Linux Mint 8 on T30

[Norway Pad]

Hello

I am in the process of buying a T30, just to put a Linux distro on it, and play around with it. I have previously only worked briefly with Linux, but this represents a world I find it useful to know more about as I am in the process of moving into working with computers and networking for a living. A path where I most likely will meet some Linux or Unix based system on my way.

Question #1: I have been advised that Linux Mint 8 (Helena) is a good starting point for users with only basic knowledge of Linux. Will working with the commands, etc. here, be representative of the more specialized distros? I have run it as a Live CD on the T43 a couple of times, and I really liked the looks. (However, good looks doesn't help much in real life. )

Question #2: Will there be any driver issues with the T30? If some manual tweaking is needed, that's not a big concern, as this will be a part of the learning process. But it's nice to know beforehand if there are any known issues, or if any problems occurring are simply due to my lack of Linux knowledge. The T30 hard drive will be new and blank, but I guess Linux will take care of basic formatting just as good as a Windows installation CD?

Thanks!

[Harryc]

Linux Mint 8 is a great distro for a beginner because most of the configuration and setup is done for you. As far as working with commands, the nice thing about Mint is that there are sufficient GUI menus for everything so that you need not work with the command line if you don't want to. Of course Linux is setup so that if you want to learn the command line, any distro will allow you to do so. Mint is based on Ubuntu and they both have an excellent installation routine that includes a disk partitioner and format utility. Chances are that if there were going to be a driver issue, it would have shown up when you loaded the LiveCD.

[Norway Pad]

Thanks!

Seems like I am good to go. This will be fun, I am looking forward to getting started with this.

The T30 has only 384Mb RAM installed (256Mb + 128Mb). According to the website, Mint will run smoothly with as little as 256Mb, but 512Mb is recommended during installation. I don't know how likely this is to cause any problems(?), but if it does, another 256Mb module seems to be only $16 from Cruicial.

[emeraldgirl08]

Hi Norway. I would suggest getting the extra 256 stick.

If it's not terribly expensive and is affordable your T30 will be thanking you

[Norway Pad]

Yes, you're right. $16 for meeting the min. RAM requirements, why even consider it.. He, he. Ordering a 256 module now.

[ajkula66]

You can probably find a 256MB stick for $5 in the Marketplace so don't waste your money on Crucial...

As for the Mint, I use it myself on several different ThinkPads, and would advise no less than 1GB of RAM, especially on a machine with weak graphics like T30. Other than that, you should be fine.

My $0.02 only...

[Norway Pad]

Ouch. Maxing out the RAM with 2x512Mb modules can throw this little fun project off cost-wise. I didn't pay very much for the T30 to begin with. Luckily I didn't get around to order the 128 module from Crucial today, since I couldn't find my credit card. After reading this, I will put that off and see what I can find here on the forum, and then decide what amount of RAM I go for.

I had the impression that a Linux based OS had very low system requirements, and that the 384Mb installed would be good. But I probably need a little more RAM than I thought.

Thank you for the advices!

[ajkula66]

FWIW, T30 maxes out at 2GB RAM if both slots are working...

One of the reasons that machines of this generation are quite inexpensive is the price of RAM. However, I'm certain that you could find 2x512MB DIMMs for $30 or so shipped, since the cost of a single 1GB stick is usually not much more than that.

Trust me, you'll notice the difference...

[Neil]

I had the impression that a Linux based OS had very low system requirements...

This is true for command line only istalls. When you have a resource hungry GUI, whether it's Windows or KDE/Gnome or some other desktop environement, you will need much more in the way of resources. In my (limited) experience, Linux GUIs are very similar in resource needs, if not a little more so, to Windows.

[Norway Pad]

Yes, it makes sense that a GUI needs some more resources than a command line environment, even in the Linux world. Thank you for the input.

I have had contact with the seller, so the T30 will now be shipped with 1x512Mb module. That should cover the initial requirements, and make it more convenient for me should I chose to upgrade to 1Gb later. Good for me that I mentioned this here, it saved me some hassle.

