Installing OpenSuSE 10.1 on a ThinkPad X41 Tablet
Success Chart
| Item | Working | Notes | |
| Installation | Network Installation | Yes | |
| USB Installation | Yes (DVD) | ||
| Display | Laptop Screen | Yes | X.org i810 driver |
| CRT / Projector | Yes | ||
| Screen Rotation | not working yet | ||
| Stylus | Yes | wacom serial driver. | |
| Power Management | Software Suspend (hibernate) | not tested | Software Suspend 2 |
| Suspend to Memory (ACPI sleep) | not tested | Software Suspend 2 | |
| Audio | Yes | ALSA intel8x0 driver | |
| Wireless | 802.11b/g | Yes | |
| Bluetooth | Yes | ||
| Extra Buttons | Keyboard Section | not working yet | ibm-acpi driver |
| Tablet buttons | not working yet | setkeycodes | |
| Middle Mouse button | Yes | ||
| Fingerprint Scanner | not working yet | bioapi | |
| Harddisk Active Protection | not tested | kernel 2.6.16, hdapsd | |
Introduction
As you will realise quickly, I've taken the installation tipps from the (by the way) very good site Installation of Fedora Core 5 on a ThinkPad X41 Tablet. I've been a windows user for quite a long time so I decided to go with OpenSuSE because I've already had contact with this distro some years ago and found it very good, looking at usability, settings, installation, etc. Many things of your Thinkpad will work out of the box.Later in this article I'd like to show some software I'm currently using and that I find very handy on a Tablet.
Installation
Installing OpenSuSE 10.1 is just as simple as with every other Linux distro. Adjust your local settings and choose your packages (see Helpful software for detailed information). After a rebbot you're ready to run with the chameleon;-)
Personally, I logged on as user although you have to do some administration work to do, but the good graphical user interfaces like YAST or SAX make it easy.
Graphics/Stylus
For the graphics setup you can either edit your preferences the "Linux"-way or you go with the "Windows"-method. I've chosen the second one and so made my preferences with SAX2 that you should find in System > Configuration > SaX2.
Change the settings of the monitor, like resoltuion or color depth like you want but make sure you TEST your settings before SAVING them.
To enable the stylus simply go to the submenu "Touchscreen" and activate it. Choose "Wacom" and then "PenabledTablet". Save your settings and restart your computer and we're done here;-)
For information about enabling the stylus by editing the xorg.conf go to Installation of Fedora Core 5 on a ThinkPad X41 Tablet.
Switching monitors with the FN-F7 combination should work out of the box.
Screen rotation
Definitly a feature that would come in handy for use with a tablet. Unfortunately I'm having trouble updating my xserver for some strange reason (I used the way described in Installation of Fedora Core 5 on a ThinkPad X41 Tablet). I'm getting the warning that a lot of dependences are missing... So neither the rotate script nor the xrandr order work (at the moment, because I'm very interessted in this feature so I want it to work;-)).
