Installing Ubuntu 6.06 Flight 6 on a ThinkPad X60s

Installation of Ubuntu 6.06 Flight 6 on a X60s (model 1705-24U)

Summary

What works out of the box

• Network adapter (Intel PRO/1000)
• Graphics adapter and accelerator (Intel GMA 950)
• USB (boots from external USB CD-RW/DVD-ROM)
• Firewire
• Lid switch (LCD off when lid closed)
• Volume control, keyboard light and screen brightness control
• Hard disk laptop-mode
• LCD brightness auto-adjusts depending on AC or battery operation
• Fn buttons generate ACPI events

What needs to be fixed

• Wireless
• Dual core processor
• Processor frequency scaling
• Suspend to RAM
• Suspend to disk
• SD card reader
• Sound

Installing Ubuntu 6.06 Flight 6

IBM Rescue and Recovery disks (seven CDs) can be created using preinstalled Windows: All programs > ThinkVantage > Create Recovery Media. However, as long as recovery partition (called predesktop in BIOS) is left intact, system can be restored to factory default without having recovery CDs.

Ubuntu Flight 6 installer boots normally using external (USB) IBM DVD-ROM/CD-RW. SATA disk is recognised, Xorg 7.0, gdm and Gnome start normally. Xorg is configured with i810. DRI works (glxinfo|grep rendering). Networking works, eth0 uses e1000. ALSA sound worked after original installation, but at some point it stopped working as Dapper instantly had many updates, including kernel.

Fixes after installation

• SMP kernel. Flight 6 installs -386 kernel without SMP support. apt-get install of -686-smp fixes that. /proc/cpuinfo reports CPU0 and CPU1 present.
• Wi-Fi. Intel 3945ABG wireless works after downloading driver from SourceForge (http://ipw3945.sourceforge.net/) and following supplied README and INSTALL.
• Processor C-states (high pitch noise when on battery).

Unsolved

• Suspend to RAM
• Suspend to disk
• Sound

Not tested

• PCMCIA slots
• Modem
• Embeded Security Subsystem (TCPA)
• Active Protection System (HDAPS)