Installing Ubuntu 7.04 on a ThinkPad T43

Installation Log of Ubuntu 6.06 on a T43

Overview

Worked right out of the box

• 1400*1050 resolution
• Battery Management
• Ultra Nav (Trackpoint and synaptic touchpad)
• WLAN (Atheros, IBM 11a/b/g Wireless LAN Mini PCI Adapter II)
• Hibernate and Standby
• Fn keys (switch between monitors untested)
• Audio Keys
• ThinkLight
• ATI 3D Acceleration (Mobility Radeon X300)
• AIGLX / Compiz

Was easy

• Fingerprint reader
• AIGLX / Beryl
• middle key of Ultra Nav (Trackpoint) for scrolling
• Active Protection System (acceleration sensor)

Untested

• Forward/Backward keys, Access IBM Key
• Bluetooth (light indicates working)
• Modem
• IrDA
• TV out, VGA out
• Active Protection System (hard disk parking needs kernel recompile)

Installation

I just installed Feisty using the graphical installer.

ATTENTION!

Installing grub to the MBR may hurt your Rescue 'n' Recovery Partition!

If you want to keep you Rescue 'n' Recovery Partition, read this blog entry.

Whatever you do, you should care about Backups etc. yourself. A starting point is given in Installing Ubuntu 6.10 on a ThinkPad T43#Installation

The only non-free driver that was activated was atheros for wifi access. For graphics the free ati/radeon driver was activated, the restricted ati alternative fglrx was installed but not enabled. I did not try it.

Configuration

3D Acceleration and Compiz

3D Acceleration and Compiz worked out of the box for me. Just activate it in the system menu under desktop effects. I had some minor issues, but I blame the beta status for that. To test if 3D Acceleration it works, if you have problems, type

$ glxinfo | grep rendering

The answer should be: "direct rendering: Yes". If it says "No", you don't have 3D acceleration.

3D Acceleration Beryl

I just installed following packages and started beryl-manager. Everything just works out of the box. If you enable compiz effect in the gnome menu you can even swith between beryl, compiz and metacity (no effects) just using the beryl-manager applet.

sudo  apt-get install beryl beryl-core beryl-manager beryl-plugins beryl-plugins-data beryl-settings beryl-settings-bindings

Active Protection System

TODO

The T43 has a great system to protect your hard disk, the Active Protection System APS. HDAPS and How to protect the harddisk through APS describe how you can use it.

Feisty comes with with the accelerometer installed but not activated. To test it activate the kernel module and use a neat program you find in hdaps-utils

To activate it, type:

# sudo su
$ echo "hdaps" >> /etc/modules
$ exit
# sudo modprobe hdaps

For a nice 3D show type:

# sudo apt-get install hdaps-utils
# hdaps-gl

Now you can evaluate acceleration of your Laptop. Your hard disk unfortunately still is not protected. To achive this, try How to protect the harddisk through APS or Installing_Ubuntu_6.06_on_a_ThinkPad_T43#Active_Protection_System or Howto for edgy.

Track Point Middle Key Scrolling

In my case the track point worked out of the box, but the middle mouse button for scrolling did not. How to configure the TrackPoint explains how to solve this. The steps you need to follow are in section "Using the X server (kernel 2.6.11+)". However you don't need to follow the steps in "EmulateWheelTimeout temporarily broken (-> fix for Ubuntu Dapper)" as this is fixed already if you have all your packages up-to-date.

Follow the instructions in the sections "Configure firefox for using trackpoint horizontal scrolling" and "Configure Opera for using trackpoint horizontal scrolling" as well, if you are using one of the two browsers.

Fingerprint Reader

How to enable the fingerprint reader has a good explanation for a very complicated way of activating your fingerprint reader using a restricted driver.

An alternative to this is available at [1]: How to enable the fingerprint reader with ThinkFinger provides more details.

Spezial keys

If the following standard settings are not enough for you, you'll find more info here: How to get special keys to work

Access IBM to start application

The Access IBM works out of the box. Just go to your shortcut configuration dialog and choose what actionyou want to connect with pressing this button, e.g. opening your home folder/terminal, switching o fullscreen, opening help...

CAPS to substitute Win/Super

For using your CAPS key as a replacement for the lacking Win/Super key, add following to your ~/.Xmodmap

! No Caps Lock
clear lock
! Caps Lock as Win key
add mod4 = Caps_Lock

To avoid restarting X type $ xmodmap ~/.Xmodmap

Forward/Backward in browsers

Firefox

For using the Forward/Backward Keys in your browser add also these lines to your ~/.Xmodmap as at least Firefox gets confused with their original setting as XF86Back/XF86Forward.

! back and forward browser keys
keycode 234 = F19
keycode 233 = F20

For Firefox add these lines to your /usr/share/firefox/chrome/browser/content/browser/browser.xul

<key id="goBackKb3" keycode="VK_F19" command="Browser:Back" />
<key id="goForwardKb3" keycode="VK_F20" command="Browser:Forward" />

directly after these lines:

<key id="goBackKb"  keycode="VK_LEFT" command="Browser:Back" modifiers="alt"/>
<key id="goForwardKb"  keycode="VK_RIGHT" command="Browser:Forward" modifiers="alt"/>

Opera

For Opera add these pairs in Tool->Preferences->Advanced->Shortcuts->Keyboard setup->Edit->Browser Window->New

• If you did the Firefox Xmodmap entry: F20-Forward, F19-Back
• If you didn't add the lines: XF86Forward-Forward, XF86Back-Back

Konqueror

In Konqueror it's working out of the box. But if you did the Xmodmap settings you have to adjust Konqueror, too. Just go to Settings->Configure Shortcuts, look for Back and Forward and set the alternative shortcut in the custom dialog by pressing the respective key. If you are using KDE you'll be probable prefering to do that in the Configuration Center to make these changes visible to all KDE Apps.

IrDA

Find information here: How to make use of IrDA

VGA out

I didn't try it, but it looks easy: How to enable VGA out

References

• Dapper Drake on T42

Hope this helped :-) tec