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I know everyone is tired of ubuntu rah-rah-rahs -- but
ubuntu works perfect on my ibm x31 (acpi/wifi/ect)--


-greg

Yeh, Ubuntu also woks great (except wireless of course) with my 12.1" iBook.

Nice article, but very negative view of 802.11x - Data rates??? He constantly transfers huge files over the network all the time then, because the Internet (I have 2Mb ADSL) runs top speed over my 11b network, no problems.

As for security a simple bit of WPA/WEP and common sense solve those problems...

Ben

For those sick of the Ubuntu rah-rah-rah's:

I downloaded the latest Ubuntu live CD (at the time) a couple of months ago and it had booting problems and didn't set up my wireless card (which Knoppix always did). This was on a T20. I'll probably try again in a few months.

I got a Toshiba M200 tablet PC. First thing I did was install Gentoo Linux with Gnome 2.10. Everything works perfectly fine: atheros madwifi wireless driver, wacom driver for pen/tablet function, writing recognition with xstroke, gok and xvkbd on-screen keyboard, screen rotation, hibernate with swsuspend2 and hibernate-script, automatic cpu frequency scaling and manual with the gnome applet, speech recognition with cvoicecontrol, sphinx, xvoice, etc. etc. This machine rocks!

"I recommend refurbished notebooks."

I recommand New notebook , with a full warranty and a Default GNU/Linux system.

Winbook 699 : Subtotal: $699.00

http://www.winbook.com/store/personalize_step2.phtml?PkgId=x_705806

eRacks/SUBNOTE : 995$

http://www.eracks.com/products/Laptops/config?sku=SUBNOTE&sessi...

Balance 14.1 from Walmart : $498.00

If your living in France :

HP Compaq laptop + 10.1 Mandriva Linux! : 749,00-EUR

----------

http://tuxmobil.org/mylaptops.html

http://www.linux-on-laptops.com/ibm.html

I also prefer a new notebook if the prize is right.

Gentoo, for instance, requires a user to be added to the wheel account before that user can become root.

You mean you can only su as user if you are in the wheel group?Isn't that always the case?

You mean you can only su as user if you are in the wheel group?Isn't that always the case?

nor really but can be enforced by PAM

...get a refurbished mac, and not have to do anything to get it to work properly. Close lid, sleep. Open lid, instant on. No scripts necessary. A used powerbook is only $400 on ebay, and it comes with OS X.

This guy has obviously never setup his own wireless. His fears about wireless are pretty funny but obviously from the point of view of a uninformed person. Never heard of WPA or WEP or limiting the amount of addresses your router will hand out?

I recommand New notebook , with a full warranty and a Default GNU/Linux system.

You're comparing apples and oranges if you're comparing cheapo laptops to and IBM T-series. Even the Dell C610 laptops I have here don't compare to the T21-23s. I've replaced a half dozen (of 40 computers) keyboards, a dozen CDROMs, several hard disks, and one motherboard in the Dells. For the 15 IBM Ts, I've replaced one CDROM, and three displays (all on older year 2000-vintage Ts).

I'm really sad Lenovo is (most likely) going to ruin the only worthwhile x86 laptops...

Informative. Agree entirely with author's comments on wireless networking. I'm underwhelmed by the poor range and reliability (possibly local interference). I realize some people have had some success with wireless systems though.

I am sorry but if I was going to get a mobile platform, I would go no less than an XPS Gen 2 or a comparable Sager based system if they have mobile processors or Athlon64s in them yet. The author's machine while enough to run Debian and obviously for his needs, is quite wimpy. And I would probably stick with 686 compiled 2.4 kernel instead of 2.6 due to performance.

I realize some people have had some success with wireless systems though.

Yep mostly not mine.

"I'm really sad Lenovo is (most likely) going to ruin the only worthwhile x86 laptops..."

As if you had any evidence for that. The same engineers are still going to design the computers and the same factories will build them.

"... tired of ubuntu rah-rah-rahs:"

Tried the new Kubuntu on a Thinkpad T42 -> suspend-to-ram and suspend-to-disk worked for the first time under Linux on this laptop! Fantastic - but to make up for it there were quite a few other annoying glitches which needed googling and fixing. My conclusion was that if I have to delve into the "inner workings" anyhow, I might as well stay with Debian - so now I've deleted Kubuntu and am installing Sarge, where you have to do almost everything yourself right from the beginning.
Right now I don't notice so much difference, except for some newer packages, KDE 3.4 etc., and of course Kubuntu's polished look.

Hi. Does any of you know of a complete tutorial on how to actually install/activate all of these nifty tools on the T20 computer?

It would be interesting to take something like Damn Small Linux, run it entirely in ram and shut off the HD all together to extend battery life. I wonder how much more time the T20 would get on a charge?

They aren't the best for battery life, unless used means a year or two at most old. In the last couple years a lot of advancements have been made in making notebooks run longer; they started caring finally.
And used notebooks tend to have broken batteries. I bought a Compaq Armada 110 (the last good line of notebooks from compaq) for $300 almost two years ago. It came with a largely broken NimH; but I don't use battery because my thinking is this: If there's no power source, there's prolly no reason to be on the computer.
A new Li-Ion battery would cost $160, and probably only yield me 2.5 hours of battery life; so I don't buy it (plus, I don't have $160).

You can also install lsof and use it to list open network services and the addresses they are listening. "su" to root and run this:

lsof -i | grep LISTEN

If you can stomach a ThinkPad, a Ti or Al PowerBook will really give you wood!

No comparison. Plastic PCs suck.

"You're comparing apples and oranges"

No Refurbished IBM with GNU/Linux loaded on it vs Full GNU/linux default solution with a full waranty.

