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Lenovo Thinkpad x220 and Linux support
Posted: Wed Jun 08, 2011 8:48 am
by szikla
Dear members,
I decide to buy a new notebook.
My choise is Lenovo x220, 2520M, 4GB, IPS, FP, BT, maybe smart card reader.
I'm a linux member, and I would use Ubuntu/DEBIAN linux on my first thinkpad.
Could you tell me your experience with x220 and Linux?
Could you attach some screenshots abaout x220 with linux.
Whitch tool dose not work on X220 with linux?
Regards Szikla
Re: Lenovo Thinkpad x220 and Linux support
Posted: Wed Jun 08, 2011 12:28 pm
by ThinkRob
I don't have an X220 yet, so I can't provide any personal anecdotes, but you might want to take a look at ThinkWiki.org since they tend to cover this stuff quite well.
Re: Lenovo Thinkpad x220 and Linux support
Posted: Wed Jun 08, 2011 3:30 pm
by GomJabbar
This morning I installed Fedora 15 Gnome and Mageia 1 KDE on my X220. Both installed and booted fine. Haven't had a chance to put either of them through the ringer though.
Re: Lenovo Thinkpad x220 and Linux support
Posted: Mon Jul 11, 2011 12:01 am
by jhh
I know this thread is a little old, but anyways...
Using a newer kernel, everything important except hibernation works. The RTL8192SE wireless card is supported out of the box on 2.6.38 or newer kernels, so there aren't any firmware issues. Sleep is fine, the FN buttons are all usable though I haven't mapped anything to them yet, almost everything works almost perfectly with very little configuration.
What's not perfect:
The hdapsd daemon doesn't work. I haven't started trying to figure out what's wrong with it yet.
The mic mute key produces a keycode, but the lights on it don't change. I haven't mapped it to anything yet, but don't see why it wouldn't work.
Hibernation (suspend to disk) works, but it will usually panic on resume. Sleep (suspend to RAM) works just fine.
The RTL8192SE ("Thinkpad B/G/N" cheapo wifi card) works natively with newer kernels, but requires ndiswrapper with older ones. Using the new native driver, the green light on the display lid does not work - but the card itself is still functional. Performance is mediocre, but then again it's a very poor card.
Bootsplash doesn't work. I always turn this off so I didn't look at it. Produces a black screen, but pressing F2 will go back to the verbose boot.
Distributions tried: CentOS 5.6 (to certify it for work), Debian Testing and Linux Mint 11 (Mint is Ubuntu with extra codecs and a nice desktop theme) for personal use. Debian needs a newer kernel to use wireless.