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I have a ThinkPad X1 Carbon 11gen(21HMCTO1WW) running Arch Linux, though I've noticed this on my old ThinkPad 25th Anniversary Edition/T470 as well.
Frequently (though not every time), when using my Trackpoint it will start drifting while I use it, and when I take my finger off the nub the mouse cursor will keep moving, usually in a diagonal direction, for a moment or two until it stops. The Trackpoint is basically unusable until the drifitng stops (which is honestly within a second or two, but still rather annoying).
It seems Trackpoint use is what triggers it; it doesn't appear to drift at all on its own if I haven't touched the Trackpoint in a while.
I've seen this behavior in both X11/X.org, and Wayland. I'm currently using Wayland/Hyprland (in X.org I was using XMonad). Since it doesn't seem specific to either GUI environment, I suspect an issue at the libinput/evdev driver level.
Unfortunately I don't know how to reproduce this reliably, and it's been happening for years (going back to my six plus years of use ending early 2024 for my old 25th Anniversary/T470, which was X.org/XMonad only on Arch Linux). It does seem to happen more frequently when I'm trying to move the mouse cursor a greater screen distance.
And it doesn't seem to be a function of the physical shape of the replaceable red Trackpoint nub, either. My toddler had knocked off the nub that shipped with my X1 Carbon (one of the old style, bullet-shaped rounded top nubs), and though I ordered the old style replacements from Lenovo, they sent me a pack of the newer flat style nubs (contrary to the compatibility matrix on Lenovo's website, these newer flat style nubs do seem to work with my X1 Carbon well enough). I've noticed this drifting problem with both nub styles (including the couple of weeks with no red nub at all until the replacements came in).
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I found this Troubleshooting item on the Trackpoint article on the Arch Wiki. I implemented its udev suggestion, we'll see if it works. The drift did seem to happen right after I created the rules override file, but there may not have been enough time for udev to pick it up.
I got distracted by family before I could tell udev to reload, and my laptop went to sleep before I returned to this. We'll see if it makes any difference. The next thing to try is to change the Trackpoint to a bare PS/2 mouse device if the udev rule doesn't work.
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So, it seems this behavior is built into the hardware (and appears to not be governed by anything in software). I've cross posted this in a few different places (Reddit: r/thinkpad, cross-posted to r/archlinux), and have had some feedback there.
The suggestion is this drift should only happen once I release the Trackpoint. If that were the case, this wouldn't be such a big annoyance. Basically, the device is set to calibrate itself fairly frequently.
My experience has been that it will try to calibrate and drift before I've released the Trackpoint, which is why it's such a big problem. I did set up the udev rule, and I've noticed the issue seems to have gotten worse.
I don't know that for a fact, I may just be paying closer attention to this than I ever had been before. But it most definitely drifts while I'm using it, before I release the Trackpoint. It seems to happen more often when I try to move the mouse cursor a longer distance across the screen (like trying to move it to click on a link in a full screen/maximized browser window).
If it was just when I released the Trackpoint, I think it would be tolerable. The problem is it seems to drift while I'm trying to move it, which makes it impossible to move it to the target location (usually so I can click on something).
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