I get better hardware ( faster , bigger ), full warranty , the knowledge that if something brake I can return it.
for around the same price. And the software is made for the computer , no tweaking or anything else.

And you havent followed the link I gave either those are not cheapo hardware. Not the best but there is worst.

"I'm really sad Lenovo is (most likely) going to ruin the only worthwhile x86 laptops..."

You really are no expert ... Lenovo whas already making them ... and there are plenty of worthwile x86 laptop.

I thought Lenovo is only building desktop computers and not even touching any of IBM's Thinkpad series.

I would take a Thinkpad anyday or a Dell XPS Gen 2 anyday over the Apple notebooks. They may look all nice but god they are SLOW with such old hardware.

Lenovo

http://www.lenovo.com/

http://www.lenovogrp.com/cgi-bin/main.cgi?section=about&sub_sec...

http://finance.yahoo.com/q/pr?s=LNVGY.PK

Only the budget IBM R and G models have plastic casings, the T and X series all have titanium/magnesium shells, and are generally more solid than Powerbooks. TiBooks are widely known for flaking paint, while the AlBook dents easily because the aluminum shell too thin. Funny thing is that the one you don't mention, the lowly iBook seems the most sturdy in Apple's lineup (even though the plastic does get scratches).

Well, then let me advertise my favourite distro for once: Kanotix 2005-02: everything as bleeding edge as it comes (KDE 3.4, kernel 2.6.11...), superb hardware detection, use it as a LiveCD or as a dead-easy Debian Sid installer, *tons* of goodies, very easy to customize according to your needs, none or very few bugs, guaranteed fully Debian compatible...

I don't own a laptop, but I know plenty of people who have installed it on laptops with excellent results.

Frankly a BIOS password is a bit of a waste of time... they'll stop someone from casually powering it on, but your user password will prevent them from doing anything useful that way anyway.
Yes, they could boot off Knoppix and access your system (they'd find that trick a bit harder on my laptop, but it's still possible) but ultimately if they have physical access to your laptop you're rooted anyway. You're much better off encrypting your data.

It's far more likely that somebody's just going to steal the damn thing anyway - in which case the BIOS password won't take much to reset.

Surya: I would go no less than an XPS Gen 2 or a comparable Sager based system if they have mobile processors or Athlon64s in them yet. The author's machine while enough to run Debian and obviously for his needs, is quite wimpy.
What are you intending to use yours for? Playing Doom3 is about the only thing that requires a laptop like that.
My laptop would certainly be called "wimpy" by your standards, but it also weighs rather less than the XPS, which would be fairly close to the 12-pound beast he mentioned at the beginning of the article. Which is a big factor when I have to drag it, along with my textboooks, up a big bloody hill to uni.
I also quite like the way that the battery lasts four hours or more, rather than running out in an hour flat.

And I would probably stick with 686 compiled 2.4 kernel instead of 2.6 due to performance
What on earth? The 2.6 kernels have better performance than 2.4, especially with the work done by Con Kolivas and some of the more interesting schedulers available.

Thanks for the links.

"which would be fairly close to the 12-pound beast he mentioned at the beginning"

http://www1.us.dell.com/content/products/productdetails.aspx/inspn_...

http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=2282

just above 8 lbs

The First XPS whas huge and heavy , this one whent to the gym ;-)

"I also quite like the way that the battery lasts four hours or more"

I read somewhere that it last 10 hour with LCD and power consumption ( if you dont play game or play video on it ).

Cant find the link sorry.

Just a note:

"mv /etc/init.d/exim4 /etc/init.d/DISABLED_exim4"

is a possible but not really the proper (if you care about that sort of thing) solution to this.

Try:
rm /etc/rc[2-5].d/S20exim4

The only purpose of the symlinks is to be deleted whenever necessary. The actual scripts aren't normally moved, though editing them is certainly not discouraged.

I have a HP NX7000 and run the latest Kanotix (Debian-based) on it. Most hardware in my laptop works just fine out of the box - even wireless. Anyways, thanx for a very nice article and tips on getting suspend going, which is the final thing I need to look into. I am getting a litte tired of all the boring just-installed-whatever-hyped-distro-and-man-the-firefox-icon-is-where -it-should-be sort of reviews. Nice with a report on actual GNU/Linux USAGE.

I have the same laptop running fc3. It runs well, but when waking up from sleep, the sound does not work anymore. Did debian have this problem when you installed it?

One running Fedora Core 3 and the other running Ubuntu 5.04.

Really like Ubuntu fo a laptop due to the restricted modules package and the freedom from having to re-compile drives for my Netgear on a kernel upgrade.

Ubuntu forums are great and the new users script for downloading extras and setting up the system from the How To section is god send.

Bad news it defaults to a i386 kernel and no dma. Kind of tough for a newb to figure out and makes the system seem slower than it needs to be a for someone who does not know better.

This is the case for both Fedora and Ubuntu but I guess I am just started to expect more from Ubuntu.

Oh yeah, Ubuntu needs the runlevel-admin from gnome-systems-tools and firestarter by default to round user-level admin tools. Especially if they insist on starting lvm by default.

Otherwise been very, very happy.

absolutely everything is working on my X31 ...

WiFi, bluetooth, IR, ACPI (standby, hibernate usw), all extra buttons and Fn+Fx combinations, card reader etc ...

ThinkPads rule

"Never use dictionary words for passwords and consider using letters from a sentence and including numbers and capitals. For instance, "I really think that passwords are stupid for me" could translate into "Irttpas4m" which is more effective than your cat's name."

How weird... that is my cat's name...

sudo /usr/sbin/update-rc.d -f exim4 remove