Bluetooth doesn't work. Changing screen brightness doesn't work. X crashes on startup. Even Ubuntu's GUI installer crashes on startup. Suspend works, but I can only resume by opening the lid, not by typing or clicking. Also, once I resume, focus is often on the last app, not the password input. The first time this happened, I typed my password. No effect. Confused, I clicked on the password input and tried again. Success, but my terminal said, "*K&GD#TYIBO(" command not found. That means anyone can run a command as my user simply by typing it at the password prompt. For some reason this only happens when resuming from suspend, not after locking the screen.
I have a mostly-working system today. Brightness is still stuck at maximum, limiting the battery to 6 hours. (Windows 8 gets 9 hours.) The latest beta Catalyst drivers fix X crashing, but I still get screen tearing so watching video is extremely annoying. Bluetooth no longer crashes, but it can't see any discoverable devices or pair with them. Wifi transfers at 802.11n speeds once I compile the latest drivers.
I thought I'd picked a good laptop to run Linux on, but it turns out that Ubuntu's hardware certification is worthless. It's so frustrating, because once you max-out the RAM and install an SSD, the x140e just needs working drivers.
I have an x230 and use fedora and literally everything worked out of the box and was quicker than windows by a long shot. I was just installing fedora for a dev environment, but quickly switched away from windows because it was so much better.
I'm sorry if this is obvious to you, but your post makes it sound like you may have bought a laptop in the configuration listed and then tried to install Ubuntu. Quoting from the Ubuntu website you linked,
Standard images of Ubuntu may not work at all on the
system or may not work well, though Canonical and
computer manufacturers will try to certify the system
with future standard releases of Ubuntu.
Did you use a standard Ubuntu image, or get one pre-installed?
I used the standard Ubuntu image. I tried 12.04LTS, 13.10, and 14.04LTS alpha/beta/whatever.
I'm not sure it's possible to buy an x140e with Ubuntu preinstalled. When purchasing from Lenovo's website, the OS choices are all versions of Windows 7 and 8. It would be nice if this potentially modified version of Ubuntu was released somewhere.
It has been a nightmare.
Bluetooth doesn't work. Changing screen brightness doesn't work. X crashes on startup. Even Ubuntu's GUI installer crashes on startup. Suspend works, but I can only resume by opening the lid, not by typing or clicking. Also, once I resume, focus is often on the last app, not the password input. The first time this happened, I typed my password. No effect. Confused, I clicked on the password input and tried again. Success, but my terminal said, "*K&GD#TYIBO(" command not found. That means anyone can run a command as my user simply by typing it at the password prompt. For some reason this only happens when resuming from suspend, not after locking the screen.
I have a mostly-working system today. Brightness is still stuck at maximum, limiting the battery to 6 hours. (Windows 8 gets 9 hours.) The latest beta Catalyst drivers fix X crashing, but I still get screen tearing so watching video is extremely annoying. Bluetooth no longer crashes, but it can't see any discoverable devices or pair with them. Wifi transfers at 802.11n speeds once I compile the latest drivers.
I thought I'd picked a good laptop to run Linux on, but it turns out that Ubuntu's hardware certification is worthless. It's so frustrating, because once you max-out the RAM and install an SSD, the x140e just needs working drivers.