Same situation as when I swapped in the Intel 8260AC: no whitelist required, it’s supported out of the box.

Since the ThinkPad X250 no longer has a whitelist on the WiFi slot, can you swap in a Broadcom card? Rather than just mouthing off online, better to try it myself…

A while back some foreigner said that starting with the ThinkPad X250 and ThinkPad T450 era, the hardware whitelist was dropped. T450 and X250 no longer have Whitelists I also found confirmation from an official rep on Lenovo’s overseas blog. Shame is, the rep only said the Wi-Fi whitelist restriction was gone. Saying it is one thing, but nobody had actually gone and tested it, so I had an itch to scratch and decided to be the guinea pig. On Taobao I ignored the seller’s warning and bought an 8260ac without an FRU: So does it work or not?

The X250 is a bit of a pain on Ubuntu 14.04 — the touchpad doesn’t work right. Besides the mode tweak I mentioned before, the other fix is upgrading to a newer kernel. Kernels are everywhere; you can just grab one from Ubuntu’s Mainline and install it, like the latest 4.0.2: http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/v4.0.2-wily/ But after installing, you’ll find the touchpad works fine and the WiFi is gone. So here is a fix.

Short version: I bought a Xiaodu WiFi for 9 yuan, using a JD free-shipping coupon. Even so, the kaomoji on my keychain cost more than this thing… So, according to the official site, you’re supposed to install Baidu’s software, which bundles a one-click idiot-proof driver. One button and your current network is shared out. It’s really just a wireless adapter in hotspot mode. Which means there has to be a way to use the Xiaodu WiFi as a plain wireless adapter, because that’s what it is.