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.

Display

Graphics

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. Switching monitors with the FN-F7 combination should work out of the box.

Stylus

To enable the stylus simply go to the submenu "Touchscreen" in SAX2 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.

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;-)).

Power Management

It sounds weird, but I actually don't care about Power Management because I just shut down my Laptop or look for the next power supply, but I'm sure that some may be interested in this so once again I recommend you to visit the Fedora Core site.

Audio

This feature works out of the box with no problems or any differences to Windows. but I havent suceeded controlling the volume with the Thinkpad Buttons

Wireless

No great thing there, both, wlan and bluetooth work properly and without any problems. Make sure you install the NetworkManager if you go with GNOME it's very useful.

Extra buttons

NOTE!

If you haven't installed "tpb" with OpenSuSE, please install it now. You will need it for this chapter.

Middle Mouse button

You can activate the middle mouse button using SAX2 again. Enter your administration password and go to the submenu "mouse". There activate the option "Emulate Mouse Wheel" and change the number besides to "2". Restart your Laptop and it works.

NOTE!

Enabling the middle mouse button under Linux gives you more freedom than under Windows because the use of scrolling isn't anymore limited. You can scroll in every application that allows scrolling (exception: horizontal scrolling -> specific settings)

As I use Opera I also changed my Opera settings according to How to configure the TrackPoint

NOTE!

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Fingerprint reader

I loved this one under Windows. It always gives this "magic"-effect when everyone types his password and you just swipe your finger, but I'm very unhappy not to get this running. I'm having problems with the BioApi because OpenSuSE 10.1 uses a newer GCC and the hint on the site How to enable the fingerprint reader but it didn't work

Harddisk Active Protection

I'm not interested in this feature because I don't treat my laptop like a cocktail (shaken not stired;-))