved Ubuntu Linux support on the ThinkPad X13s laptop soon, as well as various interesting Arm laptops set to hit the market in the coming months.
