Installing Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy Heron) on a ThinkPad T60
Contents
Features
Installation
my thinkpad: T60 with intel graphic (1680x1050 display), atheros wireless card, 2GHz intel core 2.
poliahu $ lspci 00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Mobile 945GM/PM/GMS, 943/940GML and 945GT Express Memory Controller Hub (rev 03) 00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Mobile 945GM/GMS, 943/940GML Express Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 03) 00:02.1 Display controller: Intel Corporation Mobile 945GM/GMS/GME, 943/940GML Express Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 03) 00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) High Definition Audio Controller (rev 02) 00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) PCI Express Port 1 (rev 02) 00:1c.1 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) PCI Express Port 2 (rev 02) 00:1c.2 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) PCI Express Port 3 (rev 02) 00:1c.3 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) PCI Express Port 4 (rev 02) 00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI Controller #1 (rev 02) 00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI Controller #2 (rev 02) 00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI Controller #3 (rev 02) 00:1d.3 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI Controller #4 (rev 02) 00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller (rev 02) 00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge (rev e2) 00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801GBM (ICH7-M) LPC Interface Bridge (rev 02) 00:1f.1 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) IDE Controller (rev 02) 00:1f.2 SATA controller: Intel Corporation 82801GBM/GHM (ICH7 Family) SATA AHCI Controller (rev 02) 00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) SMBus Controller (rev 02) 02:00.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation 82573L Gigabit Ethernet Controller 03:00.0 Ethernet controller: Atheros Communications, Inc. AR5212 802.11abg NIC (rev 01) 15:00.0 CardBus bridge: Texas Instruments PCI1510 PC card Cardbus Controller poliahu $
I booted on the Hardy Heron alpha 4 liveCD and installed from there on a 5GB primpary ext3 partition.
No problem whatsoever during liveCD session and install. Everything went smooth. I have my home on a separate partition of course, and I created a "hardy" user just to play around.
Known Issues
Hardy comes with the newest Xorg:
[wait, I need to dump the Xorg version, but right now I'm booted in gutsy]
and with X autoconfiguration (as far as I understand). So hardy installs a xorg.conf, but it is barebones. Most of the config is handled internally by the new server, and is handled fairly well. My screen and card were recognized, it configured it with the correct driver and resolution. I had 3D accel out of the box too, so that compiz was working without any tinkering. All good up to there.
The only problems I encountered in X were: (1) the trackpad was working but the scroll function was not (in previous version of ubuntu, moving your finger up and down in the right part of the trackpad would provide this functionality, here not). This is apparently a known regression (can't find the reference, but read it in some launchpad or ubuntu forum post). As it is a known regression, I assume it will be fixed for the final hardy release (?). (2) The intel driver config adopted by default by the new xorg uses EXA acceleration, which is newer and performs overall better than the XAA. The problem is that on some intel hardware, it performs quite poorly for text processing. I noticed that immediately: when I had no window, or only a terminal around, compiz would be its usual smooth (e.g. when rotating cube or moving windows). With a few windows open, with text (e.g. firefox), compiz would be very jumpy / choppy. Copying over the xorg.conf form my gutsy installation and adding:
Option "AccelMethod" "XAA"
in the "Device" section (where the video intel driver is specified) solved the problem, and now I'm back to the old smooth compiz animations.
Using this -otherwise unmodified xorg.conf- had the side effect of killing my trackpad entirely. Now It's not responsive at all. Again, I expect these things will be ironed out for the final release. Another possibility would be to only add the XAA AccelMethod in the existing xorg.conf (hardy default), but I did not know nor researched how to do that.
another problem I noticed was that the multimedia keys were not operating in exaile. I haven't tested them in rythmbox or other apps.
Apart from that, everything I tested was fine: display, network (wired and wireless), sound (pulseaudio sounds noticeably better, but may be it's self induced), suspend (which worked for a couple of tests, and then I installed uswsusp -s2ram- 0.8, which has always been more reliable for me), haven't tried hibernate, nor bluetooth.
