Installing openSUSE 11.1 on a ThinkPad T500

T500

Model specifics

Model 2242 with

• P8400
• Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 4500MHD
• WSXGA+ display
• 8G RAM
• 250G 5400rpm hard disk
• Serial Ultrabay Slim DVD Multi III Drive (8x Dual Layer)
• Intel WiFi Link 5100/5300 WLAN controller
• ExpressCard/54 slot
• Bluetooth
• OpenSUSE 11.1 x86_64
• Gnome
  • Tried KDE first, but it was too flaky. Installed OK the first time, but then I hosed it up trying to get DVDs to work. Reinstalled from scratch and had invisible icons in the system tray. Reinstalled from scratch again and volume controls didn't work on sound....

Audio

• Works out of the box.
• Volume up and down work. Mute works but only mutes the speakers, not the headphones. OSD shows volume level.

Video

• Works out of the box

Networking

• Wired and wireless work out of the box.

Keyboard

• Fn+ combinations:
  • F2 (lock) works (locks X).
  • F3 (battery) doesn't do anything.
  • F4 (suspend) works.
  • F5 (toggle Bluetooth power) works
  • F7 (toggle external monitor) causes the screen to blink but doesn't do anything. (I don't have an external monitor attached, which might possibly have something to do with it.)
  • F8 (toggle trackpoint/touchpad) doesn't do anything. (I have the touchpad disabled in the BIOS.)
  • F9 (not sure what that's supposed to be) doesn't do anything. (Actually, I think that might have something to do with docking/undocking, and I haven't tried the dock yet.)
  • F12 (hibernate) works.
  • PrtSc (SysRq) doesn't do anything.
  • ScrLk (NumLk) works. Embedded numeric keypad works as expected when NumLk is on.
  • Pause (Break) doesn't do anything.
  • Home (increase LCD brightness) and End (decrease LCD brightness) work. OSD shows brightness level.
  • PgUp (ThinkLight) works.
  • Spacebar (magnify) doesn't do anything.
  • Cursor keys (Previous Track/Stop/Play-Pause/Next Track) work, at least while Banshee is running.

DVD

• DVD didn't have a region code set; starting xine in a console got various errors from libdvdread and a popup saying the DVD couldn't be read (corrupt or encrypted), even with libdvdcss from Videolan and replacments for xine/libxine1/etc. from Packman. Got regionset and set the region to 1. Restarted X and xine works now.

Power management

• Works out of the box.

Modem

• Doesn't work. Free version of Linuxant driver installation builds the alsa-driver-linuxant package (or uses a pre-built one) once gcc and kernel-sources are installed, but fails to build the hsfmodem package. Complains that something's missing but doesn't say what. Linuxant tech support thinks it should work with those packages installed.

Samsung SCX-4100 Multifunction

• Works after installing the Samsung driver. The install will add the current user to group lp, but that won't take effect unless you logoff. If you don't, the Samsung control panel won't find the scanner unless you run it as root or make it suid root.