Lenovo X1 Carbon Gen 9¶
https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/p/laptops/thinkpad/thinkpadx1/x1-carbon-gen9/22tp2x1x1c9
Intel Graphics¶
The iGPU is gen 12, which has new features called GuC and HuC built-in that have power usage and performance benefits. When enabled, my laptop runs cooler, gained 3-4 hours of battery with the same usage pattern, hardware acceleration also seems to work better in firefox/chromium.
These features are not enabled by default, as the official intel docs states that they are not available on < gen12 intel CPUs. However, this laptop have a gen11 CPU, while the iGPU is gen12 and the features works properly when enabled.
There is currently a mailing list for enabling these features by default for this CPU. https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Talk:Intel_graphics#TGL/RKL_GuC_Submission
All credit to inslee@askfedora: https://ask.fedoraproject.org/t/intel-graphics-best-practices-and-settings-for-hardware-acceleration/21119
Sound issues¶
This laptop have a 4 speaker array for Dobly Atmos support. The factory installed firmware had buggy support for these speakers in Linux based OS, the sound was muffled and sounded like mono-channel, volume was also low and using amplification just made the sound even worse.
Turns out there was a firmware update for the audio controller available, after installing this with fw-update all of my issues went away and now my speakers are fantastic in Linux.