Before I install Ubuntu

[Torque]

Hi!

I've been thinking about trying out Ubuntu on my spanking new T60. The plan is to convert to OpenOffice and hopefully get Beryl going for some eyecandy I'm an absolute beginner with Linux, so pardon any stupid questions.

The T60 is right out of the box. So the service partition is intact and so is the MBR that allows for entry to the pre-desktop area - at least so I've been told.

1. How do I remove the service partition? I have no real use for it (already made the recovery discs) and I've heard that GRUB will make it impossible to boot on it anyways.

2. Will Ubunti 6.10 have driver support for the hardware? If not, where can one find drivers?

3. Will installing drivers require alot of terminal-work?

4. Anyone here have experience with Beryl?

[Leikeze Ajnin]

1) In the BIOS, you'll need to disable the pre-desktop area if you intend to remove the service partition. Then, when you install Ubuntu, tell the installer you want to repartition the drive. OR you could use one of the graphical partition programs from the Live CD portion of the install media. As I'm not familiar with Ubuntu's installer, I'm not sure how straightforward their interface is (for partitioning).

2) It should have drivers for everything and then some, with the possible exception of either wireless card drivers and/or video card drivers, or technology that's too new. the PCLinuxOS wiki has some decent information on getting hardware working, particularly installing ATI or NVidia drivers.

Since you're wiping and replacing, go ahead and experiment and find out what stuff does. Web pages that describe stuff to be done through the terminal usually tell you exactly what commands you need to run.

I would recommend creating your R&R discs prior to wiping, just so you have them in the event you want them.

Edit: When booting the (K)Ubuntu live CD, I had to add the special boot parameter "noapic" in order to properly boot the 64-bit version on my T-60.

[mightaswell]

I have a brand new T60 with the ati x1400 video card. I normally use slackware on my desktops but I thought I would try kubuntu just to see how it was. I installed the newest beta release and everything including the Intel PRO/Wireless 3945ABG card worked out of the box. It even recognized my 1400x1050 screen resolution. I had to edit xorg.conf to get the trackpoint middle button scroll to work. I am going to install slackware -current soon but I was impressed with how well everything worked with kubuntu.

I have never installed ati drivers with linux, I have always used nvidia cards but I plan to tackle that soon too. The vesa driver is adequate for now.

Good luck with trying linux and have fun.

Edit: One thing I haven't tried yet is the modem. I do not know if it will work easily with linux. Luckily for me I don't ever need to use a modem but I will probably try to get it working just to see if it does.

[chili555]

I have installed Ubuntu on two T23s and, just today installed it on my new T60. I installed a new zippier harddrive so the recovery partition was not an issue. The only two concerns I had were the ATI card and wireless. Wireless was detected on the Live CD as eth1 and I put in my encryption and connected! I read so many stories on the forum about ipw3945 that I was surprised that it was done perfectly.

I installed the fglrx suite from synaptic and logged out and back in and now I have 1680x1050 resolution. I did a very few tweaks I read on Thinkwiki and also installed Automatix. I have about 90 minutes in installation, configuration and fiddling. I really doubt you could install Vista, do all the updates, grab drivers, install media players, office suite, etc. and be fully functionable in 90 minutes.

I love it.

[whizkid]

Grub will not make it impossible to boot with the service partition. I have a T60 with an intact service partition.

The ThinkVantage button works to run the diagnostic software, grub lets me select Fedora Core 6 or Windows, and it all works just fine.

AFAIK, Beryl does not yet work on the T60/ATI X1400 (which I have), but people are working on it. The ATI driver does work with 3D games. I've had Doom3 running on mine. Google Earth works great too.

[Slartibartfas]

Hi!
The partition tool in the Ubuntu installer is quite easy to use. You should boot from the live-cd and then klick on install. The upcoming graphical installation routine will guide you well through all. Ubuntu is a very good choice, there is a huge community on the net which will help you with all problems you might encounter. Rule Number One: Do not give up. When you are new to linux, give yourself one month of time to get used to it. Once you are familiar with it, you will love it and you won´t understand how you could be happy with cra*** windows
It might be really helpful to have a second pc with internet-connection at hand when installing linux in the case you are not sure what to do with your network card or encounter problems...

greetings
Slarti

[Jedacite]

1. How do I remove the service partition? I have no real use for it (already made the recovery discs) and I've heard that GRUB will make it impossible to boot on it anyways.

Actually, you can boot into the service partition using Grub, and Ubuntu will set it up automagically for you when it installs itself (if you leave it there.)

