Thinkpads Forum

I ordered a T61 with SLED 10 loaded new from Lenovo (couldn't pass up the deal). Anyway, I was wondering if anyone is running SLED 10 factory installed from Lenovo, and if so can you offer any tips? Does everything work out of the box? What does not work? FN keys?

I have run SuSE on many thinkpads in the past and I do know that for the most part everything works ok.

I ran SuSE 9.2 and 10 on a T23 and also on my T41p.

Right now I am running Linux Mint on my T42 and although I am enjoying it I will probably do a wipe and install SuSE 11 as it's the distro I have the most experience with.

If you have a SLED image made by Lenovo I'd love to try it out on a T42 and see how she runs.

Temetka, thanks. I've run SuSE on many, many laptops since 9.1, and most recently 11.0 on my T43. I'm specifically looking for users with SLED 10 experience on a T61. Recovery media sharing is a question I'll have to think about. I am sure SLED is licensed by a serial# system, so it would most likely be useless to you unless you purchased a license. Well, at least you would not get any updates without a license.

Bump - the T61 shipped from China today...still looking for SLED 10 experiences on the T61 platform.

Harryc wrote:I ordered a T61 with SLED 10 loaded new from Lenovo (couldn't pass up the deal)...

Would you mind sharing the specs and what price made it a good deal?
With a coupon deal that was posted here today, I could configure a 15" WSXGA+ T61, with T8100 and DVD burner (everything else standard) just shy of $700 +tax (or $50 or so less with CD-RW/DVD instead of DVD burner). However, that was not really better than I could have gotten the same machine in April through EPP. Today, though, EPP is more expensive). Thanks

PS. please remove my mentioning of EPP if that is against the rules (but since I didn't post any actual EPP prices I thought it should be OK.)

Yeah, we can't discuss EPP here, but I don't mind sharing the deal I got. The current coupon deal sounds slightly better.
$685. plus tax shipped.

Nice price you got there Harry. Very nice price indeed.

Temetka, there is no doubt that if someone ever wanted a new T61, now is the right time to buy....there are some nice coupon deals out there as mentioned by basketb.

I received the T61 today. SLED is very nice on this platform so far. I haven't found anything that does not work yet, but I am far from testing everything out. If there is a specific function that someone wants tested let me know. So far, wireless, sound, volume/mute keys, Thinklight, FN-Brightness, FN-F7 display switcher, middle ultranav button scroll, all work out of the box. It has a SLED recovery partition and came with a recovery DVD.

The cardreader does not work. This link explains why.

That doesn't really explain much now does it?

I gathered it's a problem arising from incompatibility with the driver and current kernel.

I'm also out of touch with SLED. The guy mentioned repositories. So I can use apt-get in SuSE now?

...and the Intel 3945ABG Mini-PCI Express Adapter is acting up as well. Intermittent loss of network connectivity, just like it does on Vista to a great extent, and XP to a lesser extent. The Atheros card was not an option when I ordered the machine, but I now have one on the way .

TTBOMK, Synaptic was always an option in SuSE (based on apt-get). The package management system is so good in 11.0 that it is all that is needed....zypper from the command line.

Harryc wrote:Temetka, thanks. I've run SuSE on many, many laptops since 9.1, and most recently 11.0 on my T43. I'm specifically looking for users with SLED 10 experience on a T61. Recovery media sharing is a question I'll have to think about. I am sure SLED is licensed by a serial# system, so it would most likely be useless to you unless you purchased a license. Well, at least you would not get any updates without a license.

Only those parts of the SLED distro that are not GPL'd can be limited by a proprietary license, since the Linux kernel and other open source parts cannot be restricted in their redistribution. You would be wise to be careful about any restrictions. Lenovo can, and probably does limit free assistance to those who are identified to a serial numbered set. Beyond that we're all able to see and use the open parts, and even provide help!!

Temetka wrote:I'm also out of touch with SLED. The guy mentioned repositories. So I can use apt-get in SuSE now?

The term repository is not specific to the APT package manager, but is a general term used by most package managers. There are lots of package managers available for SLED/OpenSUSE though, so you can use yum, smart, APT, or zypper if you want.

Personally smart or yum are the two I've had most luck with in OpenSUSE.

I got my t61 with sled 10 around Aug 1, 2008. That same day, I decided that I needed more desktop effects and it turned out i needed sp2 in order to get these. (I was used to my desktop with ubuntu and all of compiz fusions features working). I upgraded to sp2 and in turn this completely ruined my x11 config. Since I hadn't gotten attached to anything on the hard drive (it was 3 hours old), I decided why not throw the recovery cd in and start over. What they do not tell you anywhere in the documentation or on the webpage is that you will have to re-register with SUSE in order to get any more software updates for the OS. This turned out to be a problem. I did not have a key for my software, so I was out of luck. An hour of bouncing back and forth between Lenovo cust. support and SuSE customer support, and I was still stuck. A SuSE rep actually told me I'd be better off with openSuSE than to re-register. I tried it, "for fun" but OpenSuSE doesn't have the driver support for quite a few critical components. It took me an hour to basically hack the fingerprint reader drivers to make them work, among other things. I gave up. I bought a rediculously spec'd out t61, and couldn't use it for what it was worth. I gave up and installed a stripped "performance" edition of XP, enabled Intel Virtualization in the bios, and now I use sun xVM to run linux, almost as fast as native, in XP. I do the same for Vista, but I also had to upgrade from 1 to 3 gigs of ram (2 gig ocz ram at newegg was 26.99 after rebate). It was nice to save the money by not getting any microsoft software installed, but SLED 10 was a complete letdown. My advice: order with SLED 10 to save money, and install your own linux distro (or microsoft product) after you receive your t61; these laptops are too powerful to waste on sled.

Just curious: does HDAPS work out of the box?

No, not out of the box. I don't like the feature that much anyway, because it is so picky about how i move my laptop. It's better than it was on my x41, but i just cannot deal with the delay and noise it makes when it offloads. I know someone has made a linux driver for it out there somewhere.