Installing Ubuntu 7.04 (Feisty Fawn) on a ThinkPad T60

Ubuntu Feisty Fawn is still under development (alpha status) and works fine on a T60 UT-049GE and 2007-72U.

The installation worked without any problems. The new network manager is great as it now supports a useful roaming mode. The system runs stable since 3 days of work. No crash, no severe bugs. I would recommend it for experimental systems lovers. :)

Most of the tips in the Ubuntu 6.10 Edgy Eft Guide, like installing the ATI driver, apply to Feisty as well.

Feisty polishes up Thinkpad support for media buttons, and gives a much more usable machine immediately following installation than Edgy. This is a distribution to watch for Thinkpad users.

ATI Driver, Intel Pro Wireless, and Powernowd Suspend to RAM Fixes

"Out of the box:"

• Suspend to RAM fails during suspend, leaving the moon blinking indefinitely.
• The Ubuntu apt-installed fglrx packages give the driver version 8.33.6, which is one of the versions that supposedly "breaks" suspend to RAM. Resuming from an otherwise successful suspend will cause the machine to resume with a blank screen without the fix below.
• The Intel Pro Wireless 3945 wireless card will often stop working even after a successful suspend, requiring a restart.

Fixing Suspend to RAM

I'm assuming you have the optional Intel Pro Wireless; ignore the line that mentions ipw3945 if you don't have that wireless card.

1. Disable powernowd during suspend

   These two edits will disable the powernowd when you suspend, and re-enable it when you resume. For whatever reason, powernowd causes intermittent suspend problems.

   • Open a terminal and type: sudo gedit /etc/acpi/suspend.d/10-thinkpad-standby-led.sh
   • Add to the bottom of the file: /etc/init.d/powernowd stop
   • Save the file and go back to the terminal.
   • Type: sudo gedit /etc/acpi/resume.d/90-thinkpad-unstandby-led.sh
   • Add to the bottom of the file: /etc/init.d/powernowd start

2. Edit /etc/acpi-support file to unload wireless module during suspend and disable video card warm boot

   These edits will fix the disappearing wireless card and the blank screen on resume problems.

   • Open a terminal and type: sudo gedit /etc/default/acpi-support
   • Find the line MODULES="" and change it to MODULES="ipw3945" so that your wireless card module won't disappear after you resume.
   • Next, find the line POST_VIDEO=true and change it to POST_VIDEO=false to eliminate the blank-screen-resume problem.
   • Save the file.

Tips for those dist-upgrading from Edgy

Repair fglrx to a working state:

If you have an ATI graphics card, now by default Mesa may be active despite your xorg.conf configuration in edgy. Check whether there is hardware acceleration:

$ fglrxinfo

The above should print "OpenGL vendor string: ATI Technologies Inc", among other output. If "Mesa" is present, then you need to reinstall the fglrx driver:

$ sudo apt-get remove xorg-driver-fglrx fglrx-control

$ sudo apt-get install xorg-driver-fglrx fglrx-control

$ sudo depmod -a

Then logout, kill the X server with control+alt+delete, and login again. Now the command 'fglrxinfo' will print the proper vendor string.