2. Will Ubunti 6.10 have driver support for the hardware? If not, where can one find drivers?

Everything but Video will work out of the box. It will use the vesa driver by default, you will want to change this to the radeon or ati proprietary driver first.

If I recall, Beryl and Xgl require the radeon driver and not the ATI Proprietary driver but I could be wrong.

ATI Proprietary Install (I'd use Method 1, the ubuntu way)
http://wiki.cchtml.com/index.php/Ubuntu ... tion_Guide

3. Will installing drivers require alot of terminal-work?

Beryl might, because I've never got it going under Ubuntu (not saying its hard, I've just never bothered to try.) But up into there at least it shouldn't. Theres only a few required console commands to enter, and even then I'm not sure if they are really required (ie. you can probably do them through the gui.)

I hope this helps you. I run 6.10 but plan to upgrade to the newer one once it becomes available.

[Torque]

Thank you very much for your replies

I'll give it a go today!

[chadwicktr]

beryl is working fine on my t60 w/ x1400

[kulivontot]

beryl also works fine with X1300 (basically same card).

[syedj]

I have been trying to get Beryl working on my T60 with X1400 using Kubuntu for two days now without much luck.

I have tried various HowTo's found on Beryl's Wiki, here are pertinent sections from my xorg.conf:

Code: Select all

Section "Device"
        Identifier  "Generic Video Card"
        Driver      "fglrx"
        Option      "VideoOverlay" "on"
        Option      "OpenGLOverlay" "off"
        Option      "GARTSize" "64"
        Option      "AGPMode" "4"
        Option      "DisableGLXRootClipping" "true"
        Option      "AddARGBGLXVisuals" "true"
        Option      "AllowGLXWithComposite" "true"
        Option      "XAANoOffscreenPixmaps" "true"
        Option      "EnablePageFlip" "true"
        Option      "DRI" "true"
        Option      "AccelMethod" "EXA"
        Option      "EXANoOffscreenPixmaps"
        Option      "ColorTiling" "on"
        Option      "RenderAccel" "true"
        Option      "AGPFastWrite" "true"
        BusID       "PCI:1:0:0"
EndSection
Section "DRI"

        #Group        "Video"
        Mode         0666
EndSection

Section "Extensions"
        Option      "Composite" "Disable"
EndSection

I am constantly running into Beryl problems as follows:

Code: Select all

~> beryl-manager
~> X Error: BadDevice, invalid or uninitialized input device 168
  Major opcode:  148
  Minor opcode:  3
  Resource id:  0x0
Failed to open device
X Error: BadDevice, invalid or uninitialized input device 168
  Major opcode:  148
  Minor opcode:  3
  Resource id:  0x0
Failed to open device
**************************************************************
* Beryl system compatibility check                           *
**************************************************************

Detected xserver                                : AIGLX

Checking Display :0 ...

Checking for XComposite extension               : failed

No composite extension
beryl: No composite extension
X Error: BadDevice, invalid or uninitialized input device 168
  Major opcode:  148
  Minor opcode:  3
  Resource id:  0x0
Failed to open device
X Error: BadDevice, invalid or uninitialized input device 168
  Major opcode:  148
  Minor opcode:  3
  Resource id:  0x0
Failed to open device

The driver appears to be working fine:

Code: Select all

~> fglrxinfo
display: :0.0  screen: 0
OpenGL vendor string: ATI Technologies Inc.
OpenGL renderer string: ATI Mobility Radeon X1400
OpenGL version string: 2.0.6334 (8.34.8)

~> glxinfo  | grep dir
direct rendering: Yes
~>

Would you mind either PMing or posting the steps you followed, which driver are you using and relevant sections of your xorg.conf?

Thanks in advance.

[kulivontot]

on the login screen, did you make sure you select xgl as your default renderer? I made that mistake and it took me awhile to figure it out.

[CoffeeBeans]

It even recognized my 1400x1050 screen resolution. I had to edit xorg.conf to get the trackpoint middle button scroll to work. I am going to install slackware -current soon but I was impressed with how well everything worked with kubuntu.

What did you have to edit in order to get the trackpoint middle button scroll to work?

I've just installed Kubuntu to my T43, as far as I can tell, that is the only thing that's not working.

[gastro54]

I am running solely Ubuntu on my T60p with XGL-Beryl.

This is the guide I followed
http://wiki.beryl-project.org/wiki/Inst ... y_with_XGL