Recently I bought a Thinkpad T440s. The latest Windows 8.1 looks really gorgeous, but it is so different from any previous version that I am almost using a whole new OS. Given that I seldom use Windows for development, I decided to only install Ubuntu on my laptop. The process of installing is nothing new, except that one needs to remember to disable all UEFI settings in BIOS. Otherwise, the computer wouldn't load Ubuntu.

Disable UEFI settings

When the compter starts, press ENTER or F1 to go to the BIOS menu. Then go to Security page, select Secure Boot, disable Secure Boot. Later, go back to the top level, and go to Startup page, change UEFI/Legacy Boot to Both and UEFI/Legacy Boot Priority to Legacy First. You may also need to tweak the Boot order for loading the installation media.

Thinkpad Touchpad Driver

By default, the touchpad doesn't support middle key etc. To add the support for this, we need to first deactivate gnome settings by

sudo apt-get install dconf-editor

Then, uncheck the "active" option in org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.mouse.

Now create a file named as 99-synaptics-t440s.conf under /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/ and paste the following in the file.

# Custom xorg.conf.d snippet that assigns the touchpad driver
# to all touchpads. See xorg.conf.d(5) for more information on
# InputClass.
# Additional options may be added in the form of
#   Option "OptionName" "value"
#
Section "InputClass"
        Identifier "touchpad catchall"
        Driver "synaptics"
        MatchIsTouchpad "on"
# This option is recommend on all Linux systems using evdev, but cannot be
# enabled by default. See the following link for details:
# http://who-t.blogspot.com/2010/11/how-to-ignore-configuration-errors.html
      MatchDevicePath "/dev/input/event*"

      # This sets the top area of the touchpad to not track
      # movement but can be used for left/middle/right clicks
      Option "SoftButtonAreas" "60% 0 0 2400 40% 60% 0 2400"
      Option "AreaTopEdge" "2400"

      # Helps to reduce mouse cursor "jumpiness"
      Option "HorizHysteresis" "30"
      Option "VertHysteresis" "30"

      # Settings reported to work well on an X1 Carbon
      Option "FingerLow" "40"
      Option "FingerHigh" "45"
      Option "MinSpeed" "1"
      Option "MaxSpeed" "1"
      Option "AccelerationProfile" "2"
      Option "ConstantDeceleration" "4"

      # Disable edge scrolling, I prefer two-finger scroll instead
      Option "VertEdgeScroll" "0"

      # Disable tap and drag gesture
      Option "TapAndDragGesture" "0"

      # Enable three-finger tap for middle mouse click
      Option "TapButton3" "2"
EndSection

Now you should be able to use the middle key on the top of the touchpad. More coveniently, tap the touchpad with three fingers can also function as the middle key pressing.

Setting Charging Threshold

According to the recent discussion in Lenovo forum, the feature to set the charging threshold has been removed in Windows 8. Luckily in Linux, we are still able to set such threshold by altering the modules in the kernel.

For me, I prefer batteries to start to charge below 60% and stop above 90%. So I simply put

tpacpi-bat -s ST 1 60
tpacpi-bat -s SP 1 90
tpacpi-bat -s ST 2 60
tpacpi-bat -s SP 2 90

Swap Ctrl with Caps Lock and Alt with Tab

As a heavy Emacs user, the swapping is a must. First we can type

sudo apt-get install xkeycaps

Next, invoke the key-map tweaker by

xkeycaps

After remapping the key positions, put the following in ~/.profile

xmodmap ~/.xmodmap-`uname -n`

Other miscs:

• Numix theme
• apt-fast
• zsh and oh-my-zsh
• rxvt-unicode

sudo update-alternatives --config x-terminal-emulator
gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.default-applications.terminal exec 'urxvt'

• keylock-indicator and cpufreq-indicator
• gitconfig