Lenovo ThinkPad T440s

This article covers the installation and configuration of Arch Linux on a Lenovo T440s laptop.

Installation

UEFI vs BIOS

The T440s has SecureBoot and UEFI enabled by default. Unless you know you want to use UEFI, it's simpler to get Arch installed if booting is switched to BIOS-only. In the BIOS/EFI menu, set booting to "Legacy only" (which uses BIOS emulation instead of EFI).

Driver Selection

Device Driver Package Free Software?
Video Intel graphics Yes
ClickPad Synaptics Yes
Wireless/Bluetooth iwlwifi* Yes
Finger Print Reader fingerprint-gui* Uses proprietary driver blobs

Note*: Depending on what you picked when ordering the laptop, you might have a stock ThinkPad wireless card. Check this page for more information.

Tp_smapi

See tp_smapi and a configuration for ThinkPad T420.

Tweaks

Backlight

Controlling the backlight can be a little tricky- on my T440s, KDE's default brightness controls would only do 0%, 50%, and 100% brightness. GNOME 3 worked out of the box, but it would never save the last-used brightness value on reboot. A workaround for both of these issues is to use [1]. An example script for setting the backlight on boot is:

~/.config/autostart/backlight-hack.desktop
[Desktop Entry]
Comment=backlight
Exec=xbacklight -set 40
GenericName=backlight hack
Name=Backlight hack
Terminal=false
TerminalOptions=
Type=Application

If you just want to set the current brightness level, run:

xbacklight -set <value>

Touchpad