Installing Fedora 12 on a ThinkPad T41

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Revision as of 10:06, 27 October 2009 by Tonko (Talk | contribs) (Success Chart - Out of the box experience)
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NOTE!
This is based on the Beta version of Fedora 12. I will try to update the results when the final version is available.

Success Chart - Out of the box experience

This machines SMOLT profile is available here.

Item Working Notes
Installation Local CD/DVD install yes
Network Installation yes
USB Installation yes
Display Laptop Screen yes Occasional minor corruption. Compiz works, but rotating cube causes the colour palette to be messed up during rotation.
VGA partial see below
DVI partial see below. Requires port-replicator or dock with DVI
S-Video partial see below
Power Management Software Suspend (hibernate) no Broken. Fails with a Power Manager error dialog that it failed to hibernate
Suspend to Memory (ACPI sleep) no Broken. black display with graphical mouse cursor on resume. can switch to text mode.
Audio yes crackling on startup, afterwards seems to work fine
Wireless WiFi - Atheros yes
WiFi - Intel unknown (should work)
Bluetooth yes
Input Keyboard yes
TrackPoint yes Install gpointing-device-settings rpm for full configuration capabilities
TouchPad yes Install gpointing-device-settings rpm for full configuration capabilities
Extra keys partial see ThinkPad Extra keys section below
Ports Ethernet yes
Modem no Requires closed-source driver
Serial yes Requires port-replicator or dock
IrDA no Device is detected, but does not work
PS/2 Keyboard/Mouse yes Mouse works, but disables Trackpoint/Touchpad
Parallel unknown (should work) Device is detected
USB yes
PCMCIA/Cardbus yes
Harddisk Active Protection partial There is now a hdaps rpm, but it is not installed by default, and even after install it is not started automatically. Starting it manually (hdapsd -d sda), does seem to cause the HDD heads to get parked, but it gives lots of warnings that seem to indicate it does not yet work as intended.
Ultrabay device removal partial Eject switch causes udev event, but no default udev script to handle the event to unmount filesystems in time. ata_piix does handle the removal and insertion of ATA devices.
TPM (security subsystem) unknown Not brave enough to mess around with it. You can try to install the tpm-tools rpm.
Dock removal unknown Most likely not handled either

Tested and Verified on Fedora 12

Information in this section has been tested and verified using Fedora 12.

Installation

Installation is straight forward; you can follow the generic Fedora install instructions.

Configuration

Kernel

It is recommended to edit /boot/grub/grub.conf and add hpet=force to the kernel line. This will activate HPET (High Precision Event Timer), which will allow the CPU to sleep for longer periods and save power.

X Server (ATI RV250)

Basic X server functionality should work out of the box on the ThinkPad LCD (LVDS), but there can be occasional glitches like a horizontal corrupted line, or a font where one letter has a horizontal line through it.

Booting with an external display attached does not work properly. Plymouth Graphical boot works fine, but the moment the X server starts to display GDM the LVDS gets switched off and the picture on the external display is somewhat messed up (on partly re-drawn). Logging in causes the X server to crash and restart.

Attaching an external display after the X server is started (hotplug) works better. After you manually trigger a display scan (for instance running xrandr or pressing the 'Detect Monitors' button in Gnome Display Properties) will cause extended desktop mode to get activated. You can also switch to mirror mode, and use the Fn-F5 key combination to switch between different modes. But each time you take such an action the display will get more and more corrupted.

TV-Out (S-Video) defaults to NTSC and cannot be changed to anything else. No settings are available to adjust the output. Also the picture has a very annoying horizontal 'vibration' making it useless.

In addition the following issues exist

  • unknown physical LVDS display size (0mm x 0mm)
  • nasty LVDS 'flash' when hotplugging an external display and running xrandr
  • external displays do not show the physical size, until you run xrandr for the 2nd time

Desktop Effects

Enabling 'Desktop Effects' (compiz) works. But there is a colour palette problem when using the cube rotation.

Wireless Network

Both the Intel and Atheros wireless should work out of the box.

I did limited tested with Atheros and it seemed to worked.

Intel WiFi was not tested.

ThinkPad keys

ThinkPad keys are handled by a mixture of the thinkpad_acpi, acpi button and acpi dock drivers.

Key Function Handled by Event Works Notes
Fn-F3 lock screen thinkpad_acpi HAL yes
Fn-F4 suspend acpi button HAL yes
Fn-F5 wireless thinkpad_acpi HAL partial Works as a radio kill switch, kills WiFi but not Bluetooth
Fn-F7 videomode thinkpad_acpi HAL partial Cycles through various modes (LVDS+External Extended, LVDS+External Mirror, LVDS only, External only). I get however a warning message that the display switch did not work, though it did work. The biggest problem is that it causes all the fonts to get corrupted.
Fn-F12 hibernate acpi button HAL partial It attempts to hibernate but fails
Fn-Home brightness up - no yes no default OSD. Install the tpb rpm as a workaround.
Fn-End brightness down - no yes no default OSD. Install the tpb rpm as a workaround.
Fn-PgUp thinklight - no yes no default OSD. Install the tpb rpm as a workaround.
Fn-Space zoom thinkpad_acpi HAL no Known Xorg limitation, scheduled to be fixed in Xorg 1.8 with the new XKB2 extension in 2Q 2010
VolumeUp Volume Up - no yes no default OSD. Install the tpb rpm as a workaround.
VolumeDown Volume Down - no yes no default OSD. Install the tpb rpm as a workaround.
Mute Mute - no yes no default OSD. Install the tpb rpm as a workaround.
Access IBM Vendor key thinkpad_acpi HAL partial No default action, but can be associated with gnome-keybinding-properties
NextTab Browser Next tab standard keyboard driver HAL yes
PreviousTab Browser Previous tab standard keyboard driver HAL yes
Power Power button acpi button HAL yes Need to press button for ~1 second to trigger event. Causes a dialog asking you what to do.
Lid Lid button acpi button HAL yes
Dock Dock eject button acpi dock unknown unknown Should cause udev event
Ultrabay Ultrabay eject switch acpi dock udev no Causes udev event, but missing handler. See below.

Ultrabay

Ultrabay eject is not handled properly by default. Since there is no undock udev handler. This udev rule and eject script works for me: How to hotswap Ultrabay devices

IrDA

IrDA is detected, but does not work. Part of the problem is that the default Fedora configuration expects to find the IrDA port at /dev/ttyS2, while it should use /dev/ircomm0 instead. This can be fixed in /etc/sysconfig/irda after which the irda service can be started (# service irda start).

However, even after this communication with other devices fails. irdadump does not show any output when something like a mobile phone with IrDA is sending data.

Untested on Fedora 12

Dock eject was not tested, as I only have a port replicator not a dock.