Thinkpads Forum

Hi all,

i am new here on this forum.
I would like to know if the thinkpad W500 series will have linux support (at least in hardware).
And more if it will be shipped with a linux distribution too, istead of windows Vista.

Thank you very much.

Since most part of the W500 would use the standard Montevina platform, I think it is just a matter of time before you can run Linux on it. Of course, the problem for running Linux on cutting edge hardware is that you usually need to wait a couple of months before 95% of the hardware run flawlessly.

The fine print at the very end of the W500 spec sheet says:

"(13) Linux preload models: Some hardware configurations not available."

I would say that purchasing this machine from Lenovo with Linux instead of Vista IS an option.

barrywohl wrote: I would say that purchasing this machine from Lenovo with Linux instead of Vista IS an option.

Well it would make the difference for me.
I like Thinkpads a lot (i own a t42) but i will never buy a laptop (of any brand) that forces me to buy Microsoft Operating systems.

I will wait until a linux option will be fully available.

well, I hope Lenovo would offer Ubuntu instead of SuSE on the Linux model.

dickeywang wrote:well, I hope Lenovo would offer Ubuntu instead of SuSE on the Linux model.

yeah me too, but i doubt with all the dell support to ubuntu seems pushed lenovo to suse

I've always found it very easy to install Ubuntu on Thinkpads. (I guess I've only tried T-series). I wouldn't care which linux was supplied as long as I don't need to pay for windows and I can reinstall Ubuntu.

IBM was hooked up with Suse long before Lenovo took over. I don't know but I guess that is where they will stay.

I just installed Ubuntu on a W500. Most things worked fine out of the box, but there were two areas with some issues. The wireless card is not supported out of the box. This solution worked for me.

The second problem was with the video card(s). This machine appears to have both an ATI card and an onboard Intel card. It will correctly detect and prompt to install the fglrx driver for the ATI card, but upon rebooting will start in "low graphics mode" and ask you to reconfigure the video card. Do so, setting the first card to use the VESA driver, and the second to use fglrx using the configuration utility that pops up.

Zak wrote:I just installed Ubuntu on a W500. Most things worked fine out of the box, but there were two areas with some issues. The wireless card is not supported out of the box. This solution worked for me.

The second problem was with the video card(s). This machine appears to have both an ATI card and an onboard Intel card. It will correctly detect and prompt to install the fglrx driver for the ATI card, but upon rebooting will start in "low graphics mode" and ask you to reconfigure the video card. Do so, setting the first card to use the VESA driver, and the second to use fglrx using the configuration utility that pops up.

Hi Zak,

Could you make available for us your xorg.conf file (and perhaps your Xorg.0.log fiel too)? I have been trying to configure both the fglrx and the radeonhd driver for my w500. They seem to install fine, but then the server crashes with various errors. Since I am using the 64bit version of OpenSuse 11, I probably can not rely on the same configuration program that guided you through the configuration steps. So far I have been able to only run the vesa driver at max 1600x1200 resolution.

Thanks

Zak wrote:I just installed Ubuntu on a W500. Most things worked fine out of the box, but there were two areas with some issues. The wireless card is not supported out of the box. This solution worked for me.

The second problem was with the video card(s). This machine appears to have both an ATI card and an onboard Intel card. It will correctly detect and prompt to install the fglrx driver for the ATI card, but upon rebooting will start in "low graphics mode" and ask you to reconfigure the video card. Do so, setting the first card to use the VESA driver, and the second to use fglrx using the configuration utility that pops up.

Thanks for the directions you provided!
I followed them and I was able to get the ATI card to work. However EVERY time I start Ubuntu it once again prompts me that the computer is in "low graphics mode" and I have to set the card to use fglrx. When I set it, the system asks to reboot and it comes up running fine--ATI card is in use and 3D enabled. But then, when I shut my computer down, the next time I start up I have to go through the whole process again.

Worse yet, after using Ubuntu, when I boot to Windows XP it starts with a low resolution. I have to restart XP in order to get it to run with my normal 1680 x 1050. It's like Ubuntu has told the W500 to go low resolution.

Any idea what's going wrong?

