Installing Ubuntu on a ThinkPad T21
Ubuntu 6.06 Desktop
The Ubuntu 6.06 Desktop CD is both a Live CD and a installation CD. You can boot directly from the CD and it will run Ubuntu in live mode in X Windows so you can play with it. Your hard drive will not be changed at all in this mode. You can then choose to install it to your hard dirve by clicking the install icon on your desktop. After going through 5-6 screens and 15 minutes later, you are done.
Well, things are always more difficult than I thought. My Thinkpad froze a few times during installation, when it tries to boot into X windows. Later I found out that Ubuntu 6.06 Desktop has trouble with the S3 Savage video hardware on my thinkpad. The only solution at the install stage is to keep rebooting from the CD. I tried to boot 5-6 times, and finally got though.
I did the following to get things working.
1) Make sure that the ethernet port on your Thinkpad T21 is connected to the internet. My Thinkpad froze again halfway through copying files to the hard drive. I guess it was trying to find some files on the internet, so I plugged in the ethernet cable and reinstalled the OS. My guess was right, and the second installation went through smoothly.
After installation. Ubuntu will often freeze when it tries to boot into X windows. My Thinkpad T21 kept getting stuck on a blank screen with "_" on the upper left corner. Here is a solution that worked for me:
1) Choose Safe Boot instead of Normal Boot. It is the second line on the boot menu.
2) Click Applications > Accessories > Terminal
3) Type: Sudo -H -s (This command gives you power to modify the xorg.conf file later.)
4) Type: gedit /etc/X11/xorg.conf (Make sure that the "X" in "X11" is capital X, and the "11" is number "eleven" not lowercase "LL".)
5) Add the following two lines into the "Device" section of your xorg.conf.
Option "BusType" "PCI" Option "DmaMode" "None"
6) Save the file. Done! Your Thinkpad won't freeze anymore when booting into X Windows.
The X tip also applies to the T20, and probably the T22 and T23 as well.
paulistano says:
I had a black screen problem on starting ubuntu and resolved it with changing
"DefaultDepth 16" to "DefaultDepth 24" in the xorg.conf
Crapulon says:
I also found it is a good idea to have "acpi=off apm=on" as GRUB kernel options. Without this Ubuntu could not recognise the Ethernet port or internal modem. Edit the GRUB menu.lst file so that update-grub automagically adds these options. To do this:
1) Type: sudo vim /boot/grub/menu.lst
2) Find the section titled ## Start Default Options ##, then add the two new options to the line that begins with "# kopt=" eg. in my menu.lst file the new line (line 66) reads:
# kopt=root/dev/hda1 ro acpi=off apm=on
3) Write the changes and exit vim.
4) Now use update-grub to rewrite the boot options
Type: sudo update-grub
Reboot, and check that all is well.
