Lenovo ThinkPad T480s

Hardware
PCI/USB ID
Working?
GPU (Intel)
8086:5917
Yes
GPU (NVIDIA)
Untested
Wi-Fi
8086:24fd
Yes
Audio
8086:9d71
Yes
TrackPoint
Yes
[1]
Touchpad
Yes
[2]
Webcam
5986:2113
Yes
Fingerprint reader
06cb:009a
Yes
Mobile broadband
Yes
Bluetooth
8087:0a2b
Yes
Smartcard reader
058f:9540
Yes
SD card reader
0bda:0316
Yes
PrivacyGuard
Yes
This article covers the installation and configuration of Arch Linux on a Lenovo T480s laptop. For the most part things work out-of-the-box, but some features may need to be configured manually.
For a general overview of laptop-related articles and recommendations, see
Laptop
.
Powersaving
Without special configuration and with default firmware settings, power usage is a bit high (around 7,5W in idle). There are a few knobs to improve battery life:
Warning
Changing Thunderbolt BIOS options has been reported to irreversibly brick ThinkPads due to a firmware bug
[3]
[4]
[5]
. A fix is available through a firmware update
[6]
[7]
, which can be installed via
fwupd
.
Set "Thunderbolt BIOS Assist Mode" to "Enabled" in the EFI firmware interface. This seems to reduce number of idle wakeups.
However, kernel versions since 4.19+ should support it natively (
[8]
), and some power consumption improvements is reported if this is switched to "Disabled"
[9]
.
Disable unused peripherals under "Security" -> "I/O port access" in the firmware. This especially applies to the SD/MMC-cardreader, which seems to drain some power even when idle
As of Kernel 4.15, DisplayPort PSR (Panel self refresh) is disabled by default and broken when forcibly enabled (system hangs after a few seconds, display lag). 4.17-rc1 seems to improve a lot in this regard, but PSR still sometimes causes the screen to freeze for a few seconds.
SD card reader
According to various reports the SD card reader drains several watts of power. If you do not want to disable it in bios because you use it semi-regularly, you can turn it off by unbinding its driver using this command:
# echo 2-3 > /sys/bus/usb/drivers/usb/unbind
You can then turn the reader back on by running:
# echo 2-3 > /sys/bus/usb/drivers/usb/bind
Fingerprint reader
The fingerprint sensor is not supported by
libfprint
.
There is a project
python-validity
based on
open-fprintd
, see
[10]
.
Install
python-validity
AUR
and enroll your fingerprint:
$ fprintd-enroll
Refer to
Fprint#Configuration
for configuration.
You may experience an issue where the fingerprint reader does not work after the laptop wakes up from suspension. To fix this, try
enabling
the
open-fprintd-resume
and
open-fprintd-suspend
systemd services
[11]
[
dead link
2025-08-15—HTTP 404]
. If the issue is still present,
create a unit file
as follows, then enable it
[12]
.
/etc/systemd/system/fingerprint-restart.service
[Unit]
Description=Restart services to fix fingerprint integration
After=suspend.target hibernate.target hybrid-sleep.target suspend-then-hibernate.target

[Service]
Type=oneshot
ExecStart=systemctl restart open-fprintd.service python3-validity.service

[Install]
WantedBy=suspend.target hibernate.target hybrid-sleep.target suspend-then-hibernate.target
If this solves the issue, you may disable
open-fprintd-resume
and
open-fprintd-suspend
again.
PrivacyGuard
The PrivacyGuard feature is referred to as
LCD Shadow
and was introduced in Linux 5.4.
[13]
To enable or turn on the LCD shadow:
# echo 1 > /proc/acpi/ibm/lcdshadow
Conversely, use
0
to disable it:
# echo 0 > /proc/acpi/ibm/lcdshadow
Note
Not every model supports this feature. If PrivacyGuard is not available, you will get the following output:
$ cat /proc/acpi/ibm/lcdshadow
status:         not supported
Function keys
Key
Visible?
1
Marked?
2
Effect
Fn+Esc
No
Yes
Toggles Fn lock
F1
Yes
Yes
XF86AudioMute
F2
Yes
Yes
XF86AudioLowerVolume
F3
Yes
Yes
XF86AudioRaiseVolume
F4
Yes
Yes
XF86AudioMicMute
F5
Yes
Yes
XF86MonBrightnessDown
F6
Yes
Yes
XF86MonBrightnessUp
F7
Yes
Yes
XF86Display
F8
Yes
Yes
XF86WLAN
F9
Yes
Yes
XF86Tools
F10
Yes
Yes
XF86Bluetooth
F11
Wayland only
3
Yes
XF86Keyboard
F12
Yes
Yes
XF86Favorites
Fn+Space
No
Yes
Controls the keyboard backlight
Fn+Left
Yes
No
Home
Fn+Right
Yes
No
End
Fn+b
Yes
No
Control_L+Break
Fn+k
Yes
No
Scroll_Lock
Fn+p
Yes
No
Pause
Fn+s
Yes
No
Alt_L
Alt_L+Sys_Req
Fn+4
Yes
No
XF86Sleep
Fn
Yes
No
XF86WakeUp
The key is visible to
xev
and similar tools.
The physical key has a symbol on it, which describes its function.
This key has a keyboard symbol on it. According to Lenovo, it should open the keyboard settings page
[14]
, which it does on Windows 10. It does generate an event on Wayland, but not on X.
Tip
By default, the function keys behave as multimedia keys instead of actual function keys. This behaviour can be changed in the UEFI BIOS settings so that
F1
to
F12
are used as standard function keys and special multimedia features are only triggered with the use of the
Fn
key.
Note
Although Fn lock state persists across reboots, the function keys will always behave as standard function keys during device startup.
Troubleshooting
Thermal throttling
There are reported throttling issues for Lenovo T480/T480s/X1C6 notebooks.
[15]
This script forces the CPU package power limit (PL1/2) to 44 W (29 W on battery) and the temperature trip point to 95 'C (85 'C on battery) by overriding default values in MSR and MCHBAR every 5 seconds (30 on battery) to block the Embedded Controller from resetting these values to default.
Install
the
throttled
package and
enable
the
throttled.service
.
[16]
It is recommended to also undervolt the CPU (
Undervolting CPU#intel-undervolt
). Most Kaby Lake R chips are able to easily undervolt to -100mV or more, which significantly helps to keep the device from thermal throttling. Throttled also provides undervolting capabilities and will overwrite the undervolt settings applied by intel-undervolt when it updates settings if both services are enabled.
Fix freezes/hangs on QT applications (with Intel driver)
See
Intel graphics#AccelMethod
.
See also
T480s install video playlist