Lenovo ThinkPad P15s

To use Thunderbolt 3:

1. Go into BIOS

2. Enable BIOS Assist mode: (Thunderbolt 3 -> Enable BIOS assist mode)

The NVIDIA driver now supports PRIME Offloading. Following this guide you can try out this new mode.

To get the best power options the graphics card may be configured to use low power mode by following the guide here

Currently, one of the easiest solutions for this laptop is to use optimus-manager with the hybrid backend. This requires the most up to date nvidia and xorg-server packages.

This allows easy switching between the PRIME offloading feature above, and a mode where external display ports (HDMI and USB-C) work.

Steps to setup after a fresh install:

• Install nvidia proprietary driver 'prime', not bumblebee.
• Reboot.
• Install optimus-manager^AUR.
• Reboot.
• optimus-manager --switch nvidia # this will restart your X session, but not make the change persistent.
• lspci -k should say: Kernel driver in use: nvidia.
• xrandr should list HDMI output - try to configure screen, should work.
• nvidia-settings should work.
• optimus-manager --set-startup nvidia makes it persistent.
• Check: reboot, external display should still work.

This laptop requires firmware in order for the soundcard to work. See Advanced Linux Sound Architecture#ALSA firmware.

The 1.90.1 version of fprint supports this device.

The webcam in this laptop is capable of "Windows Hello" which has a Linux version called Howdy. The device you should use to configure howdy on this laptop is /dev/video0. It is possible that Howdy will only use the RGB camera, in this case some additional configuration and software is required. Follow this guide on installing chicony-ir-toggle and setting it up as a service. Or you can just install chicony-ir-toggle-git^AUR, which automatically helps you enable the IR camera after booting the system and waking up from sleep. Before installing chicony-ir-toggle-git^AUR, make sure you change the local variables in in PKGBUILD to match your own IR camera. In this case try changing the video device to in the howdy config , if everything has worked correctly when running sudo howdy test the IR Camera should have a very faint red light. This will indicate that the camera is functioning and Howdy is using the IR camera correctly.

If you would like to enable the keyboard backlight, run:

# echo 2 > /sys/class/leds/tpacpi::kbd_backlight/brightness

The "2" represents the brightness and can be any value between 0 and 2 (inclusive) for the laptop. For example, to turn off the keyboard backlight, you would run:

# echo 0 > /sys/class/leds/tpacpi::kbd_backlight/brightness

The touchpad works out-of-the-box with libinput. However, it will be very insensitive.

Make sure to not install - this driver is deprecated, lacks all features mentioned below, but is still installed by default with the xorg-drivers group.

You can check which input driver Xorg is using for your touchpad with:

You can explicitly choose an input driver by placing an Xorg configuration snippet like the following in

You can adjust acceleration using the command:

$ xinput set-prop 'SynPS/2 Synaptics TouchPad' 'libinput Accel Speed' 0.5

Additionally, if you wish to disable right-clicking so that you use two finger click as your right click, run:

$ xinput set-prop 'SynPS/2 Synaptics TouchPad' 'libinput Click Method Enabled' 0 1

If you would like for a tap on the touchpad to be registered as a click, use:

$ xinput set-prop 'SynPS/2 Synaptics TouchPad' 'libinput Tapping Enabled' 1

CPU throttling on the P15s is a known issue but can be easily fixed with undervolting by 100mV.

There are a few ways to fix this. You should only use one of the following as they both attempt to undervolt.

To fix this install , then start/enable .

Note that on kernels 5.9 and newer, the kernel parameter is required to prevent error messages, for example:

Undervolting the CPU/Intel GPU works well with intel-undervolt.