Lenovo Legion Go Extreme Mode Is Coming To Address The Gaming Handheld's Biggest Flaw In Linux

Linux users running Lenovo's Legion gaming handhelds and laptops are about to get a much-needed update to the way their systems handle power profiles. Developer Derek J. Clark has submitted a new patch series to the Linux kernel that adds explicit support for an "Extreme" performance mode to the lenovo-wmi-gamezone driver and overhauls how compatible systems are detected. The change is aimed at improving reliability and eliminating confusing behavior in tools that expose Lenovo's built-in performance profiles to userspace.

The short version: some Lenovo Legion devices report support for an "Extreme" thermal mode in firmware, but don't actually implement it correctly. In theory, the mode pushes the CPU and GPU power limits to the maximum levels the cooling system can handle, but on some devices, this is actually beyond what the internal battery can safely supply, and on other devices it was apparently stubbed out, meaning it doesn't necessarily do anything at all. Earlier kernel versions tried to work around buggy firmware by maintaining a deny-list of affected devices, but Clark's patches flip that logic to an explicit allow-list. In practice, that means no Legion Go models will offer Extreme mode in the software until they've been tested and validated for stable behavior.

This change also clears up one of the stranger quirks in Linux on recent Legion systems. Because of how the firmware misreported profile names, Linux tools like GNOME's power settings and third-party utilities could show mismatched modes—"Performance" in the UI might actually trigger a "Balanced-Performance" state under the hood, or even invoke the half-implemented Extreme mode. The result was inconsistent LED indicators (where color cues didn't match between Windows and Linux), and the impression among some users that "Performance" mode was performing poorly on Linux.


Windows users might recognize the parallels here: Lenovo's own Legion Space app doesn't expose an "Extreme" mode either; users who want to ramp up power limits beyond what "Performance" offers have to use a "Custom" profile to manually set CPU and GPU limits. Clark's work essentially brings Linux into parity with Lenovo's own approach—acknowledging that Extreme mode exists in firmware but shouldn't be used unless the hardware has been explicitly qualified for it. For now, users can still enable it through the Fn + Q shortcut on supported systems, but it won't appear in software menus by default.

We ran into some battery life quirks while reviewing the SteamOS-equipped version of the Legion Go S, the company's smaller 8-inch revision of its Windows gaming handheld. Battery life and power draw behaved oddly across modes, and some of that instability may have been linked to these same firmware profile bugs. With Clark's patches merged, Linux users should finally see more predictable performance scaling across Lenovo's expanding Legion lineup.

_{Thanks to Phoronix for spotting this story.}