Linux on T60p

[b3b0p]

I ordered a Thinkpad T60p (200794u) and I was wondering what, if anything doesn't work or work very well.

I bought got this laptop for Linux as I do not have plans to use Windows at all.

My main concerns are the video card and power management.

Does sleep/hibernate/suspend work?

How do the ATI drivers work, since it seems the card (v5200) is not officially supported?

I ask because my laptop has not shipped yet, and I am tossing and turn between keeping my order or getting a MacBook Pro.

[jescombe]

Not sure about the T60p specifically, but can give you some thoughts on the T60 (mine is a 2007-63G).

Suspend/resume will need AHCI patches that aren't in the upstream kernel yet. They're in Suse 10.1 RC1 which pretty much works out of the box, and I've respun some FC5 kernel RPMs with the support (although I only have suspend to RAM working for me so far)..

Similar story with the 3945ABG wireless, works out of the box with Suse or with kernel module updates & compilation from source.

It's not a whitelisted model for the hdaps driver, so again you'll need a patch. But with that added, works perfectly well. (Including the hdaps-protect patches if you have them)..

Not sure about your graphics card, but the latest ATI driver works a treat on my x1400, and didn't break suspend to RAM either.

If anyone is interested, my FC5 RPMs are here - http://www.dresco.co.uk/hdaps - they have the AHCI suspend/resume patches, the hdaps 'force' patch (to override the whitelist), and the hdaps-protect patch. There's also a fglrx kermel module compiled against them.

All in all, am very happy with mine

Regards,
Jon.

[b3b0p]

Thanks.

That's some information I didn't even know or have heard about.

I still can't decide if I want MacBook Pro or this Thinkpad I ordered. The Mac will just work, which is a major plus. No waiting for (better?) drivers or features to be implemented.

[FuguTabetai]

The FireGL V5200 card is not supported with the fglrx driver, but you can trick the Xserver into thinking the card is a X1600, and things are reported to work well in that case. See http://thinkwiki.org/wiki/ATI_Mobility_FireGL_V5200.

I have a T60p that I would like to put linux on (and an A31p with linux, totally awesome, 3 HDs for a small silent server) but since I do all my real work on a 15" PowerBook G4 (last of the G4s, high def screen, dual layer DVD) I haven't done anything with the T60p yet.

Well, that isn't entirely true. I did put F.E.A.R. on it (a 3d game, first I've played since Pathways into Darkness on my Mac IIci) and that works really well. Kind of scary though, and I get lost in 3d games a lot.

[b3b0p]

You have a Mac and T60p, can you report how you like Linux compared to your Mac OS X? I would really like to hear how Linux runs on your Thinkpad.

I'm totally ditching Windows and it's either Linux or MacOS X. I've been using Linux for years, but not MacOS. However, I'm really sick of some of the headbanging I've had to go through or long waits to get everything working, and not very well many times at that.

So, is the consensus that Linux support will be getting substantially better? What does AHCI do? I have not been following the latest hardware trends for a long time since I've been quite content with what I have. This is a very large purchase either way and I plan to keep it and use it for many years to come.

[jescombe]

AHCI is an Intel SATA controller spec, and in this context, the name of the linux driver that needs the suspend/resume patches...

Cheers,
Jon.

[revolutionary_one]

Just my two cents, but this is starting into a "which OS do YOU think is cooler discussion/poll."

While NO ONE has asked, what will the user be doing, what features does the user need (aside from basic ACPI and GFX support), what software NEEDS to be supported, how smoothly will it run, how much time am I going to have to invest into learning a new OS, how much time do I HAVE to invest?

Maybe its just the IT nerd in me, but that's sorta the first few things I think about when setting up ANY COMPUTER for anyone (including myself).

Cheers.

[FuguTabetai]

You have a Mac and T60p, can you report how you like Linux compared to your Mac OS X? I would really like to hear how Linux runs on your Thinkpad.

Yes, I have a 1.67 GHz G4 15" PowerBook with the 1440x960 display that I run OSX on, and like it a lot. I also have a 1.8 GHz P4M ThinkPad A31p with Fedora Core 4 on it. I've been using that machine for a few years and it has been linux for the past few years.

I'm a research scientist that works in natural language processing, so most of my work is text analysis and large corpus processing. Lots of Java and Perl programming, lots of LaTeX and Emacs so I'm very comfortable in linux.

