Linux 5.9 Will Finally Offer Proper Support For The ThinkPad 10 Ultrabook Keyboard

While Lenovo recently committed to certifying more systems for Linux use and upstreaming drivers / hardware support for Linux moving forward, there remains a backlog of existing Lenovo devices that still have less than desire Linux support. But thanks to Red Hat and others, the hardware support does continue advancing.

The Lenovo ThinkPad 10 Ultrabook initially debuted in 2014 and now with Linux 5.9 debuting in late 2020 there is proper keyboard support, thanks to Red Hat's Hans de Goede who has frequently provided similar driver improvements for a range of hardware over the years.

With the Lenovo changes now queued in HID-next for Linux 5.9, the ThinkPad 10 ultrabook's keyboard should be in good shape. Previously some of the function keys were not working as the keyboard was emitting the same usage code so a mapping needed to be added for the usage index. Additional code changes were also needed for getting the speaker and microphone mute LEDs working that are integrated into the function keys. Additionally, another few dozen lines of code were needed for getting the function lock support working on this ultrabook keyboard. The function lock can be toggled through sysfs similar to other ThinkPad keyboard support.

Rounding out Hans' work was also dealing with an issue where an "F23" key-press would happen when resuming from suspend even though the keyboard has no F23 key.

These improvements to the Lenovo HID driver code and more will land for Linux 5.9 with that merge window happening in August and the cycle should round out with the stable release around October. Meanwhile we are still on the lookout for Linux driver improvements coming out of Lenovo.