I have installed Gutsy on my new X61s and have been working on getting everything to function. Im sure some of this will apply to other models.

Things that work: Graphics (full 3d support), a number of the hotkeys, wifi, screen brightness adjustment, sound/volume.

I have been able to get CPU scaling, tap to click (with the trackpoint), and middle mouse button scroll to all work fine. I am still working on getting suspend/hibernate/sleep to work, and hotkeys working (although a surprising number work right away).

If anyone has anything related to using Gutsy to ask/share/talk about that would be great.

I have been working on a list of how to get some things working (with intent to post in the Ubuntu forums) and I hope it might be of use to someone here.

1. Install ondemand frequencey governor, which modulates your CPU frequency (saving battery and reducing heat).



Add the frequency monitor to your panel (right click your panel>add to panel>system and hardware>CPU frequency scaling monitor.

credit: mbsullivan

2. Enable CPU frequency scaling. Doing this will give you the option to scale your CPU yourself (ondemand will modulate your CPU by default if you dont change it manually).



Answer "Yes" to the question regarding setting the suid of thecpufreq-selector executable. Now, by left-clicking on the CPU FrequencyMonitor Applet, you can choose the frequency of your processor.

credit: http://ubuntu.wordpress.com/2005/11/04/ ... y-scaling/

3. Getting tap to click to work with a trackpoint.



In order to make sure it workes every time you reboot:



And add the following to the end of /etc/sysfs.conf:



Reboot, if tap to click does not remain working then follow these steps:



Add the following line before "exit 0"




credit: mbsullivan, insaneinside

4. Getting middle mouse button scroll to work.

Replace the mouse entry of your /etc/X11/xorg.conf with the following (its a good idea to back up your xorg.conf before making any changes):



Now reboot, and if you hold down your third mouse button, you should be able to scroll up and down using the trackpoint.

credit: mbsullivan

Note: This will also cause you to page back and fourth (at least within Firefox) when any pressure is put left or right. You can prevent this by changing some values in about:config in Firefox.

enter about:config into the address bar. Then change the values of the following to these:

mousewheel.horizscroll.withnokey.action = 0;
mousewheel.horizscroll.withnokey.numlines = 1;

credit: pibach

5. Enabling Compiz Fusion with Intel X3100 graphics

Add this line:



To the end of this file:



Note: The Intel X3100 graphics are blacklisted because video playback does not work. I use compiz occasionally on my X61s and most everything works (that comes with the compiz settings manager) although the rain effect will lock up things.

You will have to have the compiz settings manager installed (search the synaptic package manager) to get the extra compiz options, it will add a new custom option to your appearance settings.

I just tried Kubuntu 7.10 on my R61. I had to use the safe video mode to boot to the live cd and it ran using Vesa @ 1400x900, Surprising! After the install it was very simple to install the nvidia drivers for my NVS 140M chipset. This is the first distro I have found that will work with the intel 4965AGN and the HD audio right out of the box. Bluetooth is not working yet but I'm only 1 hour into this at this point.
It looks like 7.10 is going to be a very good release for us with newer hardware.

I tried Opensuse 10.3 last week and i spent all day trying to get the nvidia driver and the 4965AGN card to work. I never got it but maybe that is just me. I'm just a Debian kind of guy.

The only things that have stood in my way of getting bluetooth to work is the interface for controlling it. Once I stumbled my way through badly designed UI I was able to get my mouse to be recognized and usable.

Have you (or anyone else) been able to get desktop effects working? I have seen compiz run on an X61 so it seems understandable that desktop effects should be able to run.

I have also been having some issues with getting the onboard mic to work, when I mess with some settings I get a really loud beep out of the speaker (freaked out some people at a coffee shop when I was messing with settings). I am going to try different ALSA drivers (on a tip from a friend) to see if that fixes anything.

about the scaling, is there any way to get it to load up on restarts? I notice I have to run the command lines again each time in order to enable the scaling on my tp

edit: I had to add it to my /etc/modules for it to work so now it works when I plug it in its at 100% and on battery it auto scales, nifty

my 2 cents:
I've successfully installed Kubuntu 7.10 RC on my T42p UXGA.
Clean install, no dual boot.
Works better than Feitsy Fawn.
Hibernate, volume controls workedout of the box.
Fn+F5 did not work and there where strange problems during the first hour
to get the Intel 2200 B/G wireless to work with KNetworkmanager 0.2.
further tests pending

Good info guys. I've been running Feisty on my X60s since it was first released. (just happened to be release when I was back home on vacation last spring and had just received my new X60s...which I brought back with me to Iraq)

I am heading home next month and plan to do a fresh install with Gutsy. I've been really impressed with Feisty, so am excited to see the improvements with Gutsy.

