Installing Fedora 11 on a ThinkPad X22

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Revision as of 11:24, 6 May 2009 by Tonko (Talk | contribs) (Success Chart)
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NOTE!
This is based on the pre-release version of Fedora 11, but should give a good indication of what to expect of the final release

Success Chart

Item Working Notes
Installation Local CD/DVD install yes
Network Installation yes
USB Installation yes
Display Laptop Screen yes Occasional corruption may occur.
VGA no currently broken.
Power Management Software Suspend (hibernate) no When entering hibernation the display will get corrupted (vertical lines), and the system hangs.
Suspend to Memory (ACPI sleep) no Enters suspend, but moon LED does not go on. On resume the display is corrupted (vertical lines), and the system hangs (ssh fails)
Audio yes
Extra Buttons Keyboard Section partial See ThinkPad keys section below
Ports Ethernet yes
Modem no Requires closed-source driver
Serial unknown (should work) Requires UltraBase X2
IrDA no Device is detected, but device files are not created
PS/2 Keyboard/Mouse unknown (should work) Requires UltraBase X2
Parallel unknown (should work) Requires UltraBase X2
USB yes
PCMCIA/Cardbus yes
Compact Flash unknown (should work)
Ultrabay device hotswap 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.

Tested and Verified on Fedora 11

Information in this section has been tested and verified using Fedora 11.

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

Basic X server functionality should work out of the box on the ThinkPad LCD (LVDS). Occasional screen corruption can occur.

Fedora 11 uses KMS (Kernel Mode Setting) by default, and this causes problems for now with external displays. Activating mirror mode with an external VGA display has no effect on the external display (no signal). Activating extended desktop, or booting with an external VGA display attached, causes severe corruption on the ThinkPad LCD, while again the VGA display gets no signal.

On the up side, with KMS the maximum virtual display size is now 4096x4096 (max 2048x2048 without KMS), which should allow extended desktop once the issues with external display support are sorted.

Desktop Effects

Enabling 'Desktop Effects' (compiz) cause the Xserver to restart

ThinkPad keys

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

NOTE!
Due to Xorg limitations, some keys that cause HAL events work with Xorg (Access IBM and Fn-F7) and others do not. This is a known limitation that should be fixed with the next major Xorg (v1.7) release.
Key Function Handled by HAL event Works Notes
Fn-F3 lock screen thinkpad_acpi yes yes
Fn-F4 suspend acpi button yes partial The key event works, but suspend itself is broken
Fn-F7 videomode - no no
Fn-F12 hibernate acpi button yes partial does the same as Fn-F4 (suspend), not hibernate. Both suspend and hibernate itself are broken.
Fn-Home brightness up - no yes changing thinkpad_acpi hotkey_mask, causes HAL events. But sysfs backlight brightness value does not change, so OSD is wrong.
Fn-End brightness down - no yes changing thinkpad_acpi hotkey_mask, causes HAL events. But sysfs backlight brightness value does not change, so OSD is wrong.
Fn-PgUp thinklight - no yes changing thinkpad_acpi hotkey_mask, causes HAL events. No OSD in any case.
VolumeUp Volume Up - no yes changing thinkpad_acpi hotkey_mask, causes HAL events. But OSD is wrong
VolumeDown Volume Down - no yes changing thinkpad_acpi hotkey_mask, causes HAL events. But OSD is wrong
Mute Mute - no yes changing thinkpad_acpi hotkey_mask, causes HAL events and OSD. works as a on/off toggle
ThinkPad Vendor key thinkpad_acpi yes partial No default action, but can be associated with gnome-keybinding-properties
Power Power button acpi button yes yes Need to press button for ~1 second to trigger event
Lid Lid button acpi button yes yes
Ultrabay Ultrabay eject switch - no no

Untested on Fedora 11