Installing Ubuntu 7.04 Feisty Fawn on a ThinkPad T60p

From ThinkWiki
Revision as of 13:36, 2 August 2007 by Trampas (Talk | contribs) (T60p Hardware setups)
Jump to: navigation, search

Installing Unbuntu Feisty Fawn

THIS IS A DRAFT WRITTEN FROM MEMORY AND HAVE NOT BEEN VERIFIED YET.

The long, but easy way

  • Install earlier version of Ubuntu (6.06/6.10) and dist-upgrade. If you start from 6.06 you will have to upgrade to 6.10, and then upgrade to 7.04.

The fast way

  • Be sure to have a *wired* network connection ready (wifi will not work yet)
  • Download a ubuntu 7.04 feisty fawn image from ubuntu.com
  • Boot from the CD, and wait ... the installation will break down when attempting to start the graphical part of the installation (X).

The problem is, that the ATI driver required for X is not working. Luckily it is already in the ubuntu repos, so we just install it temporarily (in RAM), so we can get on with the installation. When you have a console prompt, do a:

 apt-get update
 apt-get install xorg-driver-fglrx fglrx-control
 depmod -a 

then restart X with:

 /etc/init.d/gdm restart

With any luck X should launch, so you can click on the desktop icon and continue the installation.

If X doesn't launch, try changing the Driver in /etc/X11/xorg.conf from "vesa" to "fglrx", then restart X.

T60p Hardware setups

THIS IS A DRAFT WRITTEN FROM MEMORY AND HAVE NOT BEEN VERIFIED YET.

  • The t60p uses an Atheros network device with this signature "Atheros Communications, Inc. Unknown device 0024 (rev 01)". It will work with any Madwifi driver version later than subversion revision 2360. This means that the madwifi included in Feisty Fawn will *NOT* work. Either get a newer release (when available), or build from SVN.
  • The fans are too noisy and can be throttled down by using the ACPI fan control script. Increase the min and max to 70, 100 on the GPU. This will lower the fan speed to <3000 for normal usage (XGL/Compiz fusion setup).
  • You should install a 'generic' kernel i favor of the i386 to gain better performance of the dual core, and better suspend.
  • Compiz fusion (previously compiz and beryl) will run smoothly of this hardware, using ATI's fglrx and XGL. Use trevinos repository http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=481314

NOTE July 2007 I tried the instructions for Compiz and to date was unable to get it working on the T60p, if anyone has some better instructions please update them here.

  • You can tweak the 'fn' keys to work well too.