Installing Fedora 11 on a ThinkPad T41

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Revision as of 13:20, 27 April 2009 by Tonko (Talk | contribs) (Success Chart)
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Success Chart

Item Working Notes
Installation Local CD/DVD install yes
Network Installation yes
USB Installation yes
Display Laptop Screen yes Occasional corruption may occur
VGA no currently broken
DVI no currently broken. Requires port-replicator or dock with DVI
S-Video no No, this is currently broken with KMS
Power Management Software Suspend (hibernate) yes
Suspend to Memory (ACPI sleep) yes
Audio yes
Wireless 802.11 - Atheros yes
802.11 - Intel unknown
Bluetooth yes
Extra Buttons Keyboard Section partial thinkpad_acpi, acpi button and acpi dock driver
Ports Ethernet yes
Modem no Requires closed-source driver
Serial yes Requires port-replicator or dock
IrDA unknown Device is detected
PS/2 Keyboard/Mouse unknown (should work) Requires port-replicator or dock
Parallel unknown (should work) Device is detected
USB yes
PCMCIA/Cardbus yes
Harddisk Active Protection no
Ultrabay device removal no Does not work reliably, due to missing dock eject detection

Tested and Verified on Fedora 11

Information in this section has been tested and verified using Fedora 11.

Installation

Installation is straight forward; you can follow the generic Fedora install instructions.

Configuration

X Server

Basic X server functionality should work out of the box on the ThinkPad LCD (LVDS), as long as no external displays are attached at boot. Occasional screen corruption can occur, such as a corrupted background image or with the vertical scroll bars.

Fedora 11 uses KMS (Kernel Mode Setting) by default, and this causes problems for now with external displays. Neither VGA or DVI external displays work properly, and can cause severe screen distortion when booting with an external VGA display attached.

On the up side, with KMS the maximum virtual display size is now 4096x4096 (2048x2048 without KMS), which should allow extended desktop once the issues with external display support are sorted.

Also, with KMS Svideo output is not supported for now.

These issues have been reported to Red Hat bugzilla.

Desktop Effects

Enabling 'Desktop Effects' (compiz) cause the Xserver to restart

Wireless Network

Both the Intel and Atheros wireless should work out of the box.

I tested the Atheros and it worked. Intel was not tested.

ThinkPad keys

ThinkPad keys are handled by a mixture of the thinkpad_acpi, acpi button and acpi dock drivers.

Key Function Handled by Seen by HAL Works Notes
Fn-F3 lock screen thinkpad_acpi yes yes
Fn-F4 suspend acpi button yes yes
Fn-F5 wireless thinkpad_acpi yes no
Fn-F7 videomode thinkpad_acpi yes no causes a brief flash of the display
Fn-F12 hibernate acpi button yes yes
Fn-Home brightness up - no yes changing thinkpad_acpi hotkey_mask, causes HAL events. But sysfs backlight brightness value does not change, so OSD is wrong.
Fn-End brightness down - no yes changing thinkpad_acpi hotkey_mask, causes HAL events. But sysfs backlight brightness value does not change, so OSD is wrong.
Fn-PgUp thinklight - no yes changing thinkpad_acpi hotkey_mask, causes HAL events. No OSD in any case.
Fn-Space zoom thinkpad_acpi yes no
VolumeUp Volume Up - no yes changing thinkpad_acpi hotkey_mask, causes HAL events. But OSD is wrong
VolumeDown Volume Down - no yes changing thinkpad_acpi hotkey_mask, causes HAL events. But OSD is wrong
Mute Mute - no yes changing thinkpad_acpi hotkey_mask, causes HAL events and OSD. works as a on/off toggle
Access IBM Vendor key thinkpad_acpi yes no
NextTab Browser Next tab standard keyboard driver yes yes
PreviousTab Browser Previous tab standard keyboard driver yes yes
Power Power button acpi button yes yes
Lid Lid button acpi button yes yes
Dock Dock eject button acpu dock unknown unknown Should be handled by ACPI dock driver
Ultrabay Ultrabay eject switch acpi dock no no Handled by ACPI dock driver, but does not work

By default the Fn-F4 (suspend) and Fn-F12 (hibernate) keys work. As do the brightness/thinklight and volume/mute keys but the key presses are not seen by HAL, so no nice onscreen display.

Fn-F3, Fn-F5, Fn-F7 and Fn-Space have no effect as HAL

Untested on Fedora 11