Distributions Tested:
OpenSUSE (32/64 bit), Ubuntu (feisty/hardy) 64 bit, Debian Lenny 64 bit.
Hardware Support:
Perfect linux laptop. It's actually certified for RHEL and SLED, but will work out of the box on any modern distro. There is native kernel support for all hardware except for Atheros wireless cards (Intel cards also available) which are supported by madwifi.
Bluetooth works fine. I just run 'hidd --search' to attach my keyboard.
I have yet to test the 4 port ieee1394/Firewire, but I imagine it works since it is detected fine.
Suspend to ram and disk both work fine out of the box on Debian. The soft buttons and lid event all work fine using gnome-power-manager.
Note that the speakers are pretty quiet.
Docking station works as expected. Tested DVI, VGA, audio, serial port, ethernet, ps/2 port, power. A bios update prevents it from crashing when the power state is changed (unplugged, etc) while the laptop is docked by allowing you to disable serial and parallel ports.
SD card reader may remount after laptop resumes.
Performance Notes:
Running with the lenovo 4 cell battery from 1.5-2 hours on Ubuntu/Gnome to 2-2.75 hours on Debian with Xfce4. I later got a 6 cell battery from battdepot.ca which lasts 3-3.5 hours. All times refer to light to normal usage conditions at half brightness. I also found that using Xfce's compositing takes some load off the cpu to the intel gpu and actually saves power.
Features:
To get the trackpoint to behave as intended (hold middle button to scroll) add the following lines to the mouse 'InputDevice' section of xorg.conf
Code:
Option 'EmulateWheel' 'on'
Option 'EmulateWheelTimeout' '200'
Option 'EmulateWheelButton' '2'
The soft wireless toggle button cycles between wifi and bluetooth/wifi/bluetooth/both off. To toggle bluetooth only, I use a custom script to control it via acpi:
Code:
#!/bin/sh
FILE='/proc/acpi/ibm/bluetooth'
if [ -n `grep status $FILE` ]
then echo 'disable' (GREATER THAN SYMBOL) $FILE
else echo 'enable' (GREATER THAN SYMBOL) $FILE
fi
The soft display toggle button may not work. I recommend LXRandR to quickly change display settings reliably (for a presentation or when attaching to vga/dvi monitor.)
We may soon see HDAPS (hard drive accelerometer to protect drive when you drop laptop) support in the shipped kernels in next generation of distros. Right now I've got the HDAPS accelerometers working as a joystick which can be used in neverball.
See http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Category:T61 for full hardware options and lots of useful information about running linux on a T61.
