Installing OpenSUSE 10.0 on a ThinkPad X41

(This is a braindump of sorts. I'm still trying to find out how to integrate it more nicely into this wiki. Feel free to rip this page apart and put the information into more appropriate sections.)

Installing OpenSuSE 10.0 on your X41 is straightforward. SuSE was my first ever distro back in 2.0.32, so I'm somewhat biased, but IMHO it's a very fine product for desktops, and even more so since they created OpenSuSE. Updating still sucks sometimes, but if you're prepared to nuke your box every once in a while and do a clean reinstall, SuSE really kicks ass in the "Works out of the box" department.

For users of other distros, SuSE uses a patched 2.6.13 kernel, so most of the things I'm describing here should also work on other distros if you're prepared to roll your own kernel, but the amount of integration the SuSE folks did (nice GUI tools, YaST configurator) is what makes it so painless and fun.

Installation

I chose to shrink the existing Windows partition in case I would later have to revert back to Windows in order to find out about hardware peculiarities and maybe get firmware installed, but since things just work under OpenSUSE 10.0, you might as well nuke it.

The SuSE installation process is a no-brainer.

Be sure to check "Mobile Computing" in addition to your usual choice of packages.

The following things Just Work(tm):

• suspend to disk
• mute, volume up and down buttons (but that's probably a hardware thing since it does not affect the ALSA mixer)
• Fn+PgUp switches on the light (again, probably done in hardware)
• ACPId gets events from the lid, power button and Fn+F[1-12], some of which you can assign to suspend, poweroff etc. in the yast power management configurator (I set mine to suspend-to-disk upon lid close)
• Battery and AC status
• Bluetooth enable/disable by Fn+F5
• Bluetooth (haven't tested anything real yet, but I can browse other people's cell phones in the subway :)
• WLAN
• Audio playback/recording.
• 3D graphics acceleration (enabled via YaST->Graphics Card and Monitor). Works, but causes the fan to stay on almost all the time, although at low rpm. I suspect it will severely reduce battery time, so I switched it off again.
• External VGA works in Clone mode after activating Dual Head support in YaST. For some reason, I can't activate Xinerama, it stays greyed out. The external VGA on/off button (Fn+F7) does not do anything.
• UltraBase X4 docking station (I have not tested the UltraBay Slim drive)

These things work, but require extra configuration

• Modem: the integrated modem works using the commercial driver Conexant HSF.

The following things don't work for me yet:

• suspend to RAM. In order to play with it, Google told me I have to add a kernel parameter "acpi_sleep=s3_bios" to /boot/grub/menu.lst (cf. this debian posting (in German)), otherwise my display would stay black after resume. It does work ok when I'm on the text console, but it sometimes crashes the machine when I invoke suspend while in X. People using Ubuntu have reported complete success with suspend-to-RAM, so it *is* possible.
• NumLock. When enabled, the keys that comprise the numerical pad simply stop working. After disabling, the keyboard works normal again. Should be easy with some xmodmap tweaks.
• Dual Head in Xinerama mode.

Not tested yet:

• serious bluetooth usage

Oddities:

• In order to get into the BIOS, you have to press the weird blue "Access IBM" (or whatever they're naming it this week) button, and the choose "BIOS" in IBM's pre-boot environment.

Open Issues:

• How can I disable the WLAN hardware in order to save battery power? For now, I'm setting the WLAN interface to "Radio Off" in the BIOS, but that sucks since you need a reboot in order to use WLAN. Bluetooth can be switched on and off at runtime by using Fn+F5, I'm looking for something similar for the WLAN radio transmitter.
• Try manual X11 config to enable Xinerama.
• Try making use of the special keys.
• Try to understand TrackPoint configuration.

Accessory recommendation

I decided against ordering the IBM DVD+CDRW USB drive, since it's way overpriced IMHO. I bought a Freecom FS-50 instead, it was more than 100 Euros cheaper than the IBM and is also very slim and bus-powered. It will use two USB ports (which is unfortunate, since the X41 only has two, and it can't work with the extra power outlet for the IBM drive, so it's a tad less elegant). Since the two ports are on opposite sides of the notebook, you will have to split one end of the double-USB cable of the FS-50 a little bit.

You can also run the FS-50 with an external power supply, which comes included, in which case you need only one USB port. So far, it has worked for me.

see also

Additional hints about OpenSuSE 10 (although on different hardware) can be found here: Installing SUSE 10 on a ThinkPad TransNote