(btw, I use Beryl without issue on my X60s. pretty slick.)

Hi guys,

Slightly offtopic... but I'm kinda curious on how the new tickless kernel is affecting power-management. Especially for the X61s (which i'm planning to buy soon). Can someone perhaps give me a power consumption estimate for 7.10 on an X61s? ACPI-estimate using Powertop for instance? I know this number will varry ofcourse but a rough indication would be great for knowing what kind of power consumption I can expect or is possible.

Regards

I have been able to get nearly 6 hours depending on how much I am using the wifi and how bright my screen is.

I have not read up much on the tickless kernel, I have heard that Gutsy does not support it and to gain support you would need to patch your kernel to see any effect. But I have no reliable info on that. If anyone knows more about this please share with us.

---

Today I have been having a little issue with my battery recharging. I plugged in the AC adapter while the computer was at 98 percent and I find it odd that it isnt getting to the full 100% Does anyone know if this is normal? Where are the battery setting that deal with when it should be charged?

You can use tp_smapi to set at what point it starts charging and what point it stops charging. Some people say it is better to cut off charging at 95% or so to prolong battery life and to not start charging until the battery is at 35-40%. There is some how-to's on how to get it working at thinkwiki.org and the ubuntu forums. Just do a search for tp_smapi at those two sites.

Good luck.

I just received my X61s this week, and have been tuning it to conserve power. It's a lot of work if you don't know what you're doing (I don't) and have to learn. I think there are still things left for me to tune, so this is (like you said) a rough estimate.

I'm running Ubuntu Gutsy on a L7500 with UltraLight screen, Atheros wifi and Enhanced 4-cell battery. On a full charge, with wireless off, display brightness down, and fan spun down, powertop tells me:



With everything turned on, it's under 3 hours. I was hoping to get about 4 hours with this battery at medium display brightness and no wifi (airplane mode), but am not sure how close to that goal I'll be able to get.

One thing worth mentioning: this model suffers from the always-on fan "problem". There are tools for controlling the fan so that it's not always on, and I think that saves power compared to letting the CPU run hot.

Thanks ill play with the settings.

Does anyone have any other info related to prolonging the life of your battery? When I have the machine plugged in I usually just take the battery out once its reached a full charge, and I have been trying to only do full cycles. I am just going off of my rudimentary understanding, I would really love some more info on the matter.



I have actually had the opposite problem, my fan does not start up until everything is so hot that it really cannot keep up.

A friend of mine (much more versed in the ways of the penguin than myself) helped me set up some hotkeys (there are 7 fan levels):
fn+f11=fan up 1 lvl
fn+f9=fan down 1 lvl
fn+f8=fan mode auto

The same friend is working on writing an applet for me to put in my panel that would show me what the fan is set to and also change it from 1 through 7 or to auto through a drop down menu. Once I have all of this setup I would be happy to share everything on how to do it yourself.

I installed Gutsy the day it came out and have been working on ways of improving battery life. I found this application to be very useful and extremely easy to use with the built in GUI:

http://www.gambitchess.org/moin.py/Thin ... rect=tpfan

Just download the Debian package, double click, install and reboot. You can see your CPU temps as well as adjust fan speed. You can allow the fan to be always on or set a specific speed as well as setting thresholds at which the fan should turn on and off. I can confirm this works without any problems on a Thinkpad x60.


Additionally, Powertop is extremely helpful. To start using it type the following in the command line:



Give it 5 seconds to collect data and it will show you your average power consumption (if unplugged). With wifi on and brightness turned down my power consumption is 15W (4 hours). Running Powertop and applying the suggested fixes it is down to ~11W (6 hours). The only problem I have is that I have to run Powertop each time I boot linux and apply the suggested fixes. If someone knows how to permanantly apply the suggested fixes it would be appreciated (add to menu.lst? add a startup script?)

Answering my own question, hopefully it will be useful to someone...

Since Powertop will suggest commands for you to run in order to reduce power consumption (most of them are very effective) it is useful to run these commands at startup rather than running Powertop each time and selecting which to run. Because of the nature of the commands any script that runs these commands needs to run them as root. In order to run commands as root on startup, place the commands in /etc/rc.local



Here is an example of what my rc.local looks like:

There are "correct" locations to put some of these, but it could be helpful to have them all in one place. The other locations are:

/etc/sysfs.conf (may need to install sysfs package)

/etc/sysctl.conf

The noatime mount option should go in /etc/fstab. If you have multiple mount points (e.g., /boot, /, /home) you probably want to add the option to all of them.

I'm not sure where to put the iwpriv command, but you'll probably want to investigate to ensure that it is set whenever the device is ifup'd (for instance, when resuming from sleep states).

