Installing Fedora 8 on a ThinkPad 600X

Introduction

Fedora 8 works as well as any modern Linux distribution on a 600X. The processor, memory and expansion capabilities (such as WiFi) make it a very useful (but not very powerful) tool for work and play.

Pre-installation

Hard Disk

For this installation, I'm going to use the entire drive for Fedora. There are many good resources on partitioning your drive and configuring your machine to boot multiple operating systems. Please read those if you want such a setup. If this is your first experience with partition and/or Linux, you may want to experiment on a separate hard drive.

The hard drive can have a dramatic effect on performance of Fedora. Faster rotation speed in particular is very noticeable, but a larger drive cache also has an effect. The 600X can use drives up to 120GB in size and will benefit from rotation speeds of 5400 or 7200RPM.

Memory

Fedora 8 prefers that your machine has 512MB RAM for a typical install. I know it can work with less, but the installation and other operations may be slow. Consider maximizing the RAM in your 600X with two 256MB PC100 SO-DIMM sticks. Combined with the 64MB on-board memory, you'll have 576MB RAM and enough to install Fedora and run several applications simultaneously later.

Installation

Installation Media

Every 600X came with a drive that will read CD-R media, so I used the i686 Live CD for my installation. Some machines did come with DVD-ROM drives which should read DVD-R media, and such a drive can certainly be added to any 600X. Feel free to use the Live DVD or Install DVD images if you like, but the steps for installation will be different. Configuration steps will be the same.

Booting

Boot the Live CD. The first time I use any Fedora media that I create, I like to test that it was burned correctly. If you want to do that, interrupt the countdown with a key press and select Verify and boot Fedora-8-Live-i686. If the test fails, verify your download was good using SHA1SUM and burn another disc. The test took about six minutes on my 600X.

Login in as fedora or wait 60 seconds for automatic login. At this point, the machine may seem very slow, but everything speeds up dramatically when running from the hard drive. You'll be presented with the Gnome desktop. Since you're reading this installation guide, let's get to the install.

Steps to Install

• Double-click Install to Hard Drive. The installer appears.
• Click Next. You are asked to select the appropriate keyboard.
• Select your keyboard and click Next. You are presented with partitioning options.
• For this installation, I chose Remove all partitions on selected drives and create default layout. Feel free to choose other options and partition as you see fit. Select your boot media, which likely has only one option. Note that your hard drive is called sda. Click Next. Depending on your choice, you may be asked to confirm removing partitions. Click Yes. You are presented with a map.
• Select your time zone, and whether or not you want the system clock to use UTC. If you're using only Linux, I suggest you turn that on. If you are dual-booting with Windows, you may wish to turn it off. Click Next.
• Enter and confirm a password for the root account. Click Next. You are presented with one last note about log files and other details. Nothing has been changed on your hard drive up to this point, and you can quit if you want.
• To begin the process, click Next. A progress bar appears.

Several things happen here. The hard drive is partitioned and formatted, the live image is copied to the hard drive, and some configuration is done. "Congratulations, the installation is complete." Click Close. Click System->Shut Down and select Restart. Once the ThinkPad logo appears, you can eject the CD. (If you miss that step and the CD boots, just interrupt the countdown again and select Boot from local drive.)

Notes

• These errors appear during boot:

pci 0000:00:01.0: Error creating sysfs bridge symlink, continuing...
pci 0000:00:02.0: Error creating sysfs bridge symlink, continuing...
pci 0000:00:02.1: Error creating sysfs bridge symlink, continuing...

• This appears during boot if the machine is powered with AC during boot:

cpufreq: change failed with new_state 1 and result 2