Difference between revisions of "Installing OPENSUSE 10.3 on a ThinkPad T61p"
| Line 2: | Line 2: | ||
| Experiences installing OpenSUSE 10.3 x86_64 on a T61 as a dual boot system with Windows Vista. | Experiences installing OpenSUSE 10.3 x86_64 on a T61 as a dual boot system with Windows Vista. | ||
| − | <h1> Partitioning </h1> | + | <h1> Partitioning and boot loader</h1> | 
| OpenSUSE suggested to shrink the windows partition to 60GB which was fine since I spend most of mytime in OpenSUSE. However, the linux partitions needed some changes from what was proposed as a default (everything under an extended partition) to ensure dual boot. After the windows partition, I chose: | OpenSUSE suggested to shrink the windows partition to 60GB which was fine since I spend most of mytime in OpenSUSE. However, the linux partitions needed some changes from what was proposed as a default (everything under an extended partition) to ensure dual boot. After the windows partition, I chose: | ||
| − | < | + | <ul> | 
|   <li>A primary partition of 100MB (Ext3) as /boot (check that "set partition to active" is flagged) to install GRUB </li> |   <li>A primary partition of 100MB (Ext3) as /boot (check that "set partition to active" is flagged) to install GRUB </li> | ||
|   <li>An extended partition for the rest: |   <li>An extended partition for the rest: | ||
| − |       < | + |       <ul> | 
|           <li>Partition for / </li> |           <li>Partition for / </li> | ||
|           <li>Partition for /home </li>   |           <li>Partition for /home </li>   | ||
| − |       </ | + |       </ul> | 
|   </li> |   </li> | ||
| − | </ | + | </ul> | 
| + | |||
| + | For GRUB, I chose to install to /boot and kept the default choices. | ||
| + | |||
| + | <h1>Graphics card</h1> | ||
| + | OpenSUSE 10.3 recognizes the Nvidia Quadro FX 570M card, but this gives a somewhat false feeling of safety. The installation of OpenSUSE completed without a glitch. At the end of the installation, OpenSUSE directs you to the graphical login screenm which resulted in a blank screen. | ||
| + | |||
| + | Pressing ctrl-alt-backspace gets you out of the X11 server and shows a nice prompt. After spending some time searching for the problem I came up with the following: Check in the BIOS that under Display, the display to boot is set to "Thinkpad LCD" (mine was set to Analog(VGA) which tries to use an eternal screen). Afterwards I ran xorgconfig chosing the generic Nvidia driver. | ||
| + | |||
| + | Next I installed the Nvidia driver available from the Nvidia website. | ||
| + | |||
| + | <h1>Sound</h1> | ||
| + | Download the latest alsa packages: alsa, alsa-utils, also-tools. At the time of this writing these were the 1.0.16 versions. Next run alsaconf. | ||
Revision as of 09:44, 16 April 2008
Introduction
Experiences installing OpenSUSE 10.3 x86_64 on a T61 as a dual boot system with Windows Vista.
Partitioning and boot loader
OpenSUSE suggested to shrink the windows partition to 60GB which was fine since I spend most of mytime in OpenSUSE. However, the linux partitions needed some changes from what was proposed as a default (everything under an extended partition) to ensure dual boot. After the windows partition, I chose:
- A primary partition of 100MB (Ext3) as /boot (check that "set partition to active" is flagged) to install GRUB
- An extended partition for the rest:
     - Partition for /
- Partition for /home
 
For GRUB, I chose to install to /boot and kept the default choices.
Graphics card
OpenSUSE 10.3 recognizes the Nvidia Quadro FX 570M card, but this gives a somewhat false feeling of safety. The installation of OpenSUSE completed without a glitch. At the end of the installation, OpenSUSE directs you to the graphical login screenm which resulted in a blank screen.
Pressing ctrl-alt-backspace gets you out of the X11 server and shows a nice prompt. After spending some time searching for the problem I came up with the following: Check in the BIOS that under Display, the display to boot is set to "Thinkpad LCD" (mine was set to Analog(VGA) which tries to use an eternal screen). Afterwards I ran xorgconfig chosing the generic Nvidia driver.
Next I installed the Nvidia driver available from the Nvidia website.
Sound
Download the latest alsa packages: alsa, alsa-utils, also-tools. At the time of this writing these were the 1.0.16 versions. Next run alsaconf.