[Adda]

Radeon M6 and M7 have problems with Ubuntu 9.10 and Mint 8, the T30 has the Radeon M7.
3D graphics and compiz is unstable, and you'll see graphics corruption in certain menus, fx. the system monitor window.
To fix this you need to install the libgl1-mesa-dri, libgl1-mesa-glx and xserver-xorg-video-radeon packages from the Ubuntu Jaunty repository.
Here is a guide:

http://www.ode2.com/?p=44

Also create the file "/etc/X11/xorg.conf" and paste this in to it:

Code: Select all

Section "Device"
        Identifier      "Radeon Mobility"
	Driver		"radeon"
	Option	"AGPFastWrite" "on"
	Option	"AGPMode" "4"
	Option	"DynamicClocks" "on"
	Option	"AccelMethod" "XAA" #important
#	Option	"VideoKey" "0x01" #Fixes video playback in 16-bit color mode
#----------------XAA-------------------------------------------------
	Option 	"EnablePageFlip" "on"
	Option	"XAANoOffscreenPixmaps" "on"
#----------------EXA Use with caution---------------------------------
#	Option	"FBTexPercent" "0"
#	Option	"AccelDFS" "on"
#	Option	"MigrationHeuristic" "smart"
#	Option	"EXAOptimizeMigration" "on"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
        Identifier      "TFT Panel"
        DefaultDepth    24
EndSection

With this configuration your Radeon card should work fine.

[Norway Pad]

This was a bit over my head at this point, but I will for sure look into it if it turns out that I experience graphics problems/issues.

Most appreciated. (Takk så mye for hjelpen! )

[thinkpad1]

Radeon M6 and M7 have problems with Ubuntu 9.10 and Mint 8, the T30 has the Radeon M7.
3D graphics and compiz is unstable, and you'll see graphics corruption in certain menus, fx. the system monitor window.
To fix this you need to install the libgl1-mesa-dri, libgl1-mesa-glx and xserver-xorg-video-radeon packages from the Ubuntu Jaunty repository.

With this configuration your Radeon card should work fine.

Radeon M9 cards seem to have problems with Ubuntu 9.10, too. At least, for my T41, it does. Do you think your configuration (xorg.conf) would work with a M9?

The last time I tried Ubuntu 9.10, I couldn't boot up without using safe mode. A switch to 3D would freeze the entire system. I tried different xorg.conf entries but wasn't satisfied with the various ones I tried so I gave up. I have since installed Debian Squeeze.

[Adda]

Radeon M9 cards seem to have problems with Ubuntu 9.10, too. At least, for my T41, it does. Do you think your configuration (xorg.conf) would work with a M9?

The last time I tried Ubuntu 9.10, I couldn't boot up without using safe mode. A switch to 3D would freeze the entire system. I tried different xorg.conf entries but wasn't satisfied with the various ones I tried so I gave up. I have since installed Debian Squeeze.

Sure, it can't hurt to try it out, the "DynamicClocks" option doesn't work with the karmic radeon drivers though.
Also try downgrading the radeon driver and mesa glx/dri and see if that makes a difference for you, it made a huge difference for my card.

[Norway Pad]

I got the T30 yesterday, so I sat down this morning and installed Mint. Everything worked just fine during the install, and there seems to be no issues with the graphics. Very user friendly and nice all the way.

The problem is that generally everything seems to be extremely slow. Firefox opens up gradually during a 3-4 minute process, while the lighter applications are a little quicker. I have internet connectivity through a wired connection, and it displays the Linux Mint startpage.

With my limited knowledge of Mint, this is the data I managed to get out:

-The system monitor tells me that the CPU is between 60 and 90% when Firefox is open and I am trying to do something. That does however not add up with the sum of the separate processes, which is 11%CPU for Firefox and 25-30% for the Gnome-System-Monitor. With no applications except System Monitor open, the CPU is 30-40%. The fact that everything responds so slow makes this very hard to read out, though.

-The memory usage seems to be stable on 230-240MB out of the 496Mb that the OS can see, while the 1.4GB Swap (Which I assume is Linux's virtual memory) is not used.

So I will say that the system is useless in this state. So if anyone has a top of their head-suggestion what can cause this, it would be nice if you could give any suggestions. I also have to mention that the hard drive was blank when I got the laptop, so I have not seen the laptop work with another OS. But the seller is on this forum, and I trust that I got a working laptop.

[Neil]

Everything worked just fine during the install...[after installation] everything seems to be extremely slow. Firefox opens up gradually during a 3-4 minute process.

Well, I have to say that is NOT typical. Firefox is slow to launch, but not that slow. I'm running CrunchBang (another Ubuntu based distro) on a 600X (500MHz CPU, 578MB RAM), and sometimes when I click Firefox, it takes so long to launch that I sometimes think I must not have really made the menu selection, but then it opens. However, that process is probably less than a minute, maybe more like 20-30 seconds. All other apps open in 2-3 seconds. So, seems something is definitely wrong with your system.

