Installing Ubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy Gibbon) on a ThinkPad X61

Preface

This pages applies to Ubuntu 7.10 Tribe 3 and should be updated as soon as a newer release is available.

If you do not own a Ultra-Bay docking station you should keep a small Windows partition to (eventually) run BIOS updates. External USB-CDROMs do not wok. I don't know of any way to update the BIOS without having Windows installed.

Installation

Some tutorials state you have to activate the SATA compatibility mode in the BIOS (Hit F1 when booting, choose Config -> Serial ATA -> Mode), but I did not touch that setting before installation and everything worked fine.

I used the Desktop-Live D for installation which even activated Desktop effects by default.

Wireless

The Intel a/b/g/n (IPW4965) card requires the iwlwifi drivers from Intel ([1]). I tried different versions, but they all crashed my machine when actually joining a network.

Note: scanning (iwlist wlan0 scan) works fine