Ubuntu Linux on a Thinkpad X61s
The 2007-08-03 at 20:11 by Loïc d'Anterroches filed under Computer toys.
Basically it works out of the box using the Ubuntu Gutsy Tribe 3. You just need to tweak some little things to get really everything working. Just read on for more details.
General description
This little system is very comfortable, I am having it on my lap at the moment and it can really be used nicely. Nearly no noise at all is coming from the system (after a bios upgrade). I was spoiled with my T41p having a 1440x1050 screen resolution, here 1024x768 may look very small, but in fact it makes everything (fonts, etc.) big enough to read. I had often to increase the size of the text when using the T41p. The model is the UK427GE. It as 1.4GHz dual core low voltage processor with 4MB L2 cache. The keyboard is even better than the one on my T41p, maybe it is because it is new.
It is small, very small, and weight next to nothing, less than 1.5kg. I like to travel with the minimum, with this one I will travel happy.
Installation
First, I booted once under Windows Vista, and, let say it politely, it looks like I was used to Win XP and it is difficult for me to understand this new one. I was especially annoyed by all the pop-ups about security everywhere. Ok, so my Vista experience lasted maybe 5 minutes, plus 10 or so for the boot time and shutdown because some updates were installed at the same time.
I tried to generate the recovery CDs for Vista, but was not able to find the option to burn them. Most likely because I got a German Betrieb System and my German is not that good.
So, I plugged an external usb CD player and popped in the Ubuntu install CD, I took the standard one. I selected everything normal, but went for manual partitioning. There I modified the NTFS partition of Vista and resize it to 25GB, the system really resized it without trashing the content. I was not sure about it, but it worked! So then I just created root, swap and home partitions. The installation went without a glitch.
What is working, what is not
Working
The system is using the latest Intel Graphics Media Accelerator X3100 for the video with an Intel 3945 a/b/g for the wireless, I was not sure if that would be supported. They are working out of the box! Yeah! So basically everything is working.
External display in 1280x1024 where the LCD is in 1024x768. It looks like my screen can inform the laptop of its resolution, because this is working even before X is started.
Not/partially working
What was not working was the fan, it was always full speed when plugged on AC. Not nice, but a bios upgrade to the 1.06 version (using Windows Vista to do it, very painful process by the way) solved the problem (but I need to test further).
Other stuff not working was the suspend to ram, when coming back, the back light of the display was off and I was enable to get it back (even with switching to console and back to X), the trick is simply to use the level 3 of the acpi sleep. So just add acpi_sleep=s3_bios to boot loader and it will work. My line in Grub looks like that:
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.22-9-generic root=UUID=7440af99-56fe-4af3-aa7f-03d05fcb3a06 ro quiet splash acpi_sleep=s3_bios
What is still not working is the control of the brightness of the display. I need to get more info, it looks like the bios could be a little buggy, I am not sure. I need to investigate that further.
Edit: For the moment it is possible to use xbacklight to set the brightness of the screen, for example xbacklight -set 10.0 to put it at 10%.
Partial conclusion
Wonderful little machine, I don’t think I can complain about anything. Oh, yes, one thing. I had the feeling that the Tribe 3 version of Ubuntu had a better polish than the full Business Vista. Strange feeling…
Pictures etc… and full review will come later. But basically if you want to buy and you are not sure, you can.
Comments from readers
ziggy said:
Thanks for the article! I also recently got a X61s, and I was disappointed by the lack of compatibility with Ubuntu 7.04.
Ubuntu Gutsy Tribe 3 really works better out of the box as you describe (wifi, desktop effects, etc).
My main problem right now is that I don't have any sound. Did you get sound working without any modifications?
Loïc said:
No, the sound is not working for the moment, this is due to the chipset used being not yet supported by the alsa drivers. But the drivers are working in the development version of alsa, so this will come.
Just write "X61s" in the search box here: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/ to get the list of bugs. I have one with the wifi, a little annoying but people are looking at it.
ziggy said:
Oh, I see. Thanks for the link.
By the way, I also seem to have a problem connecting to WEP wireless networks.
Loïc said:
Yes, I have the problem too but I am helping to get it fixed:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux-ubuntu-modules-2.6.22/+bug/119563
waldemar said:
Newbie: Downloaded 7.10, burned on cd, but can not find any options to install. Just tells me to reboot which I cant from my usb cd-rom drive. what/where did you do when you "selected everything normal"?
whatever said:
The sound is working with 2.6.23 vanilla kernel (had to get it on my debian, otherwise wireless didn't work). You will also need to load thinkpad_acpi module.
Christian said:
Hi,
I also want to try Ubuntu. But I have doubts about the battery lifetime compared to Windows XP? What experiences do you have?
Loïc said:
Waldemar> You need to press the thinkvantage button at startup to select an alternative boot device.
whatever> Great! I will soon enjoy sound again.
Christian> I cannot compare with XP/Vista because I have never been using them. But with the smallest battery, which is the one I have, I have about 1h45. If you put the big one, I think you can go way further as it nearly doubles the battery lifetime.
asdf said:
what the fuck?
i thought you would be able to get over 6 hours with that crappy x61s.
i have over 4 hours even with an old x20, and without any battery sticking out!
Loïc said:
asdf, please be polite. The fact is that the x61s has a very small battery with a very powerfull CPU. Do the maths, you end-up with not a lot of battery lifetime.
If you look at the technology evolution, battery is not following the Moore's law. It is just a fact, this simply implies that in the future, except if we make a big step forward in battery technology, your laptops will have less and less lifetime.
goforkt said:
I'm thinking of buying the x61s but I don't wanna buy the docking station. My worry is that if I use a usb cd or dvd rom drive, i'll have trouble booting some (bootable) CDs or DVDs.. anyone have any idea if this is the case?
Loïc said:
goforkt, I had strictly no problems booting from an external USB CD/DVD drive to install Ubuntu. You just need to press the ThinkVantage button during the boot sequence and then select the boot device you want.
spamalam said:
I get 6-8hrs on my x61s with wifi enabled, in vista.