Lenovo Ideapad 5 2-in-1 14Q8X9 (83GH)

[jglathe]

Start of discussion of this model with 360° hinge and touch screen / stylus, slightly different from the 83HL #36. This one is already supported by this boot image. There is ongoing work re brightness control, camera (why does it switch off after 30 secs), internal sound.

[jglathe]

There is a new image available: Ubuntu_Desktop_24.10_Lenovo_Ideapad_5_2in1.img on Google Drive.

What is new:

• integrated GPU support on the image
• (supposedly) fixed camera behaviour, camera power supply should behave now
• switched to different display description (Samsung ATNA40AS01)

No sound support yet.

[jglathe]

New image again: Ubuntu_Desktop_24.10_Lenovo_Ideapad_5_2in1_6.16rc.img.xz

What is new:

• integrated GPU support on the image, but not installed (breaks some snaps)
• definitely fixed camera behaviour, even working with different uvc models (tested on ThinkBook 16)
• switched to edp-panel which enables backlight control for this odd OLED panel. Odd in the sense that it adheres to standards.
• sound support. Which is of course dangerous, use with caution.

Working snap can enable the ubuntu-desktop-bootstrap package to install ubuntu from ubuntu. Currently testing this, seems to have evolved.

[jglathe]

Updated the image after some review and feedback. Same name, to make sure the sha256:

c015ef35d9813420d6aaf1802ed72aba5c8596ef1a59ab774f4b690fc79fbdd6 Ubuntu_Desktop_24.10_Lenovo_Ideapad_5_2in1_6.16rc.img.xz

[shodowlo]

I've noticed performance issues with this image. Could this be because GPU support is not installed? If so, do you know how to install it?

[jglathe]

The image has no active GPU support. There is a mesa repository on it, it can be made to work, I would prefer other ways, though. Like the one mentioned here, but also after first "install".
I will do another image, with working sound, got a bit sidetracked by the display panel (backlight adjustment doesn't work after suspend/resume, although suspend/resume itself works great) and life ™️

[jglathe]

Hmm got around to install* from this image on my Ideapad 5 2in1. It was a pain, and I had / have to fix a few things to make it work more easily. Sound doesn't seem to work yet, need to analyze / debug. Main hurdle for installing (aside from no installer) was the missing entries in the QSEECOM compatible table. Without these, no efivars, and no good way to create a boot entry for grub.
Kernel package 6.16.0-jg-1 has these now.

[jglathe]

Oh and the mystery of why the RTC doesn't work is also solved - needs efivars - so there's that

[Omoore3]

Hello, I've tried your patch, installing using ruffus onto a USB, it works really well!
Have you been able to get it off of a usb drive? I'd want to put it on a partition of my laptop's SSD, but don't have a good theory of how to do this.

[jglathe]

Nice. Well there is an image which allows install, I test-installed from plucky-desktop-arm64+x1e-20250827_extended_jg6_3.iso and ended up with an almost-usable installation.

Before rebooting you need to do some tinkering that is still required:
(your newly installed system is still mounted on /target/, we don't need chroot for this)

• mount the KERNEL_PKG partition of the ISO you booted from (should be visible in the files folder)
• copy over the dtbs from the root directory to your /boot directory
• add the devicetree /boot/<yourdevice>.dtb line to every linux boot entry in the /boot/grub/grub.cfg
• make a backup copy of the /boot/grub/grub.cfg, will be needed for checks on every update that updates grub.

After reboot, you can try to get the missing firmwares from Windows with the fetch script. It is a bit quirky, still, I suggest mounting the Windows partition via clicking on it (and if required entering the bitlocker recovery key) to ensure its accessible and mounted before running the script. After the next reboot you should have battery gauge. After do-release-upgrade to 25.10 you should also have GPU acceleration 😁

[shodowlo]

Hi, I just tested it and everything seems to be working, including the GPU acceleration.

There's just two problems, the script isn't bringing back the battery indicator, and after running do-release-upgrade, the Wi-Fi connection is gone. The Wi-Fi option isn't even there anymore. Do you know if there is fix for it ?

[munishkhatri720]

I also have this same laptop Lenovo IdeaPad slim 5x (14Q8X9) with snapdragon x plus and I also want to shift to Linux . But I noticed the installation is still very complex. Is there any chance that in the future I’ll always have to install Linux this way on my laptop, or will the patches you made be merged into the official ARM ISO for ubuntu ?

[jglathe]

Well, thats the 83HL, very similar. Also not yet officially supported, please have a look into #36.
Generally, I try to get these patches upstreamed, and also integrated into the Ubuntu Concept tree. That will take a while, though - for the Thinkbook 16 G7 QOY (which is also not in the Ubuntu Concept ISO) it took ~4 months. And this is a hobby 😀
On the bright side, I managed to build my first kernel package that is using the stubble boot loader, as ubuntu Concept does now. Next step is to add my device trees, to. That is still not in the ARM64 ISO, but a big step further, as installation gets way easier.
So the answer is yes, it will be a bit more effort now, and yes, it will be integrated eventually.

[mariowo]

Hello, thanks for your work.
I can report almost everything as working, except for the SD Card Reader, Backlight Control and the Sound.
While the Sound and Backlight Control not working is to be expected, since it's mentioned several times, I can not seem to find any mention about the SD Card Reader.
Is this a known issue with this device / device tree? I'm using the one from plucky-desktop-arm64+x1e-20250827_extended_jg6_6.iso
Thanks!

[jglathe]

Hi @mariowo, sound can work (I have it working on my 2in1), but the setup is a PITA. And there will quite likely be additional changes with HDMI and sound over dp and hdmi.
SD-card is what I'm at from time to time. It "works", but it has serious limitations. The chippery used is from BayhubTech (former O2Micro), which works well when connected via PCIe, like on the Slim5x (without any mention in the device tree, except for the PCIe port used (usually PCIE3)). But it really doesn't when connected via the sdhc2 node on the SoC, which appears to be mostly an issue of the driver sdhci-msm not handling the BayHubTech design well. I found a patch set from BayHubTech, but still need to apply and build it on the current kernel to make an assessment if this would solve the problem (sort of quite sure it would). It's ongoing research.