The Mac is newer, I've only had it for a few months, but I like it a lot. I actually prefer linux for some things: programming mostly, flexibility with the window manager and multiple virtual desktops, and automatic updates with yum for *all* installed software. Setting up OSX with Apple's X11 server and a decent Emacs (CarbonEmacs is my current favorite, it has a great LaTeX setup out of the box and keeps Emacs keybindings compared to Aquamacs, which tries to adapt Emacs to the Mac, a kind of idiotic endeavor)
along with the gwTeX LaTeX distribution the Mac is very usable.

Things I prefer on the Mac are email (Mail.app is great, and has Emacs keybindings) and general ease-of-use is much higher. It is nice that MS Word and friends work, although I mostly use NeoOffice (an OSX port of OpenOffice) and the iWork suite (Keynote mostly.)

The best thing about the Mac though is that sleeping and network setup are just great. Close the lid it sleeps. Open it and it wakes up. It remembers network settings and tries known networks, connecting up to ones you have used before.

In linux, networking means fiddling with ifup / ifdown. After a few days of playing with sleeping, I never got that to work. S3 suspend to RAM would work, but on resume the X server was messed up and I would have to kill the X Server to fix things. Maybe other distros would work better, but you still have to work on it.

On a side-note, OSX is about a million times better at networking compared to Windows, even with all that ThinkPad software (Access Connections I think?) which generally just gets in the way and makes you set up locations and whatnot.

I'm totally ditching Windows and it's either Linux or MacOS X. I've been using Linux for years, but not MacOS. However, I'm really sick of some of the headbanging I've had to go through or long waits to get everything working, and not very well many times at that.

So, is the consensus that Linux support will be getting substantially better? What does AHCI do? I have not been following the latest hardware trends for a long time since I've been quite content with what I have. This is a very large purchase either way and I plan to keep it and use it for many years to come.

Like I said, I would like to get linux working on my T60p, but for now I'm going to wait until other people work things out. Keep an eye on ThinkWiki.org, they have great information there. I think the situation I have now is ideal:

15" PowerBook OSX: mostly leave it at work, but bring it home on the weekends for almost all of my computing needs.

ThinkPad A31p (3 hard drives with 280gig internal storage): Sitting at home running Fedora Core 4, front end for Azureus for downloading tv (I live in Japan and miss some shows.) Since I never got sleeping to work, I close the lid and the machine keeps downloading. Also set up mt-daapd for an iTunes music server, netatalk for an Apple File Server, and SMB for windows file sharing to watch all the downloaded tv over the home network.

ThinkPad T60p: I play games on it until I get linux working well. Once linux is working well, I might try to use this machine for work as well, but since the Mac is working quite nicely for that (although I do sometimes prefer linux since I can poke at it and make it exactly as I like, since I don't have time now, OSX is just working and does what I need) I just have windows on it and it plays games. By far the most powerful machine I have, aside from the linux server I have at work for corpus storage and analysis.

Hope that helps. I think you can be very happy with either linux or OSX, but one thing that is great about the PowerBook is that I don't have to spend nearly as much time making things work. Although, that can be fun too...

[b3b0p]

revolutionary_one,

Sorry, I was afraid someone might think that after I asked about OS X. But I really wanted to know the status of Linux for current Thinkpad owners and especially on the T60p. And I was very interested in learning what fellow Linux users thought of it compared to Linux on their Thinkpad also.

There really is not that much info out there, yet. All the information in ThinkWiki about the video card was basically a sentance saying edit this file and it appears to work. The wireless card I assumed I could use the 2200 drivers, but I was mistaken, and I was unaware of the AHCI stuff. I got alot of the information I needed from those that did provide me some general feedback here.

FuguTabetai,

Great write up. It answers probably every thing I was thinking and then some. Thank you! I appreciate it.

[FuguTabetai]

There really is not that much info out there, yet. All the information in ThinkWiki about the video card was basically a sentance saying edit this file and it appears to work. The wireless card I assumed I could use the 2200 drivers, but I was mistaken, and I was unaware of the AHCI stuff. I got alot of the information I needed from those that did provide me some general feedback here.

There are drivers for the Intel wireless (3950? I would have to look it up.) They are currently in beta status, but I think that they will shape up given a bit of time. Historically, linux has always been pretty good on ThinkPads...