Lenovo IdeaPad 5i (16IRU9)

The Lenovo IdeaPad 5i (16IRU9) is a laptop computer with a 16" screen, Intel® Core™ 5 120U Processor or Core™ 7 150U Processor , 8GB/16GB of memory, dual-array microphone, stereo speakers, Bluetooth 5.2, and WiFi 6.

The available ports are:

• 2x USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-A (one supports USB charging)
• 2x USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-C (full function)
• HDMI 1.4b
• Headphones / microphone combo jack
• MicroSD card reader

All hardware except the fingerprint reader (see #Fingerprint reader) works as tested with Linux Kernel 6.12.1.

Installation

Disable Secure Boot in the UEFI before installing. Press the F2 key on boot to access the UEFI setup menu. The bottom of the laptop also has a hole to access the Novo button, which will boot directly to the firmware and boot device selection screens.

Accessibility

The appearance of the UEFI is pretty simple and not very colorful, so it might work well with OCR software. It works with the touchpad and touchscreen.

Firmware

The firmware of the Elan Touchpad and Luxvisions integrated camera can be updated using fwupd.

Fingerprint reader

The Elan Microelectronics ARM-M4 fingerprint reader requires a version of libfprint which supports it (the elanmoc.c driver needs to recognize the 04f3:0c98 vendor and product IDs). Patching this file and installing the library allowed fingerprints to be enrolled and verified.

Sound

If sound and microphones do not work, be sure the sof-firmware package has been installed.

Bluetooth

Bluetooth works just by following the Bluetooth instructions. Sometimes Bluetooth will not enable due to no default controller being found; if so, see Bluetooth#bluetoothctl: No default controller available.

Hibernation

Resuming from hibernation works, but the system may be unresponsive for up to 30 seconds while hardware is reinitialized. Suspend/sleep appears to work without problems.

Battery conservation

The battery conservation mode works. Unlike other Lenovo models, the charge limit threshold appears to be approximately 80% of the battery capacity.

Power management

The power management features described for the Lenovo Ideapad 5 15are05 work. Setting the ideapad_laptop.allow_v4_dytc=1 kernel parameter enables the settings necessary for the power-profiles-daemon to choose the Power Save, Performance, or Balanced power profile. The ACPI calls described there do not work, however, as the BIOS has different ACPI methods.

Function keys

Note: These are only applicable to Linux Kernel 6.12.1 as of late November 2024. Earlier kernel versions do not support the Fn+F4 and Fn+F8 keys.

1. The key is visible to xev and similar tools
2. The physical key has a symbol on it, which describes its function