Installing Fedora on an X200

Installation

The X200 lacks an internal optical drive, unless you get the media slice. However, USB devices are bootable so you can use an external USB CD/DVD drive. You can also use a USB hard-drive containing ISO images if you want to boot a small install image and not burn a full DVD or CD-ROM set.

The standard Fedora 9 i386 and x86_64 kernels do not yet support the network devices, so a network-based installation is impossible.

USB Boot

It seems as though I can only boot from an external USB CD/DVD drive when it is connected to one of the ports on the left-hand side of the machine, and not the port on the right-hand side. I do not know if this is expected or if it indicates a BIOS flaw.

SATA

The internal SATA hard disk is detected and supported during the Fedora 9 x86_64 install.

Intel Gigabit Ethernet LAN

The drivers in the Fedora 9 installation media (and updates repo, as of 2008-09-03) do not detect the LAN controller.

Intel 5100 WLAN

The drivers in the Fedora 9 installation media do not detect the WLAN controller. The drivers in the updated kernel (as of 2008-09-03) detect the controller, but do not function properly. I was unable to associate with a completely open (no WEP or WPA) access point.

Graphics

The integrated graphics is detected and supported during the Fedora 9 x86_64 install.

Trackpoint

The integrated trackpoint pointing device (the "pointy-stick") is detected and supported during the Fedora 9 x86_64 install.

Sound

The integrated sound is detected and supported during the Fedora 9 x86_64 install.

ACPI Power Management

The basic suspend and hibernate appear to function with Fedora 9 x86_64, though I have only tested it minimally.