Installing Novell SLED 10sp1 on a Thinkpad T61
Contents
Opening Notes:
1) Initial attempts for SLED 10 Non-SP1 had extreme lack of hardware support for the new chipset and devices in the T61.
2) System appears to be stable as a rock, but at this time I am unable to get sound and wi-fi to function.
Hard Disk Controller
When the system boots hit F1 to enter the Bios, select Config->Serial ATA (SATA) and set the SATA Controller mode option to "Compatibility".
Video:
Intel:
I have no idea how the Intel video works as to I have the NVidia NVS140M card.
Nvidia:
Install latest NVidia driver, at time of writing 100.14.11. If installed properly full 3d rendering works, as well as compiz/beryl. Currently getting 40-100fps in WoW.
# sudo sh NVIDIA-Linux-x86-100.14.11-pkg1.run
If the file you download is newer that 100.14.11 make sure you modify the command appropriately
Reboot:
# sudo shutdown -r now
After Rebooting Gnome should start normally
Network:
Integrated 10/100/1000 Intel Supported out of the box, no changes/tweaks necessary
Wireless:
The IBM chip works great - else you must resort to the intel drivers from their site.
FireWire / USB2.0:
IEEE1394 Mini Firewire jack on front of machine seems to mount removable hard drives just fine thru Gnome w/o additional config. Hot-Plug for USB2 storage devices do not seem to work however. If you reboot you can get them to mount.
Audio:
Build alsa-driver from the hg source, the issue is actually a mixer issue, but unfortunately the patch has not found its way downstream yet.
Multi-Card Reader
For SLED with the current kernel you need to patch the sources to support SDHCI or go with the prebuilt backport from opensuse. This support has been merged as of kernel 2.6.17, so when SLES/SLED goes up a version in kernel you won't need to worry about this any more.
Follow the directions on the SDHCI Backport page.
References
- This guide is listed at the TuxMobil Linux laptop and notebook installation guides survey (IBM/Lenovo).
