Installing OpenSUSE 11.4 on a ThinkPad T410s

Model

Lenovo Thinkpad T410s 2912-W1C, BIOS 6UET61WW (1.41), ECP 6UHT31WW (1.12)

General

This installation instruction describes these parts that do not or do not completely work after my OpenSUSE 11.4 DVD installation using KDE 4 as window manager. If anything does not work as expected, please have a look at the older Installation of OpenSUSE 11.3 on a ThinkPad T410s for possible workarounds that I forgot to mention here.

Network

Wireless WAN

The optional Wireless WAN (WWAN) adapter Qualcomm Gobi 2000 does not work out of the box. The application that uploads the firmware to the WWAN device is not included. There is a OBS home repository that contains the gobi_loader package [1] mentioned in the ThinkWiki article linked above.

Furthermore, there are some openSUSE or KDE bugs that might prevent WWAN modems from working. This seems to happens, if the SIM PIN is set. Apparently this is due to timing problems, since sometimes it just works or auto-connecting helps. E.g., [2] [3] [4] [5] [6]

Hint:

Hitting the above mentioned bugs, you can enter the SIM PIN, e.g. 1234, manually via the AT+CPIN=1234 command and, then, restart the ModemManager by # killall modem-manager. However, since ModemManager seems to send the correct SIM PIN, trying to connect manually and, then, restarting the ModemManager might work, too.

GPS

After loading the firmware, Qualcomm Gobi 2000 provides three USB devices. The last one sends GPS NMEA data after activating it by a special command string. See the ThinkWiki article linked above and its discussion page for more details.

NOTE!

"Auto tracking" has to be enabled in the Options of the Lenovo Thinkvantage GPS Windows application[7]. The Thinkvantage GPS Windows application works with a clean Windows installation in a virtualizer that supports USB. However, it requires the Qualcomm Gobi 2000 Wireless WAN Driver[8] to be installed.

UltraNav

TouchPad

The TouchPad is configured by the KDE system settings. E.g., the mouse clicks triggered by tapping, enabling two-finger scrolling, or disabling the TouchPad when a mouse is connected. However, for enabling for palm detection, some XInput properties must be set:

xinput set-prop "SynPS/2 Synaptics TouchPad" "Synaptics Palm Detection" 1
xinput set-prop "SynPS/2 Synaptics TouchPad" "Synaptics Palm Dimensions" 7 50

TrackPoint

The TrackPoint can be used to perform scrolling, similar to Windows, by holding down the middle button and moving the TrackPoint. Horizontal scrolling is now enabled by default. The Opera browser moves forward and backward in its history instead, see here to fix it or disable horizontal scrolling completely by:

xinput set-prop "TPPS/2 IBM TrackPoint" "Evdev Wheel Emulation Axes" 8 -1 -1 4 5

Power Management

Suspend to RAM works out of the box. However, the KDE battery monitor applet sometimes shows zero battery capacity left after resuming [9].

Integrated Fingerprint Reader

The Integrated Fingerprint Reader now works for me.