Kind of seems to me that the system is having trouble fetching data from the hard drive. I guess you could experiment with a light distro like BrowserLinux, which only needs 256MB to load the entire OS into RAM. See if Firefox, and other apps load quicker that way compared to your installed Mint. If it is faster, that would tend to put the focus on the hard drive, if not, then we will have to look elsewhere for the problem.

[Adda]

I got the T30 yesterday, so I sat down this morning and installed Mint. Everything worked just fine during the install, and there seems to be no issues with the graphics. Very user friendly and nice all the way.

The problem is that generally everything seems to be extremely slow. Firefox opens up gradually during a 3-4 minute process, while the lighter applications are a little quicker. I have internet connectivity through a wired connection, and it displays the Linux Mint startpage.

With my limited knowledge of Mint, this is the data I managed to get out:

-The system monitor tells me that the CPU is between 60 and 90% when Firefox is open and I am trying to do something. That does however not add up with the sum of the separate processes, which is 11%CPU for Firefox and 25-30% for the Gnome-System-Monitor. With no applications except System Monitor open, the CPU is 30-40%. The fact that everything responds so slow makes this very hard to read out, though.

-The memory usage seems to be stable on 230-240MB out of the 496Mb that the OS can see, while the 1.4GB Swap (Which I assume is Linux's virtual memory) is not used.

So I will say that the system is useless in this state. So if anyone has a top of their head-suggestion what can cause this, it would be nice if you could give any suggestions. I also have to mention that the hard drive was blank when I got the laptop, so I have not seen the laptop work with another OS. But the seller is on this forum, and I trust that I got a working laptop.

You should make sure visual effects are disabled.
To do this, right click on the desktop, select "change desktop background" then click the "visual effects" tab and choose "None".
As far as I remember, Mint 8 and Ubuntu 9.10 uses EXA graphics acceleration by default, this runs horribly on a 16MB video card, but this can be fixed.

To do this open the terminal and type:

Code: Select all

gksu gedit /etc/X11/xorg.conf

This will open a text editor.
Paste this in to it (edited from last post to work with karmic drivers)

Code: Select all

Section "Device"
        Identifier           "Radeon Mobility"
        Driver	            "radeon"
        Option               "AGPFastWrite" "on" #Use with caution, may cause instabillity.
        Option               "AGPMode" "4"
        Option               "AccelMethod" "XAA"
#       Option               "VideoKey" "0x01" #fixes video in 16-bit color mode.
        Option               "EnablePageFlip" "on"
        Option               "XAANoOffscreenPixmaps" "on"
#       Option               "RenderAccel" "off" #Fixes currupted menus.
EndSection

Section "Screen"
        Identifier           "TFT Panel"
        DefaultDepth    24
EndSection

Save and exit.
Now restart X (logout)
You may want to try 16-bit color mode if performance is still poor, to do this change the "DefaultDepth" to 16.
When running in 16-bit mode you need to uncomment the "VideoKey" line to get working video playback (remove the # at the start of the line).
If you have trouble with artifacting windows such as the System Monitor, then uncomment the "RenderAccel" line, this will slow video performance down a bit.

Jeg håber det vil hjelpe.

[Norway Pad]

Wow, thank you. With your help I fixed my T30 during the course of 2 minutes.. It turned out it was the graphics all the time then. I started to suspect that, since the applications seemed to actually run, but they just would not display properly.

The first trick of disabling the visual effects alone, made it a lot better. That made me able to open this forum and copy your code into the text editor. After the reboot, System Monitor didn't display properly anymore like you mentioned, but uncommenting the last instruction and another reboot fixed that too. So now the whole thing behaves totally like I expect it to, and everything seems fine. I am even typing this post from it.

Now I am just off to play around with it and get some experience. Next project will probably be to get the wireless running. If you happen to know about a website explaining the general thing with the code I entered, it would be interesting to know what I actually did here.

Takker så mye, dette var til stor hjelp.

[Adda]

I'm glad it worked, but not surprised, many people have had this problem I hope it will be fixed in the next Ubuntu release.
It seems the problems you had with your T30 are identical to those my FrankenPad A30/p had.