So I noticed that to use this utility, I need the thinkpad-acpi module. Any hints for getting that setup fairly easily or will I need to build a custom kernel for that?

Thanks!

Has anyone been able to get supend to ram working on a T60? Do the Feisty instructions also work for gutsy? Unfortunately there are no real gutsy instructions.

This is great help, thanks a lot!

Hi,

I intend to install Ubuntu 7.10 (dual boot with Windows XP using windows boot loader) on my X61 real soon, but am not confident of doing all the things right. I'm not familiar with Linux, and so I seek to find a complete newbie's guide to installing Ubuntu 7.10 on Santa Rosa Thinkpads ( T61 / X61 / R61 etc ). Perhaps someone can give me some starting pointers? Do I use the normal Desktop Edition CD or the Alternate Desktop CD? Once I get past the installation, I'll slowly fix things with the help of the community.

Thanks!

Did you get anywhere further, RedGreen?

I'm running (K)ubuntu Gutsy on a T22 and I can't shutdown/reboot either. When I try to, I get a blank screen screen with the mouse, then the mouse disappears, then the system hangs. Only way to turn off is holding the power button down - not so ideal

BTW, I'm running the standard Gutsy VESA driver for the S3 Savage chip on my T22 - anyone got something better running? I can choose the Savage from System Settings, but if I test it, blank screen, system hangs.

has anyone gotten bluetooth sound to work? I can pair my bluetooth headphone, but it only stays for 2 seconds.

On my T60 it is running fine. Excellent actually, the only thing is that it is running in clear type on 1400x1050, which I must find out how to disable.

The sound controls work out of the Box. And when looking for a setting, there was an icon of a laptop with a RED trackpoint, indicating that the gibbon recognized what machine it is installed on and installed the appropriate icon. Such fine tuned service makes really a difference.

Has anyone been able to use both monitors as independent desktops? All i get atm is a cloned desktop meaning it'll size up to the external monitor and my laptop will have a cutof desktop .

With my desktop at home i can have 2 screens running a separate desktop... but that's using an nvidia card with the nice tool 'envy'. I have no clue as to how to accomplish that with the intel x3100 as in the configuration options under system it doesn't even allow the option to 'extend' desktop etc. .

Basically what i'm trying to accomplish is that instead of having a cloned or extended desktop i want to have two seperate desktops.

I'm using an x61s with an external monitor of 1280x1024... any help would be appreciated.

Ciao - Ronald

sudo aticonfig --initial=dual-head

I didn't try it on my laptop, but I have a desktop with two monitors. Each have their seperat desktop.

I'm interested to know if someone have a solution to this as well, I have the exact same problem as you. I am running Kubuntu Gutsy on a T43 and using the default graphic driver (non ATI), the T43 works perfectly, but as soon as the ATI driver is installed, the system hangs when I try to hibernate. The only way to reboot is to switch it off...

This wasn't a problem when I was running 7.04 with the ATI driver. The 7.10 is a clean install, not upgrade.

Unfortunately the x61s does not have an nvidia or ati graphics card or i'd be using envy to fix it... It uses the x3100 from intell. So i'm still open to suggestions.

Regards

I am using an X61s and have been experiencing a pretty hot right palmrest when the wifi card is powered. I found this odd after using it for a few days with Vista (which I was all to happy to wipe) and having the palmrest only get slightly warm. After looking around a bit it seems that Vista had power management settings for the wifi card that now I am without.

Does anyone know of a way to manage power to wifi? Or any info on helping with heat?

Also, im looking for a way to cut power to my internal (Cingular) WWAN card if anyone has any ideas? Or does anyone know any command that will let me confirm that power is going to the card?

----

A friend of mine with an X61 explained to me how to get hibernate to work, I have not tried it but once I do ill post info on how to get it working.

I've been noticing the hot palm-rest also... Although i didn't use vista long enough to notice a difference there. Still an interesting question, so if people know something let us know!

Regarding your WWAN card you can check with powertop to see if it's drawing power. With luck it'll also give you the command with which to revoke it

http://www.lesswatts.org/projects/powertop/

-Edit-
I just checked with powertop and it actually gives the suggestion to put the wireless card in saving mode with the following command :

iwpriv eth1 set_power 5

If i find significant differences in heat i'll let you know
-Edit-

HTH -

My, this newest distro is really interesting! I'm trying out the Live CD on both a T60 and a T43p. For one thing, Wireless internet works on both. (The T43p did not on earlier versions)

Also, the goofy video problems on the T60 have gone away.

Not only that....I can now read/write and move & copy to and from a NTFS USB drive.

This is really good!

I have had some good luck with Ubuntu distros before, but this one seems -especially good!-

--might even dedicate a drive and install it for real. I can see me actually being able to use this daily for actual work!

I might, but you never said which card you have.