Installing Ubuntu 5.10 on a ThinkPad R50e

This page aims to illustrate issues and (hopefully) solutions encountered while installing Ubuntu 5.10 (Breezy Badger) on a Levono ThinkPad R50e.

The configuration of the ThinkPad used is as following:

 Levono ThinkPad R50e 1834-A67 (a Taiwan-specific model?)
   Intel Celeron M 360 (Dothan 1.4GHz)
   Intel 855GM Chipset
   14' XGA (1024x768) TFT
   Intel PRO/Wireless 2200BG Mini-PCI Adapter
   DVD±RW Writer (Not removable)
   Windows XP Home

This page is still under construction.

Installation

Installing the OS was fairly straight forward. I put in the Ubuntu install disc and pressed F12 to bring up the booting device menu. At the partitioning menu I chose to let Ubuntu resize the existing NTFS partition and create partitions it needed automatically. Everything went well and I was able to boot into both Windows XP Home and the Rescue and Recovery partition from GRUB without any extra effort. It should be noted, however, that I did this on a brand new machine. So if you had made changes to your MBR or partitioning table, you might get different results.

Networking

The Ethernet interface works right after installation as expected (eth1). The Intel PRO/Wireless 2200BG Mini-PCI Adapter was detected (eth0), but probably only works with open networks (I didn't have one to test). As my wireless network (Apple Airport Express) uses WPA/WPA2, I went straight on to make ipw2200 work with wpa_supplicant.

I do not use the built-in modem, so I didn't bother testing it. However, it was suggested here that Conexant's driver works.

References

Installing Ubuntu Breezy Badger (5.10) on ThinkPad R50e (German)