Talk:Installing Ubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy Gibbon) on a ThinkPad T61

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Revision as of 16:30, 31 August 2007 by Darrena (Talk | contribs)
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We should really just rename/move the old article which updates all the links etc.... This is especially helpfull since nobody is going to care about Tribe4/5/6 when the final is released!  ;-) Though it looks like the Wiki is smart enough to handle it all when I redirected the Tribe 4 page...

Noting things that work

Darren, I actually went through and took out all the notes for things that "just worked" (e.g. the Intel Video). It seems more logical to just list the problems. Gutsy on the T61 is coming together, and the page would be huge if we listed everything that worked.


Mike, I think that people would find it helpful if we note what works out of the box. If someone is looking at a T61 and sees a large number of "Just works" it will help them decide if the items they need to work are there. In a perfect world every item on this wiki would be "Just works!"  ;) --Darrena 21:59, 26 August 2007 (UTC)

Renaming vs Redirecting

I agree with you about the renaming vs redirecting though. When you search for 'Ubuntu T61' in Google, the links to this page are all screwy because of the redirects. This is my first time contributing to a wiki though, so I didn't know what I was doing.

The ALSA "hard" fix

Anyone want to test the latest incarnation of the ALSA "hard" fix to see if there are any problems? It should be easier than the "easy" fix now -- just open a terminal, copy-n-paste the commands as one big bunch, reboot, and you have sound. Plus, I don't think the Python hack gives you working headphones or microphone.

If nobody has problems with the "hard" fix, the "easy" fix should be removed. It's a nasty hack ;-)

The REAL "easy" fix for ALSA

I added an REAL easy fix from the Bug report from Tim Gardner with Canonical. I am archiving the other solutions here in case it doesn't work for everyone.


It doesn't work for anyone who is using x86_64, which should be pretty much anyone using this laptop. (Why would anyone install i386 on this machine?)

I'm restoring the original instructions, as well as the instructions on how to map the Thinkpad keys and volume applet to the speaker.


The update is now in the repo's and includes a fix for X64 as well, as for why someone would run i386 on this machine vs x86_64 I would in turn wonder why anyone would bother with x86_64 unless they have more than 4 gigs of RAM. --Darrena 14:59, 30 August 2007 (UTC)


Why x86_64? Certain applications benefit from it, and some even require it. The biggie for me is virtualization via kvm: You can't emulate an x86_64 guest without running an x86_64 host. (I do a lot of OS testing).

There's also less cruft in the x86_64 kernel; a lot of legacy i386 junk was discarded. Granted this shouldn't affect end users one way or the other, but it pleases my aesthetic sensibilities. ;-)

Besides, x86_64 is the future. Better for the community to help debug the code of tomorrow rather than the code of yesterday.


To finish that last thought: You might not need x86_64 for the applications you're interested in today, but you never know what you might find yourself wanting to run next year (e.g. testing an x86_64 OS using kvm). x86_64 does everything i386 does and more, so it's the more future-proof choice. Why install i386 and place arbitrary restrictions on what you can do with your machine in the future (without requiring a complete OS reinstall)? Doesn't make any sense.


This has gone completely off topic but the amd64 modules are in the repo's now as well so the more complicated solutions should not be necessary. --Darrena 15:30, 31 August 2007 (UTC)