Screen rotation works very intermittently for new Lenovo ThinkPad X390 Yoga
I've also posted a bug with the Fedora project: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1833801
Duplicate of that content, to save you fishing...
Description of problem:
I have a brand new Lenovo ThinkPad X390 Yoga. I installed Fedora 32 and it all seemed fine until I first tried tablet mode. The screen rotation is basically broken. Note, yes, I did check rotation wasn't locked in GNOME!
There's some more info here: https://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?323834-Accelerometer-not-working-software-problem-or-broken-hardware
There's very little output, even when using 'monitor-sensor' in a terminal to see what's going on. It's like the rotation events are simply not detected at all most of the time. Then suddenly it picks up an event, rotates and the screen is stuck like that. You have to keep tilting and eventually it notices and rotates back the way it's supposed to be, but all the while you're doing this there's no output from monitor-sensor, until the actual rotate event - then everything appears normal.
I had bought the machine because it is Ubuntu certified for 18.04 LTS, so I decided to try a live USB of the latest Ubuntu (20.04 TLS) and, curiously, it has the exact same problem as Fedora 32. I then tried a live USB of Ubuntu 18.04 LTS aaaaand... the laptop functions perfectly! Screen rotation in tablet mode or otherwise is snappy and perfect.
So it seems something broke, either between kernel versions 4.x and 5.x or in the iio-sensor-proxy package itself? Scratching through because it's speculation and further testing suggests otherwise.
I'm happy to provide more info for debugging, but I have no idea where to start so I'd need some guidance from the maintainers as to what logs/output is useful.
In any case, this is definitely a recent issue as older versions of Ubuntu work, and I haven't tried but I suspect it might be fine with Fedora 29 (kernel 4.18) as well? Ditto, don't think this is true any more.
Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):
Installed Packages
Name : iio-sensor-proxy
Version : 3.0
Release : 1.fc32
Architecture : x86_64
Size : 135 k
Source : iio-sensor-proxy-3.0-1.fc32.src.rpm
Repository : @System
From repo : fedora
Summary : IIO accelerometer sensor to input device proxy
URL : https://github.com/hadess/iio-sensor-proxy
License : GPLv3+
Description : IIO accelerometer sensor to input device proxy.
How reproducible:
It happens every time with the right hardware and Fedora 32.
Steps to Reproduce:
- Buy or borrow a ThinkPad X390 Yoga
- Install standard 64 bit Fedora 32 Desktop on it
- Try to tilt the computer and note the screen doesn't rotate!
Actual results:
Rotation mostly doesn't happen, but does sometimes randomly work for one or two rotations, then it stops working again.
Expected results:
Screen rotates smoothly and rapidly, just as it does with a live USB install / intermittently when it does work. Ubuntu 18.04 LTS.