Installing Ubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy Gibbon) on a ThinkPad R61

This wiki is about the R61 series laptops which come with a 14.1 inch widescreen lcd & Intel graphics cards inbuilt. The live cd will detect the correct resolution and color depth.

Compiz

Default installation will not be able to enable compiz becasue of the way the Intel chipsets work. I have found the following script to get around it (credits to the original author). Save the file as .sh and run it once to confirm you can get the compiz effects. You can add the file to your "Gnome Session" for subsequent reboots.

#!/bin/sh
SKIP_CHECKS=yes compiz --replace

I found that any program that uses Xv video will glich or just crash with compiz enabled, but not without it (The astronomy package "Stellarium" is one example).

Solution is to run from the command line:

gstreamer-properties

switch to the video tab, and set the default output to Xwindows system (No Xv). This will use a bit more processor power playing movies, but you get your video playback + compiz.

Wireless

The wireless works out of the box with the Atheros driver.

Sound

Sound card drivers are loaded out of the box but the default sound device is Microphone for some reason. You can see this by opening up the Volume Control window by right clicking on the taskbar volume applet and selecting "Open Volume Control". Because of this the special Volume buttons will also change the volume of the Microphone. To change this, click on System-> Preferences -> Sound and set Default Mixer Track to PCM.

Touchpad/Trackpoint

Works out of the box, including thinkpad side-scrolling.

Networking

Works out of the box.

Modem

Have not tested.

Hard disk

It has been found that Gutsy will spin up and down your laptop hdd far too many times, this affects the life of the disk. You can perform these steps to avoid it.

hdparm -B 255 /dev/sdX

[1]

hdaps module does not load, will be fixed in next kernel update: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/133636

Misc Hardware

The webcam / camera works (tested w/ snapshot) with the xfce windows manager (xubuntu), but seems to have some problems under the default ubuntu. Bluetooth works from a default install. ThinkLight works.