Installing Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy Heron) on a ThinkPad T61

Features

Open Source Intel Wifi Driver

Intel has created a new Linux Wifi driver project for Intel Wireless cards, "Iwlwifi". This driver is Open Source and no longer requires the Intel daemon to run in addition. This project will support the T61's Wifi Intel 3945ABG network adapter and Intel 4965AGN network adapter.

An automatic migration will occur when upgrading from Ubuntu 7.10 to Ubuntu 8.04. However, there is a caveat to be aware of:

• The new driver wants to name the interface wlan0 (by default -- you can rename it to anything you want), and requires a different entry in /etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules, which handles the naming of interfaces. Simply edit this file and delete your old entry for the ipw3945 driver, then unload/reload the new driver, or simply reboot. A new entry will automatically be created that is appropriate for the new driver. Here's an example of the lines to delete:

# PCI device 0x8086:0x4227 (ipw3945)
SUBSYSTEM=="net", DRIVERS=="?*", ATTRS{address}=="00:1b:77:a4:0e:2f", NAME="eth1"

If you need to perform a manual migration, the Ubuntu Help Community has written some documentation that will make this very easy to do.

Compiz and XV Playback on Intel GM965/GL960

With Ubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy Gibbon) you currently have to choose between using Compiz and working video playback using XV. On 8.04 (Hardy Heron) alpha 5 you can play videos using XV under compiz, it works right out of the box using the Live-CD.

Suspend with Nv140m

Suspend may not work even after editing acpi-support. Enable bluetooth (Fn+F5) may result in a successful suspend.

Hal "S3 BIOS" parameter issue!

After doing the changes to the /etc/default/acpi-support file (described here), I for one, managed to have stable suspend support by creating a new file called: /etc/hal/fdi/information/lenovo.fdi with the following contents:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?> <!-- -*- SGML -*- -->
<deviceinfo version="0.2">
  <device>
    <match key="system.hardware.vendor" string="LENOVO">
        <merge key="power_management.quirk.s3_bios" type="bool">false</merge>
    </match>
  </device>
</deviceinfo>

NOTE!

The problem (after reading the HAL and pm-utils documentations) is the fact that (as far as I can tell) the T61 Lenovo doesn't allow the S3 BIOS to be called *during* suspend/resume, which HAL seems to do by default (who knows, maybe there are T61s out there that do work with this default)! This did not seem to be necessary for previous versions of Ubuntu. Also note that I have an NVIDIA card so I have no idea what to do for Intel versions.The change should also be resistant to HAL and pm-utils upgrades.

TrackPoint

The TrackPoint works out of the box, but does not scroll. To enable using the middle mouse button to scroll, replace the "Configured Mouse" section in /etc/X11/xorg.conf with the following:

Section "InputDevice"
	Identifier	"Trackpoint"
	Driver		"mouse"
	Option		"CorePointer"
	Option		"Device"		"/dev/input/mice"
	Option		"Protocol"		"ImPS/2"
	Option		"ZAxisMapping"		"4 5"
	Option		"Emulate3Buttons"	"true"
	Option		"EmulateWheel"          "true"
	Option		"EmulateWheelButton"    "2"
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