Lenovo Thinkpad T430



Following settings aim to make Thinkpad T430 usable.

RAM


ThinkPad T430 supports up to 16 GB of SO-DIMM DDR3/DDR3L memory. Max frequency that you can buy is 2133 MHz. DDR3L is better because it is 1.35V instead of 1.5V so it stips 10 percent less battery with the same performance as DDR3. To check how much of memory the laptop has:

This shows one 4GB module is installed and a second is unpopulated but available.

To find out the frequency of installed RAM modulesː

If you install second RAM module - note that they must operate on the same frequency, but size can differ (for example 4 GB plus 8 GB).

Battery
Get current battery level (useful if you are a minimalist and use i3 or Sway window managers without GUI battery indicator) ːFor all details about the batteryː

WiFi
The Linux firmware package is needed since the Centrino Advanced-N 6205 AGN wifi adapter requires a specific firmware file.

Firmware file that is needed is the. It can be obtained by installing the Linux firmware package:. For more info see iwlwifi.

Ethernet
To try to use Ethernet on laptop boot (run by init system):

Bluetooth
Thus a Linux firmware file is needed. See Broadcom Bluetooth for additional info.

Microcode
Intel released microcode updates that fixes fault on processors. Install the officially published microcode package. For more info see Intel microcode.

Kernel
Gentoo specific Menuconfig. More info at Kernel.

Ready to use .config for Linux 5.

Compiler settings
More info is available at:
 * GCC optimization
 * MAKEOPTS
 * EMERGE_DEFAULT_OPTS

Packages settings
For more info: CPU_FLAGS_X86

USE flags
With Intel Modesetting DDX as video driver and libinput as input driver add the USE flags  and.

battery charge thresholds
Use:. Example econfig and instructions can be found at: github.com/teleshoes/tpacpi-bat.

fan control
Use:.

Fingerprint reader
Use:. Instructons can be found at:

Displays
You can connect one external display, or you can attach two display but internal display will be disabled, or you can buy a dock to have 3 external displays (internal will be disabled).

Fix screen tearing
If during watching of some videos you see that some frames is out of sync with the screen rate - you can fix it in multiple ways. For Xorg: Thinkpad T430 has Intel GPU, so create this file:

And emerge x11-drivers/xf86-video-intel.

Reboot your system for the new configuration to take effect.

Another option against screen tearing: use Sway window manager, because underlying Wayland protocol has no screen tearing by design.