I don't know any sites of that kind off the top of my head, the way I learned to use Linux is by getting things to work.
Find a problem, invent a problem, get used to the amazing flexibility of Linux and set things up to be the way YOU want them to be.
Also this link may make you happy, I know it makes me happy anyways:

http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Category:T30

It's a site dedicated to Linux on ThinkPads, it has tons of good info.
If it was not for the great quality of ThinkPads, this site and ThinkWiki would still be reason enough to buy one.

Also the Linux Mint forum has a how-to section, have a look there, maybe something strikes your fancy.

http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewforum.p ... 8967047e33

Wireless should be simple, just left click the network manager icon in the system tray and go from there.

[Neil]

If I had a better memory, I would not have given the lame advice I did above. Sorry, please excuse me. Now that Adda mentions it, I remember having a similar problem when I installed Ubuntu on my A31P. Only the thing I noticed was that background images would not display. Although the computer would work, I always had a black background on the desktop. Didn't use it enough to tell if anything else was slow, before switching from EXA to XAA acceleration, and all was well then.

So, congrats Norway Pad, and enjoy.

it would be interesting to know what I actually did here

You just changed the method of graphics acceleration. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EXA

[Norway Pad]

He, he. No advices are ever lame.

Thanks for the links from both of you, I will look into this and read about it. The ThinkWiki page is excellent btw, I have even used it to get non-Linux related info a couple of times.

The wireless is activated, and I have filled in SSID and the WPA key, checked Connect Automatically, but it doesn't connect when I unplug the cabled connection. I am however sure it's just a minor issue. I am now in the process of finishing a study for CCENT, so I will probably look more into this next week.

Thanks!

[ThinkRob]

In my (limited) experience, Linux GUIs are very similar in resource needs, if not a little more so, to Windows.

I would disagree with this quite emphatically. GNOME and KDE can be fairly resource-heavy if you use some of the heavier apps and turn on all the eye candy, but for the most part they're a bit better than Windows. When you include desktops like XFCE, there's no contest.

Just as an example: I'm currently running an XFCE desktop with the following running:

- an MP3 player (totem)
- Songbird (a fairly heavyweight jukebox/music management app)
- Iceweasel (aka. Firefox) with 10 tabs open
- an e-mail client (Evolution -- also fairly heavy)
- four terminal emulators
- another browser Epiphany
- a file manager (Thunar)

My current memory consumption is: 479 MB.

For a reference, I can boot to a full desktop with less than 128 MB used.

That said, it's honestly not a fair comparison [Linux vs. Windows]. They both have wildly different approaches to memory management, and the applications that run atop them are so different than trying to boil down resource usage to a single number is a futile exercise at best.

[Norway Pad]

After a couple of days with Linux Mint running on the T30, the experiences are mixed. This is basically a great OS, with a lot of great built in (Free!) stuff and good functionality. But the there have been some problems, and I am posting this in case someone sees a possible pattern of a hardware failure or at least can tell me that this is *not* the way Mint is supposed to behave.

During these days, Linux has frozen 4-5 times, especially when I have been loading websites with a lot of graphics or plugged in USB keys. The first two times this happened, I did hard shutdowns. (Bad, I know.. ) After the second time, Linux reported inconsistency in the file system at reboot, so I blamed the hard shutdown and did a new install. Then Linux worked for a while, and I learned the Alt+SysRq+reisub key sequence to avoid hard shutdowns when it froze. Then suddenly the main menu (Mint's start menu) disappeared, and I got error messages "Unable to mount location" or simply no response at all when I tried to open applications. On the next reboot I got the inconsistency error again. This time I used the command prompt I was provided, and the command fsck seemed to fix things to a state where Linux would load. Right now things work fine, and I am surfing, playing music and connected to a Cisco router IOS through terminal/Minicom.

The repeated file inconsistency error makes me suspect a possible hardware failure, but the problem is that I have so little experience with Linux, so I am confused as to what to expect from it. How likely is something like this to happen?

If it fails one more time, I am tempted to install Win2000 (since the T30 has a COA for that) to be able to work in an environment I am familiar with, and make sure the laptop/hardware works like it's supposed to. Then I could put Linux back as a secondary OS, since Linux seems to have an very easy way of configuring this. Or maybe that can cause other issues?

This turned out to be a long thread with a lot of questions from me. Thank you for any advice on this!

