Thinkpads Forum

Hi,

I have just bought a x100e with 4 GB RAM, AMD Dual Core (625) and 320 GB HDD. The problems I have are with Ubuntu specifically. I have installed Ubuntu 10 on my x100e and wireless pretty much worked out of the box for me except for a problem that comes into picture when I leave my system for a while. So, the screen goes blank (when the system is idle) and once I move the mouse, it asks for the system password. Then, the wireless connection asks me the password to the secured connection again and it just goes on forever. It never connects. Ultimately, I have to restart the system.

The second problem is that headphones just do not work. I plug my headphone in the jack, the sound continues to come out from the speaker. There is no sound in the headphones at all. I have checked this in Windows and it works fine so this is not a issue with the headphone jack or anything(I have dual booting).

Oh yeah and the last one. This should be a minor one. It seems at startup the OS is not able to detect the screen resolution (or maybe the thinkpad display parameters). The startup screen of Ubuntu that comes is a low resolution one. I mean, really low.

So these are the open issues. The one major problem that I had with Ubuntu (and I solved) was with the brightness controls and when switching to battery power. Each time you did that, the system would freeze. This is a known issue. In most cases, an upgraded bios and fglrx driver is what you need.

I would say that the issues I listed above are medium intensity because they do not hamper your working on the machine and so I am glad to say that I am happy with the overall experience I have had with this tiny thinkpad. Lastly, the heat issue is kind of over-rated, I'd say.

Please do let me know if you have anything to add on this or can give me some pointers on the solution of my problems! I could do with some help

thanks,

aditya

For the wifi problem yo have to build the latest driver from realtek. The one provided by ubuntu is crap.

You can't get both the native resolution at boot and the fglrx drivers installed.

If you want native resolution at boot you have to use the radeon (open source) driver and a recent kernel or your x100 will hang whenever you unplug the power supply.

You can find a lot of suggestions here

http://justinsomnia.org/2010/02/ubuntu- ... pad-x100e/

Thanks for the reply, I will do as you say about the wireless and post it here about what happens.

About the startup screen, yeah I guess, I can certainly live with that after what you told me about it.

Lastly, would there be any pointers on the headphone problem? Just not working!

Have you heard of the Linux Mint distro? It is what Ubuntu could be. I think Linux Mint 9 (built on Ubuntu 10.XX) will blow your socks off. It is significantly smaller, faster, & superior to Ubuntu. It is not recognized by Canonical as a member of the Ubuntu family.

Mint 9 is significantly more user friendly and it is ready to go as no other Linux distro. I think the Mint project team is more talented than the Ubuntu team. Their scripts are better and they are better intouch with what average users want & need in a distro. You do not have to finish (wink, wink) Mint by researching & installing the correct multimedia codecs, libraries, add-ons & font packages to get major multimedia packages working online (video clips, streaming, DVD movies, CD music, etc). It even includes the libdvdcss library needed to decrypt DVD movies. Install Mint 9 and it just works. Clearly, Puppy 5.0 & Linux Mint are MORE user ready and user friendly than Windows! The only remaining draw back is Linux teams still have to reverse engineer drivers to work hardware made by companies who are under the Microsoft monopoly strong arm. So, unless you become Linux literate, you want to stay away from computers with the newest hardware. It takes some time for talented Linux masters to reverse engineer the needed drivers. Clearly, the consequence of this problem is users of PC tech about a year or more old get Linux hardware auto identifier and driver installation software that is superior to anything Windows or Mac.

On anything from a six year old Dell GX60 or T-23 to a vanilla Dell XPS 400 gaming PC to a T-60 and a Dell D420, I can boot from anything Ubuntu 8.xxx - 10.XX, DSL, Puppy 3.XX - 5.0, Linux Mint 9 and have it auto detect, install, and boot ready for action in less time than INSTALLED Windows 2000 to Vista Ultimate can
simply boot up! There are no long shut down times or hangups. Linux Mint 9 shuts down in a few seconds!

You may also want to consider the PuppyLinux project's new release, Lucid Puppy 5.0, which represents a new direction for Puppy. 5.0 is built around Ubuntu (Lucid). Either Puppy 4.31 or new 5.0 will turn your ultraportable into a fast machine. Puppy distros are small but powerful and very user friendly (the primary goals of Puppy project). Puppy auto loads itself into RAM memory and runs from there! It is significantly faster than Linux Mint.

I used Puppy to speed up my Dell Ultraportable (D420). You can have it install itself onto as little as a 2GB USB Memory stick (which is how I use it.). I suspect the very thin x100 comes with a slow 1.8" video game, Tivo hard drive & your dual core is slow like mine is. Puppy gets around all that due to its small size and its operation from RAM and USB flash.

Unlike Canonical LTD (British Empire version of "Inc" --"Corporation"), Ubuntu products teams Puppy and Linux Mint are not semi-non commercial. They are full spirit Linux non-commercial. Team Mint is funded entirely by user donations. So, you get free whole hearted support from team members and from the user community. Team Ubuntu withholds team level support for paying customers.

You will not find the tougher issues and requests for help unanswered at anywhere near the rate they go unanswered at Ubuntu Community or Forums.

Both Mint 9 and Puppy 5.0 come in live CD forms, so you can try them out before installing them. Puppy distros are designed and built to boot & install from CD (or DVD) into RAM anyway. You can very easily choose to have Puppy create a save file on USB, CD (or DVD) -RW, or a small area on your hard drive. Then Puppy will auto save your settings, data, & software installations to your save file (which it uses to boot from each boot)

BruisedQuasar, Thanks for enlightening me on the merits of Linux Mint but at this time, your reply does **not** help me one bit.

adityeah wrote: Lastly, would there be any pointers on the headphone problem? Just not working!

I haven't tried the headphones yet, but the problem should also be fixed in recent kernels (2.6.35-xx)

You can fix the headphone issue by editing the /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf file:

Terminal: sudo gedit /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf

Add this line to the end, save and reboot:
options snd-hda-intel model=”olpc-xo-1_5″

Great fishybawb, the fix worked!

adityeah wrote:BruisedQuasar, Thanks for enlightening me on the merits of Linux Mint but at this time, your reply does **not** help me one bit.

Yeah, Mint isn't really relevant here, since it's really just Ubuntu with a couple different GUI packages. The kernel, drivers, and most of the underlying userland are exactly the same as the Ubuntu release on which it's based.

I know I'm a bit late, but the first port of call for any Linux on ThinkPad issues should be the ThinkWiki.

http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Category:X100e

The issues mentioned in this thread are covered there and if you have any further solutions, add them to the wiki.