Bluetooth and Wi-Fi work together with no issues on my ThinkPad X1 Extreme. I'm using Wi-Fi on 5GHz. Haven't tried it on 2.4GHz; I imagine there could be more potential for interference there.
I mostly use Bluetooth with Apple AirPods. I tried running Ubuntu on the ThinkPad but it had the same problem I've seen on other Linux machines: the AirPods would only pair as headphones, not as a full headset with microphone.
I like Windows better anyway on the hardware, especially its support for different scaling factors on multiple monitors. So I run Linux in a VM or use WSL2.
A tip for anyone having such issues with wifi on linux: Is it a 2.4GHz network and is anyone using bluetooth (such as headphones)? They might be interfering with each other.
The iwlwifi kernel module has an option that tries to allow them to coexist, but it seems totally random whether or not you should have it on. Different bluetooth headphones also affect it in different ways (as I discovered a few weeks ago when I bought a different brand; with my usual the bluetooth would drop for about a minute then reconnect with no effect on the wifi, but with the new ones they would go crazy maintaining the connection, causing a lot of audio stuttering and extremely slow wifi).
I had zero issues with the Wifi, not tried Bluetooth so can’t comment there.
I’m not sure if the lack of WiFi issues is because Fedora tends to stay pretty up to date kernel wise.
EDIT: to clarify - I had zero issues with having to to anything special to get Wifi working - there are still intermittent issues with the driver that happens maybe once or twice a week
I have last year's X1 Yoga (2nd gen), which has a lot in common with the X1 Carbon. On that one, I can't get 2.4GHz wifi to hold if I'm also using bluetooth (i.e., watching a youtube video using headphones). Soon as I switch over to 5GHz, no problem. This is under Linux -- with Windows 10, it starts off disconnecting a couple times, then it will eventually hold the connection.
If they're using Intel wifi I agree. I got a Lenovo laptop a couple years ago that used a realtek card for wifi+Bluetooth and the Bluetooth was unusable with my headphones (windows and Linux). Swapping it for a $20 Intel chip fixed all my issues.
I’ve owned two generations of them and exclusively run Linux on them (I think the 2016 and 2018 releases). One of them was a Developer Edition from work, but the other one was a generic store bought. Never had any issues with WiFi or Bluetooth.
I’ve always run distributions with kernel releases that aren’t months or years behind upstream, which might have helped as far as hardware support goes.
This is good news; FreeBSD's wifi/bluetooth stack definitely more love and a bit of polishing. The last time I tried using Intel wifi on FreeBSD the driver kept trying to use wrong tx settings without allowing me to change them, leading to slow performance and poor signal (the same card under Linux/Windows had excellent signal from the same AP).
With Bluetooth, it's precisely what all notebooks I can remember do. With WiFi, especially connected via PCIe, I wouldn't rule out problems. But please keep in mind that at least in the early days WiFi cards most often came as PCMCIA/PCcard/CardBus, so I'd guess the infrastructure started out PnP compatible from the start...
How well wifi works depends on if you stick with the default "Thinkpad wireless" or you pay a bit extra for the Intel wireless stuff. Its well worth the extra $20 in terms of the Linux drivers being much better for the later, if nothing else.
Broadcom wireless cards ought to be avoided at all costs (except they finally saw the light and released an open driver for their latest 802.11N, yay, but likely it's not integrated in any distro yet).
I've no idea what "ThinkPad wireless" actually is.
Good point. I use FreeBSD on a daily driver NUC and I have no need for neither WiFi not Bluetooth. But I know I'm an outlier.
Support on that front could definitely use some improvement. I had to turn off Bluetooth in the bios because it made my box hang on startup. Never bothered to find out why because I don't need it anyway.
Fedora 21 through 23 has worked well so far. All of my peripherals work well on my ThinkPad X1 Carbon (3rd gen). The community is quite easy to join if you need to submit bugs or ask for help.
I've had zero PulseAudio issues even with creating multiple monitoring devices, a USB DAC and a USB webcam with audio support.
Which wifi cards are you using? Broadcom can be a bit of a pain, but the Intel chips are fairly easy to get working.
That's not the case always. My first cheap thinkpad worked great, but the 2nd expensive one (T440p) has bad driver support for Wifi (on current and last Ubuntu LTS). Connections are unstable and throughput is ~0.3x of the dongle I use (both 2.4Ghz 802.11n). Hardware - Realtek RTL8192EE PCIe.
Personally I would be happy with any kind of stable wireless support, even the most unsecure or obsolete one. My Pi3 and Pi4 both can't maintain stable wifi connection for more than a week. After that they simply become unresponsive on the network - I got to unload and reload the driver to make them communicate through the network. I solved this on one of them by simply connecting though ethernet, but the other one is still a constant pain.
I have given up using built-in Bluetooth and Wifi at the same time years ago, when they were interfering with each other. Nevertheless, I wonder if that is still the case.
I mostly use Bluetooth with Apple AirPods. I tried running Ubuntu on the ThinkPad but it had the same problem I've seen on other Linux machines: the AirPods would only pair as headphones, not as a full headset with microphone.
I like Windows better anyway on the hardware, especially its support for different scaling factors on multiple monitors. So I run Linux in a VM or use WSL2.
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