Fedora 40 Linux on Chuwi Minibook X N100

Chuwi Minibook X
Chuwi Minibook X
Picked up a cheap ($281 on sale) Chuwi Minibook X to have something better than an iPad, but not as expensive or large as a MacBook Air, to tote with me. It has an Intel Alder Lake N100 CPU, 4 cores at up to 3.4 GHz (turbo), 12 GB of LPDDR5 RAM (4800 MT/s), a 512 GB NVMe SSD at a claimed “over 1500 MB/S read/write speed,” and a 1920x1200 10.5" display. In theory it has a 360° hinge and with the display flipped around, becomes a 10" tablet, but that functionality doesn’t (yet?) work in Linux. Chuwi is, I believe, an ODM out of Shenzhen who also sells their own hardware. I’m not sure I really trust the thing (first thing I did under Linux was setup a script to automatically back up my home directory to my fileserver whenever I’m on my home network, so it can die at any time and I won’t have lost anything). But the price and form factor is right, so we’ll see how it goes. (I’ve heard the batteries use shit chemistry and last about a year ...?)

The unboxing experience was ... Sparse. The unbleached cardboard box itself is single-color branded, and inside, you get the laptop itself in a foam insert, a 45W power supply (USB C end) in a cardboard insert, and ... that’s it. No manual. No nothing. Which is fine, that’s all I really wanted or needed.

The information below is, as far as I know, specific to the newer Intel Processor N100 model of the Minibook X, and not the earlier Jasper Lake Celeron N5100 model.

Installing Linux

Used Windows’ Disk Management to shrink the Windows partition by about 130 GB, to make enough room for a Linux install. Downloaded the Fedora Workstation 40 Live ISO For Intel and AMD x86_64 systems on a Mac and wrote it to a PNY 64GB Duo Link using the Fedora Media Writer for Mac. (I’d heard good things about GNOME on touch screens.)

In its stock configuration, you rapidly press the F7 key on the keyboard when booting the Minibook X with the Linux install USB drive inserted into one of the USB C ports, and then just install it as you normally would.

Immediate Update

At first, the screen was rotated 90° and nigh unusable (the GNOME Settings had a selector to change rotation, but it wouldn’t toggle), and the keyboard wasn’t working, and WiFi wasn’t working. Yeesh. But I was prepared for all of that. I had one of my Tokyo 60 keyboards hooked up via USB C, and used an Apple USB-C to USB Adapter and an ancient Hawking Technology HUF11 USB 10/100 Mbps Faster Ethernet Adapter to get it online. The touch screen worked.

My first step was to run:

% sudo dnf update -y

... To make sure all the software was as up to date as possible. Rebooting, the login screen and main GNOME environment were properly running in landscape mode (identified as Portrait, Left). The keyboard was also working now. 

Screen Scaling

Used this command to enable scaling (other than the 100% / 200% enabled by default; 150% seems to be a good sweet spot):

% gsettings set org.gnome.mutter experimental-features "['scale-monitor-framebuffer']"

Screen Rotation

Details here; work in progress.  (grub2 documentation)

# vim /etc/default/grub
    GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="video=DSI-1:panel_orientation=right_side_up rhgb quiet"
# grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/grub2/grub.cfg

WiFi

The Intel AX201 WiFi module was not working, but after some extensive searching, I found this page and tried disabling 802.11ax:

% sudo rmmod iwlmvm iwlwifi
% sudo modprobe iwlwifi disable_11ax=1
% sudo echo "options iwlwifi disable_11ax=1" > /etc/modprobe.d/wifi.conf

Sure enough, that worked, and I was able to connect to my home WiFi network without any issue.

Touchpad

I could not figure out why the touchpad wasn’t working, but it just wasn’t responding at all. Until I saw an offhand comment somewhere (I think in a Reddit discussion) that unlocked the secret: Press Fn+Esc to unlock the touchpad. Now it works perfectly.

Bluetooth

The Bluetooth module (also Intel AX201) also wasn’t working, you couldn’t even turn it on in the GNOME settings panel. Following instructions I found here, and rebooting, fixed this issue:

% sudo ls -l /usr/lib/firmware/intel/ibt-0040-1050.ddc.xz
lrwxrwxrwx. 1 root root 20 Jun 10 17:00 /usr/lib/firmware/intel/ibt-0040-1050.ddc.xz -> ibt-0040-0041.ddc.xz
% sudo ls -l /usr/lib/firmware/intel/ibt-0040-1050.sfi.xz
lrwxrwxrwx. 1 root root 20 Jun 10 17:00 /usr/lib/firmware/intel/ibt-0040-1050.sfi.xz -> ibt-0040-0041.sfi.xz
% sudo rm /usr/lib/firmware/intel/ibt-0040-1050.ddc.xz /usr/lib/firmware/intel/ibt-0040-1050.sfi.xz
% sudo ln -s /usr/lib/firmware/intel/ibt-1040-4150.ddc.xz /usr/lib/firmware/intel/ibt-0040-1050.ddc.xz
% sudo ln -s /usr/lib/firmware/intel/ibt-1040-4150.sfi.xz /usr/lib/firmware/intel/ibt-0040-1050.sfi.xz

Software Tweaks

 Couldn't deal with "kinetic" scrolling in Firefox; about:config -> apz.gtk.kinetic_scroll_enabled set to false.

Device Rundown

  • Display - just worked, once on a 6.9+ kernel
    • Different scaling values enabled with gsettings (see above)
    • The grub display is still rotated 90° but I don’t really care
    • I haven’t experienced the garbled display others report
  • Audio - just worked, tested speaker playback
  • GPU - untested
  • Accelerometer - untested
  • Lid Switch - works?
  • Tablet Switch - not working
  • Performance profiles - untested
  • Screen brightness - just worked
  • Media keys - just worked
  • USB-C ports - just worked
  • Touch screen - just worked
  • Keyboard - just worked, once on a 6.9+ kernel
  • Touchpad - just worked, once unlocked with Fn+Esc
  • Keyboard backlight - just worked
  • Night Light - not working
  • Bluetooth - worked once I symlinked different firmware; have used it with two different Logitech mice and a Bose QC 35 II headset.
  • Ambient light sensor - untested
  • WiFi - worked once I disabled 11ax
  • Charging - just worked; both USB C ports took a charge capably from a generic 60W USB C PD grommet charger
  • The 26.6 Wh battery - gives me a little over 4 hours on a charge without any tweaking (so far), about what people are reporting under Windows.

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