Install Mandriva 2009.0 on a ThinkPad W500

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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

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
  • 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:

  • 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.

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