[Adda]

It could still be a graphics problem, in an earlier post I linked to a guide the shows how to install the jaunty GLX and DRI packages.
I'll just link you to the files you need to download and install, they work just like an installer on windows... kinda'.

http://packages.ubuntu.com/jaunty/libgl1-mesa-dri

http://packages.ubuntu.com/jaunty/libgl1-mesa-glx

http://packages.ubuntu.com/jaunty/xserv ... deo-radeon

Download the i386 versions of these packages and install them.
Be ware though mintupdate will want to update these packages and you have to dis-select them every time you update your system.
After installing these packages you can remove the RenderAccel line from xorg.conf as RenderAccel works fine with these older drivers.

Also try installing powernowd.
Just open Synaptic Package Manager and search for powernowd, mark it, click apply, wait for it to finish and reboot.
Later Mint/Ubuntu releases haven't used ondemand CPU frequency scaling by default on old processors, so it could be a heat problem, powernowd fixes that.

If this doesn't work I suggest you try a different HDD.

You could also try Linux Mint 7 (Ubuntu Jaunty), it has no problems with old Radeon cards.

[Norway Pad]

Thanks again. You have been of great help.

I downloaded the 3 files, and installed them like suggested in the earlier post, with the sudo dpkg -i command. Otherwise I got the error that a newer version was installed. After that, I selected "Lock version" in the Synaptic PMngr, then I assume they won't be upgraded(?) At last I put the # back at the beginning RenderAccel line in the xorg.conf file.

I also installed the powernowd, I didn't at all consider that it might run hot.

So we will see if this fixes it. Otherwise I am also suspecting a possible intermittent hardware/HDD failure. According to the seller, the machine was tested with a spare HDD, so that makes sense.

The next time I go to Denmark for a vacation I will buy a beer for you.

[Adda]

Ah yes I forgot installing those files graphically would do that.
The "lock version" feature doesn't work with mintupdate unfortunately, I hope they implement it in the future or give it that feature on it's own.
If you update your system with the "sudo apt-get upgrade" command it will not update those files, remember to run "sudo apt-get update" before the upgrade command.

Actually you can try out vidual effects (compiz) now as the GLX/DRI (3D accelration) packages you installed are stable with your card.
To play around with 3D performance try installing "driconf" "sudo apt-get install driconf" or through Synaptic Package Manager.

Yeah that makes it sound fairly likely that it's the HDD causing the trouble, that explains the filesystem errors as well.

Thanks for the offer, I do this for fun though

[Norway Pad]

Just thought I would give a quick feedback. The laptop seems far more stable this point, and it has stayed on for a long time without freezing or getting file errors. Just to push things a little, I played a DVD while plugging a large USB drive in, and later I had the DVD playing while letting a graphic extensive web page open. And it didn't freeze. So I guess the graphics issue probably influenced things a bit beyond what I suspected they would.

I will still watch it for a while, but I think I am on the right way, and I can start playing around a little with Mint now.

The wireless issue seems to be that the card simply doesn't support our WPA security. I have the WPA option in the wireless profile, but when it tries to actually connect, it works for a while, then I am asked for the pass phrase and I am only given WEP alternatives. I can attach to one of my neighbors unsecured wireless though, so the wireless does work.

Thanks again!

[Adda]

Good to hear

I'll try to remember posting my findings with Linux Mint 9 when it gets released, I really hope this video card mess will be solved.

[emeraldgirl08]

Thanks Adda!

This will help many people!

[Temetka]

With regards to your WPA issues I can offer the following suggestion.

Turn off WPA.

Hide your SSID (i.e. do not broadcast it)

Turn on MAC address authentication in your Wifi router.

If you must encrypt at this point (not terribly necessary for a home connection) then go for WEP or upgrade your wifi card.

With MAC address filtering and no SSID broadcast your network will be mostly secure from script kiddies and war drivers. It won't stop a dedicated hacker, but then again most people like me who hack wifi don't bother with man in the middle attack and TCP redirects against a home user.

In other words you should be good to go.

Also if you have the time and knowing the age of the T30 series, I would suggest opening up the laptop. Then blow it out with some compressed air and if it is running super hot (as a lot of mobile P4's tend to) repaste the CPU and lower your operating temps.

The T30 is still a great system and since you mentioned getting into networking with your CCENT, then it is also a great system for learning Linux on.

If you need help with anything Cisco related drop me a PM and I will be glad to assist you.

Finally, keep in mind that the great folks over at LinuxMint have a wonderful forum that I would suggest you join up with. They can help you with problems, questions and whatnot. We can too, but their forum is specifically dedicated to that specific distro.