Install Mandriva 2009.0 on a ThinkPad W500

W500

NOTE!

The below issues have been fixed in later GNU/Linux versions, but they have been left in case someone decides to try installing Mandriva 2009.0 for some reason.

BIOS Issues

• Switchable Graphics

GNU/Linux with X.Org previously lacked the support for on-the-fly switching of GPUs. It not only did not support switching, you also had to explicitly turn off switching in BIOS. Go to Config->Display->Graphics Device and DISABLE OS detection of switchable graphics.

If you don't disable OS detection, Linux will enumerate two graphic adapters (see `lspci` output) and X.Org will be confused as to which one to use, leading to random weird side effects such as hangs and worse.

• AHCI

I also had to turn off AHCI in Config->SATA and used Compatibility Mode instead, otherwise the kernel would not boot occasionally.

• Intel Virtualization

The T9400 and up CPUs also support advanced Intel Virtualization technologies. Just don't turn on VT-d (disk I/O virtualization) in BIOS, otherwise WLAN any a couple of other things will not work and even freeze your system, see https://qa.mandriva.com/show_bug.cgi?id=44711

Things not working/issues

As I've found most of the components are just working out of the box, I will only list the issues I have found so far:

• booting with "vga=788" not working
  • the Mandriva installer added the "vga=788" parameter to my Linux boot line. That prevented the laptop from booting quite frequently, not always though. Still to be investigated, but removing "vga=788" from the kernel boot line solved the issue for now.
• Active Protection System
  • HD-APS is not working for me, probably due to a BIOS bug, see http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=12221
    • some kind of workaround is to add pnpacpi=off to the kernel boot line, but that turns off ACPI, which is no real option
• Suspend/Resume
  • while suspending works fine, resuming always ended with a blank screen, workaround below
• muted audio not shown in alsamixer
  • when you use the built in "mute audio" button on the ThinkPad keyboard, the EC does a hardware mute without sending a XF86AudioMute event, so the mute state will not show in any audio mixer. So if you don't hear a sound, press the "mute audio" or "volume up" button to unmute :-)
• 3D and radeonhd
  • the radeonhd driver did not support 3D acceleration
• 2D and fglrx
  • see below

Suspend/Resume problem

If resuming just leaves you with a blank black display, try the following:

 echo "ADD_PARAMETERS='--quirk-vbe-post'" > /etc/pm/config.d/w500_vbe_post

Display / Xorg

The laptop comes with Switchable Graphics, so you can choose on your own which GPU to use:

• intel
  • consumes the least energy
  • DVI connector on the ThinkPad Advanced Mini Dock ist not recognoized
  • a static dual head configuration gives weird background garbage when one of the statically configured monitors is not connected, see http://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=19412

• radeonhd
  • consumes the most energy
  • lack of 3D support

• fglrx
  • changing runlevel to 3 (init 3) leaves you with X eating 100% CPU
  • huge performance issues when switching between virtual desktops, switching can take a couple of seconds with 100% CPU again

So if battery life and 3D are important for you, you should probably use the intel driver, but I am fine with the radeonhd driver for now. And fglrx is nothing but proprietary nonsense, IMHO ... for a commercial driver this is ridiculous.