Spartos wrote:

Zak wrote:I just installed Ubuntu on a W500. Most things worked fine out of the box, but there were two areas with some issues. The wireless card is not supported out of the box. This solution worked for me.

The second problem was with the video card(s). This machine appears to have both an ATI card and an onboard Intel card. It will correctly detect and prompt to install the fglrx driver for the ATI card, but upon rebooting will start in "low graphics mode" and ask you to reconfigure the video card. Do so, setting the first card to use the VESA driver, and the second to use fglrx using the configuration utility that pops up.

Thanks for the directions you provided!
I followed them and I was able to get the ATI card to work. However EVERY time I start Ubuntu it once again prompts me that the computer is in "low graphics mode" and I have to set the card to use fglrx. When I set it, the system asks to reboot and it comes up running fine--ATI card is in use and 3D enabled. But then, when I shut my computer down, the next time I start up I have to go through the whole process again.

Worse yet, after using Ubuntu, when I boot to Windows XP it starts with a low resolution. I have to restart XP in order to get it to run with my normal 1680 x 1050. It's like Ubuntu has told the W500 to go low resolution.

Any idea what's going wrong?

I had to disable switchable graphics in the BIOS to workaround the problem.

Thanks. I disabled graphics switching in the bios and it solves the problem of having to enter the the graphics card information each time. It also solves the problem of having to reboot Win XP twice after using Ubuntu. However, oddly enough, Ubuntu still pops up the warning about being in low graphics mode every time it starts up. I click the "configure" button and it goes on with startup without having to actually configure anything.

I tried installing openSUSE 11. The ATI graphics driver seems to work O.K. But sometimes, at the beginning of SUSE startup, the screen just goes blank and I end up having to manually shut down the machine by pressing the power button. Sometimes when it does this the screen looks like the computer is trying to access the graphics card. So I suspect the graphics switching function is causing this also.

The lousy thing about this is that I have no interest in the graphics switching capability in the first place. I'm not using Vista. If I wanted to do integrated graphics I would have bought a much cheaper laptop. I'd have been happier if they had left the other card out and just installed the ATI card.

I finally just ordered a W500 fully loaded to replace my A31p with it's IPS screen. I was waiting for a quad core version of the W500, but due to his higher heat of 45 watts, I don't see that happening for at least another year. On another note, because of the way Intel makes their quad cores, which is two cores slapped together, you're going to have two of the cores always running at least higher power and the battery life will go down hill. AMD's quad core would be a better solution if they could get the TDP down.

Anyway, back onto Linux, I've been using Linux since 1995 and on laptops since 1999. Everything that I've read shows everything is fully supported. You'll need to have the RC 2.6.27 kernel to use the Intel Wireless 5300 card.

The whole point of switchable graphics is to extend your battery life if you're not currently playing games are doing any 3D work. I'll have to see if x.org is working on switchable graphics.

Anyway, I'm stoked to finally get a new laptop after 5 years.

Ryushin wrote:You'll need to have the RC 2.6.27 kernel to use the Intel Wireless 5300 card.

Severe bug warning follows.

The W500 is equipped with the Intel 82567LM Gigabit network controller. The 2.6.27-rc* kernels contain a serious bug, which if triggered overwrites the EEPROM in the network controller and makes it unusable. Investigations are currently ongoing, but the 82567 network controller seems to be endangered by this bug.

References: Kernel bug tracker, Red Hat bug tracker

You might want to stay away from the bleeding-edge kernels until this bug is fixed!

By the way, I am new on this board and looking forward to receive my W500!

ceski wrote:

Ryushin wrote:You'll need to have the RC 2.6.27 kernel to use the Intel Wireless 5300 card.

Severe bug warning follows.

The W500 is equipped with the Intel 82567LM Gigabit network controller. The 2.6.27-rc* kernels contain a serious bug, which if triggered overwrites the EEPROM in the network controller and makes it unusable. Investigations are currently ongoing, but the 82567 network controller seems to be endangered by this bug.

References: Kernel bug tracker, Red Hat bug tracker

You might want to stay away from the bleeding-edge kernels until this bug is fixed!

By the way, I am new on this board and looking forward to receive my W500!

