Installing Ubuntu 10.04 (Lucid Lynx) on a ThinkPad T510

Success Chart - Out of the box experience

I had posted a fedora 13 howto for this same model on kde. Unfortunately results were not good and i decided to change to Ubuntu 10.04 LTS edition. Worked marvelously!

Item		Working	Notes
Installation	Local CD/DVD install	yes
	Network Installation	unknown
	USB Installation	yes
Display	Laptop Screen (15.6" TFT display with 1920x1080(FHD) or 1600x900(HD+))	yes	See notes below
	VGA	yes
Power Management	Software Suspend (hibernate)	yes
	Suspend to Memory (ACPI sleep)	yes
Audio		yes
Wireless	WiFi - ThinkPad 11b/g/n Wireless LAN Mini-PCI Express Adapter II	yes	Has some small issue. see notes below
	Bluetooth	yes	It did detect my HTC legend and i transferred some files from it.
Input	Keyboard	yes
	(TrackPoint / Touchpad combo)	yes
	Extra keys	partial	see ThinkPad Extra keys section below
	Fingerprint	yes	See notes below
Ports	Ethernet	yes
	Modem	unknown
	Serial	unknown
	ExpressCard_slot	unknown
	PS/2 Keyboard/Mouse	unknown	Requires dock. I do not have a doc. Maybe someone with it can test and edit this page
	Parallel	unknown
	USB	yes
	Firewire_Port	unknown
	PCMCIA/Cardbus	yes
[Multicard reader 5-in-1 (MMC, MS, MS Pro, SD, SDHC)]		yes	2GB SanDisk Ultra II SD flash card automatically detected.
2.0MP webcamera		yes	Tested with Skype. Works perfectly.
Harddisk Active Protection		yes	See notes below
TPM (security subsystem)		unknown
Dock removal		unknown

Tested and Verified on ubuntu 10.04

Information in this section has been tested and verified using ubuntu 10.04.

Installation

Installation is very easy and a breeze. The system boots really fast. Even faster then windows. I was like WOW!!! However as the default installation came with windows and drive was not partitioned, i had to manually resize the partitions. I used the following guide to partition the HDD

ATTENTION!

Be careful! Make sure you have make your recovery disks and Boot disk first prior to partitioning. These disks are made in windows itself. In my case i had 2 recovery DVD's and 1 boot cd. Also DO NOT delete the recovery partition or driver partition.

Updating

I recommend you update your system after installation to get all the bugs sorted out

Configuration

Kernel

..

Issues

NVIDIA

Update the driver by selecting System-->Administration-->Hardware drivers. You will be prompted if you want to upgrade to the relevant driver, Accept and restart. There is a bug in ubuntu in that the startup and shutdown logos get blurred. Beats me why they have not sorted it out yet but its not "important" as the logo only comes up when you start or shut down the system.

Backlight controls are not functional while running nVidia driver 195. They can be controlled by either changing brightness in a VT or adding the following to the "Devices" section of /etc/X11/xorg.conf

   Option "RegistryDwords" "EnableBrightnessControl=1"

Reboot and the keys now work

WiFi

The wifi driver with the old kernel before updating is unstable. it hardly detects access points and if it does it continuously disconnects. The problem is solved simply by upgrading your system to the latest kernel. # sudo aptitude update

# sudo aptitude upgrade

Then reboot and the wifi card works flawlessly.

FingerPrint Reader

Finally worked. It was so easy.

1. Download the driver from here Protector Suite for Linux 2. To enroll type

# enroll

A graphical fingerprint program will come up where you just select which finger(s) you want to enroll.

For PAM, Add this as the first line to PAM configuration files: /etc/pam.d/sudo

auth sufficient pam_upek.s

Although it should be there already.

Done now when you log out, reboot, type a sudo command all you need to do is swipe your finger and press the ENTER key:).

ThinkPad Extra keys

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

Key	Function	Handled by	Event	Works	Notes
FnF2	Lock the computer	-	unknown	yes
FnF3	Select Power Plan	-	unknown	yes
FnF4	Put Computer to sleep/standby mode	-	unknown	yes
FnF5	wireless	-	unknown	yes	Switches the bluetooth off
FnF6	Change camera/audio settings	-	unknown	yes
FnF7	Switch Display output location	-	unknown	yes
FnF8	Change ultranav device settings	-	unknown	yes
FnF12	Put computer in hibernation mode	-	unknown	unknown
FnHome	brightness up	-	unknown	yes
FnEnd	brightness down	-	unknown	yes
FnPgUp	thinklight	-	unknown	yes
FnSpace	zoom	-	unknown	unknown
FnPrtSc	Have the same function as the SysRq key.	-	unknown	unknown
FnScrLk	Enable or disable the numeric keypad.	-	unknown	yes
FnPause	Have the same function as the Break key.	-	unknown	unknown
ThinkVantage	Vendor key	-	unknown	unknown
VolumeUp	Volume Up	-	unknown	yes
VolumeDown	Volume Down	-	unknown	yes
VolumeMute	Volume Mute	-	unknown	yes
MicMute	Microphone Mute	-	unknown	no
NextTab	Browser Next tab	-	unknown	yes
PreviousTab	Browser Previous tab	-	unknown	yes
Power	Power button	-	unknown	yes
Lid	Lid button	-	unknown	yes