Installing Ubuntu 10.10 on a ThinkPad T510

Success Chart - Out of the box experience

I had posted a howto for 10.04. This howto is similar and i changed somethings to make the istallation easier!

Item		Working	Notes
Installation	Local CD/DVD install	yes
	Network Installation	unknown
	USB Installation	yes
Display	Laptop Screen (15.6" TFT display with 1920x1080(FHD) or 1600x900(HD+))	yes	See notes below
	VGA	yes
Power Management	Software Suspend (hibernate)	yes
	Suspend to Memory (ACPI sleep)	yes
Audio		yes
Wireless	WiFi - ThinkPad 11b/g/n Wireless LAN Mini-PCI Express Adapter II	yes
	Bluetooth	yes	It did detect my HTC legend and i transferred some files from it.
Input	Keyboard	yes
	(TrackPoint / Touchpad combo)	yes
	Extra keys	partial	see ThinkPad Extra keys section below
	Fingerprint	yes	See notes below
Ports	Ethernet	yes
	Modem	unknown
	ExpressCard_slot	unknown
	USB	yes
	Firewire_Port	unknown
5-in-1 MultiCard Reader		yes	2GB SanDisk Ultra II SD flash card automatically detected.
2.0MP webcamera		yes	Tested with Skype. Works perfectly.
Harddisk Active Protection		yes	See notes below
TPM (security subsystem)		unknown
Dock removal		unknown

Tested and Verified on ubuntu 10.10

Information in this section has been tested and verified using ubuntu 10.10.

Installation

Installation is very easy and a breeze. The system boots really fast. Even faster then windows. I was like WOW!!! However as the default installation came with windows and drive was not partitioned, i had to manually resize the partitions. I used the following guide to partition the HDD

ATTENTION!

Be careful! Make sure you have make your recovery disks and Boot disk first prior to partitioning. These disks are made in windows itself. In my case i had 2 recovery DVD's and 1 boot cd. Well this time i deleted all partitions. Why would i use windows when i can install it using virtualbox

Updating

I recommend you update your system after installation to get all the bugs sorted out

Configuration

Kernel

..

Issues

NVIDIA

Update the driver by selecting System-->Administration-->Hardware drivers. You will be prompted if you want to upgrade to the relevant driver, Accept and restart. There is a bug in ubuntu in that the startup and shutdown logos get blurred. Beats me why they have not sorted it out yet but its not "important" as the logo only comes up when you start or shut down the system.

Backlight controls are not functional while running nVidia driver 195. They can be controlled by either changing brightness in a VT or adding the following to the "Devices" section of /etc/X11/xorg.conf

   Option "RegistryDwords" "EnableBrightnessControl=1"

Reboot and the keys now work

WiFi

Works smoothly.

# sudo aptitude upgrade

Then reboot and the wifi card works flawlessly.

FingerPrint Reader

There are two possibilities:

Get the proprietary software from the Upek page (32bit only)
or try the Fingerprint GUI project which uses upeksonly driver from the fprint project

Trackpoint

You can adjust the sensitivity and speed by running this script at boot

make a new config file nano /etc/init/trackpoint.conf

description "Trackpoint settings"
env TPDIR=/sys/devices/platform/i8042/serio1/serio2
start on virtual-filesystems
script

  while [ ! -f $TPDIR/sensitivity ]; do
    sleep 2
  done

  echo -n 200 > $TPDIR/sensitivity    // values from 0 to 250 for sensitivity
  echo -n 150 > $TPDIR/speed          // values from 0 to 250 for speed
  echo -n 0 > $TPDIR/press_to_select  // 1 or 0 to turn on/off press to select

end script

from ubuntuusers

For some reason the settings get lost after hibernate or standby and you need to reboot to get this working again.

Setup ThinkVantage ActiveProtection

$ sudo cp /etc/modules /etc/modules_backup

$ sudo apt-get -y install tp-smapi-dkms hdapsd

$ sudo modprobe tp-smapi

$ sudo /etc/init.d/hdapsd restart

You can set the activeprotection sensivity:

cd /etc/default/
gedit hdapsd

# sensitivity
SENSITIVITY=25

Now you can try, if the modules are loaded yet. Do so with

lsmod | grep hdaps

If the installation of hdapsd succeeded, you can test it by typing this into your terminal:

sudo hdapsd -d sda -s 15 -a -v -y 

If you suddenly move your laptop the output will change! (stop it with pressing Ctr + C)

Reboot. Now HDAPS should work. If you want to have a HDAPS icon in your notification area like in Windows, simply install AVN

$ sudo apt-get -y install avant-window-navigator awn-applets-python-core

Now you can run the avn

Click Applications > Accessories > Avant Window Navigator

to make the ThinkHDAPS icon appear in the navigator, right click on the navigator bar and select "Dock Preferences"

Go to applets and under the catefory "All" browse down and select the applet named ThinkHDAPS

A new applet should appear on the dock. The applet changes when you shake your laptop:)

Setup Think Sensors

The gnome sensors applets allow you to monitor all important temperatures, including battery, hdd, cpu and gpu and system fan

$ sudo apt-get -y install sensors-applet Add the hardware sensor monitor to the panel and then configure it. You can add the sensors eighter in the gnome panel or Avant Window Manager. Note: I had to reboot the system first so that the applet appeared in gnome panel.

1. libsensors: temp2 to 8 do not work for me. I have no idea if they are supposed to work or not.
2. hddtemp: /dev/sda is the sensor of the harddisk. It is important to keep the harddisk always below 45°, normally under 40°.

ThinkPad Extra keys

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

Key	Function	Handled by	Event	Works	Notes
FnF2	Lock the computer	-	unknown	yes
FnF3	Select Power Plan	-	unknown	yes
FnF4	Put Computer to sleep/standby mode	-	unknown	yes
FnF5	wireless	-	unknown	yes	Switches the bluetooth off
FnF6	Change camera/audio settings	-	unknown	yes
FnF7	Switch Display output location	-	unknown	yes
FnF8	Change ultranav device settings	-	unknown	yes
FnF12	Put computer in hibernation mode	-	unknown	unknown
FnHome	brightness up	-	unknown	yes
FnEnd	brightness down	-	unknown	yes
FnPgUp	thinklight	-	unknown	yes
FnSpace	zoom	-	unknown	unknown
FnPrtSc	Have the same function as the SysRq key.	-	unknown	unknown
FnScrLk	Enable or disable the numeric keypad.	-	unknown	yes
FnPause	Have the same function as the Break key.	-	unknown	unknown
ThinkVantage	Vendor key	-	unknown	unknown
VolumeUp	Volume Up	-	unknown	yes
VolumeDown	Volume Down	-	unknown	yes
VolumeMute	Volume Mute	-	unknown	yes
MicMute	Microphone Mute	-	unknown	no
NextTab	Browser Next tab	-	unknown	yes
PreviousTab	Browser Previous tab	-	unknown	yes
Power	Power button	-	unknown	yes
Lid	Lid button	-	unknown	yes