The bug could make the ethernet chip permanently unusable. The e1000e driver has been blacklisted in 2.6.27.4 (alpha 6). but I'd definitely avoid and stop running 2.6.27.3 (alpha 5).

ceski wrote:

Ryushin wrote:You'll need to have the RC 2.6.27 kernel to use the Intel Wireless 5300 card.

Severe bug warning follows.

The W500 is equipped with the Intel 82567LM Gigabit network controller. The 2.6.27-rc* kernels contain a serious bug, which if triggered overwrites the EEPROM in the network controller and makes it unusable. Investigations are currently ongoing, but the 82567 network controller seems to be endangered by this bug.

References: Kernel bug tracker, Red Hat bug tracker

You might want to stay away from the bleeding-edge kernels until this bug is fixed!

By the way, I am new on this board and looking forward to receive my W500!

Actually I think it's fixed in at least 2.6.27-rc7. I'll double check this though before installing it. I'm building rc8 so I should be fine. Intel is also making a fix to repair the bricked nics.

Ryushin wrote:

ceski wrote: Severe bug warning follows.

The W500 is equipped with the Intel 82567LM Gigabit network controller. The 2.6.27-rc* kernels contain a serious bug, which if triggered overwrites the EEPROM in the network controller and makes it unusable. Investigations are currently ongoing, but the 82567 network controller seems to be endangered by this bug.

References: Kernel bug tracker, Red Hat bug tracker

You might want to stay away from the bleeding-edge kernels until this bug is fixed!

By the way, I am new on this board and looking forward to receive my W500!

Actually I think it's fixed in at least 2.6.27-rc7. I'll double check this though before installing it. I'm building rc8 so I should be fine. Intel is also making a fix to repair the bricked nics.

Well, it look likes I was both wrong and right. 2.6.27-rc7 fixed the e1000 bug, but not the e1000e. A patch has to be applied to fix this as it's not fixed in the mainline kernel yet. Please see:
http://lkml.org/lkml/2008/10/1/368

The patch for 2.6.27 can be found here:
http://bugzilla.kernel.org/attachment.c ... ction=view

nothing is working from my end with my W500 even booting to install didnt work, i had to choose discrete card to boot in a fuzzy screen and install

now after booting into the fuzzy screen is it possible to get the ATI card configured and the network card configured ? because it cant detect neither the wireless or ethercard card on ubuntu

any advise?

Thanks

Bashar wrote:nothing is working from my end with my W500 even booting to install didnt work, i had to choose discrete card to boot in a fuzzy screen and install

now after booting into the fuzzy screen is it possible to get the ATI card configured and the network card configured ? because it cant detect neither the wireless or ethercard card on ubuntu

any advise?

Thanks

What version of kernel are you running?

i'm not sure i used the ubuntu 8.04 CD

i booted using fedora CD and it detected the VGA card but still non of wireless/ethernet card are working

Bashar wrote:i'm not sure i used the ubuntu 8.04 CD

i booted using fedora CD and it detected the VGA card but still non of wireless/ethernet card are working

Ubuntu 8.10 (currently in beta. GA end of Oct) supports native wireless driver out of the box. I am running 2.6.27.7-generic. Everything is working OK except I couldn't find a good fingerprint scanner driver.

wtam wrote:

Bashar wrote:i'm not sure i used the ubuntu 8.04 CD

i booted using fedora CD and it detected the VGA card but still non of wireless/ethernet card are working

Ubuntu 8.10 (currently in beta. GA end of Oct) supports native wireless driver out of the box. I am running 2.6.27.7-generic. Everything is working OK except I couldn't find a good fingerprint scanner driver.

Thanks man i installed 8.10 and everything is working so far that i needed

Bashar wrote:

wtam wrote: Ubuntu 8.10 (currently in beta. GA end of Oct) supports native wireless driver out of the box. I am running 2.6.27.7-generic. Everything is working OK except I couldn't find a good fingerprint scanner driver.

Thanks man i installed 8.10 and everything is working so far that i needed

Was anybody able to make the Intel Wireless 5300 card under Opensuse 11 or Opensuse 11.1 Beta5?
Any recommended tricks to get this work?