Installing Fedora 16 on a ThinkPad T41

NOTE! This is based on Fedora 16 with the default GNOME desktop. Your experience with KDE may be different. Since the video adapter in this ThinkPad is rather dated, Gnome 3 will run in Fallback/Classic mode. Help needed Not all models of this ThinkPad are equal, you may have a different WiFi adapter, or some options I did not have. If you tested them, please add their status down below.

New in this release

Fixed or new in this Fedora release, with regards to this model ThinkPad is the following;

• ..

Regressions;

• ..

Success Chart - Out of the box experience

This machines SMOLT profile is available here.

Item		Working	Notes
Installation	Local CD/DVD install	yes
	Network Installation	yes
	USB Installation	unknown
Display - ATI RV250	Laptop Screen	yes	But corruption during boot
	VGA	yes	Mirror is fine, but extended-desktop results in very slow performance
	DVI	unknown	Requires port-replicator or dock with DVI
	S-Video	unknown
Power Management	Software Suspend (hibernate)	yes
	Suspend to Memory (ACPI sleep)	no	Xserver hang on resume. bugzilla. Boot with radeon.agpmode=1 as a workaround.
Audio		yes
Wireless	WiFi - Atheros AR5212	yes
	WiFi - Intel	unknown (should work)
	Bluetooth	yes
Input	Keyboard	yes
	TrackPoint	yes
	TouchPad	yes
	Extra keys	partial	see ThinkPad Extra keys section below
Ports	Ethernet	yes
	Modem	no	Requires closed-source driver. Install the slmodem rpm from the rpmfusion-nonfree repository, edit /etc/sysconfig/slmodem and set INTERFACE=alsa and ALSA_DEVICE=modem:1 and optionally the country. Then run "chkconfig slmodem on; service slmodem start" and point your dialer to /dev/ttySL0
	Serial	yes	Requires port-replicator or dock
	IrDA	no	Device is detected, but does not work
	PS/2 Keyboard/Mouse	yes	Mouse works, but disables Trackpoint/Touchpad
	Parallel	unknown (should work)	Device is detected
	USB	yes
	PCMCIA/Cardbus	yes
Harddisk Active Protection		no	Fedora ships the hdapsd rpm, but not the tp_smapi kernel module, which is required to read the motion sensor bugzilla
Ultrabay device removal		partial	Eject switch causes udev event, but no default udev script to handle the event to unmount filesystems in time. ata_piix does handle the removal and insertion of ATA devices.
TPM (security subsystem)		yes	Enable security chip in BIOS, then "yum install tpm-tools", then "modprobe tpm_atmel; service tcsd start; tpm_version" works.
Dock removal		unknown

Tested and Verified on Fedora 16

Information in this section has been tested and verified using this Fedora release.

Installation

Installation is straight forward, you can follow the generic Fedora install instructions.

Configuration

Kernel

It is recommended to edit /boot/grub/grub.conf and add hpet=force to the kernel line. This will activate HPET (High Precision Event Timer), which will allow the CPU to sleep for longer periods and save power.

You will also want to add radeon.agpmode=1 to work around a suspend/resume bug by forcing AGP 1X mode. Do note that forcing AGP 1x mode will mean less performance in games that copy large sets of textures around (e.g. Quake, World of Padman).

X Server - ATI RV250

Out of the box external displays (VGA or DVI) should work, and you can switch display modes with the Fn-F7 key combination.

The following issues still exist for single-head (LVDS only) setups

• unknown physical LVDS display size (0mm x 0mm) reported by RandR

And for Multihead or External displays. Some of these issues are likely caused by the limited amount of VRAM available (32MB)

• Multihead causes the desktop to become very slow

NOTE!

The below issues are a left-over from F14. They need to be checked.

• S-Video output is distorted Bugzilla
• Screen rotation does not work in combination with Multihead

ThinkPad Extra keys

ThinkPad keys are handled by a mixture of the thinkpad_acpi, acpi button and acpi dock drivers.

Key	Function	Handled by	Event	Works	Notes
FnF3	lock screen	thinkpad_acpi	yes	yes
FnF4	suspend	acpi button	yes	partial	button works, but suspend fails on resume
FnF5	wireless	thinkpad_acpi	yes	partial	Works as a radio kill switch, kills WiFi but not Bluetooth
FnF7	videomode	thinkpad_acpi	yes	yes
FnF12	hibernate	acpi button	yes	yes
FnHome	brightness up	-	no	yes	no OSD
FnEnd	brightness down	-	no	yes	no OSD
FnPgUp	thinklight	-	no	yes	no OSD
FnSpace	zoom	thinkpad_acpi	yes	no	Known Xorg limitation, scheduled to be fixed with the new XKB2 extension, whenever that may be.
VolumeUp	Volume Up	thinkpad_acpi	no	yes	no OSD. Hardware and Software volume controls are independent from each other.
VolumeDown	Volume Down	thinkpad_acpi	no	yes	no OSD. Hardware and Software volume controls are independent from each other.
Mute	Mute	thinkpad_acpi	no	yes	no OSD. Hardware and Software mute controls are independent from each other.
Access IBM	Vendor key	thinkpad_acpi	yes	partial	No default action, but can be associated in the Gnome keyboard settings
NextTab	Browser Next tab	standard keyboard driver	yes	yes
PreviousTab	Browser Previous tab	standard keyboard driver	yes	yes
Power	Power button	acpi button	yes	yes	Need to press button for ~1 second to trigger a suspend event.
Lid	Lid button	acpi button	yes	yes	Will trigger a suspend event.
Dock	Dock eject button	acpi dock	unknown	unknown	Should cause udev event
Ultrabay	Ultrabay eject switch	acpi dock	udev	no	Causes udev event, but missing handler. See below.

Ultrabay

Ultrabay eject is not handled properly by default. Since there is no undock udev handler. This udev rule and eject script works for me: How to hotswap Ultrabay devices

IrDA

IrDA is detected, but does not work. Part of the problem is that the default Fedora configuration expects to find the IrDA port at /dev/ttyS2, while it should use /dev/ircomm0 instead. This can be fixed in /etc/sysconfig/irda after which the irda service can be started (# systemctl start irda.service).

However, even after this communication with other devices fails. irdadump does not show any output when something like a mobile phone with IrDA is sending data.

Untested on Fedora

The following features where not tested with this Fedora release. If you have tested them, please update the table

• Intel WiFi
• Parallel port
• Dock eject