On January 25, 2005, I installed Fedora Core 3 on a new IBM ThinkPad T42 (model 2378FVU: 14.1" display, 1400x1050 display, 64MB ATI Mobility Radeon 9600, 40GB hard drive). I have since upgraded through Core 4 and Core 5, and upgraded the hard drive with a fresh install; see my main Fedora Core Thinkpad T42 page for info on those. This page tracks my experiences and notes with my initial Core 3 install.
After some minor tweaking, almost everything works, including the display, power management (including variable CPU clock speed, a.k.a. SpeedStep), built-in wired and wireless networking, sound, and advanced touchpad features (tapping with two fingers = middle-button; tapping with three fingers = right-button; moving your finger along the right edge = scroll wheel). The only exceptions:
Details follow.
I used Partition Magic 8.0 to shrink the Windows partition, and the Fedora installer's tool (Disk Druid) to create ext3 and swap partitions. This basically worked, but presently I recommend you avoid buying Partition Magic, due to some important limitations. Details follow.
IBM has customized the shipping system image so that the hard drive comes with a FAT partition, which gets reformatted to NTFS on first boot into Windows. I do use Windows sometimes, and I wanted to use NTFS to get real file permissions, so I booted into Windows and let this happen.
The various Linux repartitioning utilities have always made me nervous (to say nothing of Microsoft's FDISK), so I bought a copy of Partition Magic 8.0 to shrink the Windows XP NTFS partition. It shrunk the NTFS partition fine, but the partitions it created were somehow not usable by the Fedora installer. So, I had to recreate the ext3 and swap partitions using Disk Druid.
My final partition layout (sizes are approximate):
| Size | Type | Mount point | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 14 GB | NTFS | None (Windows C: drive) |
NTFS support in kernel 2.6.10 is incomplete, so I don't mount this. |
| 94 MB | ext3 | /boot | For some reason FC3's installer recommends a huge /boot partition. I took the recommendation, but you can probably set this to less, with no ill effects. I never have more than two kernels live at once, and a 2.6.x kernel takes about 15MB on /boot. 40-50 MB is probably enough. |
| 6 GB | ext3 | / | |
| 4.6 GB | ext3 | /home | |
| 8.7 GB | FAT32 | /mnt/transfer (Windows E: drive) |
Since 2.6.10 doesn't yet have full NTFS support, I created this FAT32 partition for transferring data between Linux and Windows. I plan to keep mostly static data, like music files and digital photos, on this partition. |
| 510 MB | Linux swap | ||
| 3 GB | n/a | IBM rescue partition | This comes installed from the factory; I don't want to mess with it. |
Incidentally, with Windows XP Professional SP 2, Microsoft Office 2003, the various IBM tools, Cygwin, and MiKTeX, about 11 GB on the NTFS partition is used. Obviously, this will vary depending on what Cygwin and MiKTeX options you use.
Note that after I had completed the entire install process detailed below, I ended up wanting to resize some of my partitions. Time for Partition Magic, right? Wrong. The partitions created by Disk Druid somehow made Partition Magic spew a bunch of error messages (asking to "repair" some things that probably weren't actually broken), and then die with "Error 117", which has evidently been a bugbear for PM since at least version 6.0. Perhaps I should have seen this coming, given that Disk Druid hadn't been able to use the ext3 partitions PM created.
Some online resources suggest that, as a workaround, you try using Partition Magic for DOS (included with PM 8.0). Well, PM for DOS couldn't read the disk either, possibly due to the FAT32 partition. So much for that.
In any case, I read in an online forum that if you could get a Windows utility to rewrite the partition table, then Partition Magic 8.0 might work. Don't believe it. To make a long story short, I was reckless, I tried it, and I spent half a day reinstalling Fedora. When Partition Magic 8.0 yields an Error 117, forget about getting it working on that hard drive ever again. It might happen, but not through any sensible action on your part.
UPDATE 20 April 2006: Based on recent experiences, I conclude that GParted is now reasonably mature. In the future, if I ever need to repartition something, I'm going to burn myself the latest GParted LiveCD. It's ridiculous how much simpler it is to pop GParted into your optical drive, boot from the disk, and repartition away, compared to Partition Magic's convoluted installation process.
Installation proceeded without incident, except for sound.
Note that the Intel 2200BG wireless card will not be recognized during installation. Also, if you do not hear the sound card, go ahead and tell the installer that you did.
I imported the Fedora GPG keys and ran yum. Update was completely painless.
The first thing I did when I logged in as root was to connect to a network (Red Hat's GUI network configuration/control tools worked fine for this) and update to the latest RPMs:
rpm --import /usr/share/doc/fedora-release-3/RPM-GPG-KEY rpm --import /usr/share/doc/fedora-release-3/RPM-GPG-KEY-fedora yum update
Since at least 13 Jan 2005, this update has included an updated kernel with support for both IBM's ACPI and the Intel 2200BG wireless card. However, to make either of these useful, I had to do some manual tweaks; see below.
Only four tweaks were required. (1) Suspend requires some scripts in /etc/acpi, plus an edited /etc/grub.conf. (2) Wireless Ethernet requires installing firmware in /lib/firmware. (3) Turning off sub-pixel hinting in X11 requires an edited /etc/fonts/local.conf. (4) To get sound working at boot, you have to tweak the ALSA mixer settings. Everything else just works.
Giving credit where it's due, I should note that the following draws heavily on instructions/suggestions from the sites linked at the end of this page.
First, I edited /etc/grub.conf, changing the line that reads:
kernel /vmlinuz-xxxxxxx ro root=LABEL=/ rhgb quiet
(where xxxxxxx is the kernel version) to:
kernel /vmlinuz-xxxxxxx ro root=LABEL=/ rhgb quiet acpi_sleep=s3_bios
Next, I created the following files:
# sleep on lid close event=button[/]lid action=/etc/acpi/actions/sleep.sh
# sleep on "sleep" key request event=button[/]sleep action=/etc/acpi/actions/sleep.sh
#!/bin/sh /usr/sbin/hwclock --systohc echo -n mem >/sys/power/state /sbin/modprobe -r usb_uhci /sbin/modprobe -i usb_uhci /usr/sbin/hwclock --hctosys
The modprobe lines reload the USB driver, which has the effect of making my USB mouse work again. You may need to add lines to reload the other USB drivers, if you use non-HCI devices (e.g., USB drives). If I ever get such a device, I'll update this page to reflect my experiences.
The hwclock lines fix some problems I had with the system clock resetting itself to strange values on resume.
Note: the following assumes you got the Intel 2200 wireless card; in January 2005 IBM was shipping this in the standard configuration, with other cards being optional, but this may have changed.
To make the ipw2200 driver work properly, you need ipw2200 firmware in /lib/firmware/. The version you need depends on which kernel you're running:
| Kernel version | ipw2000 version | Firmware file names |
|---|---|---|
| 2.6.10 | v0.6-v0.16 | ipw2200-*.fw |
| 2.6.11 | v0.19 | ipw-2.2-*.fw |
| 2.6.12 | v1.0 | ipw-2.2-*.fw |
I downloaded the tarball, su'd to root, and unpacked all files
directly into /lib/firmware:
mv ipw2200-fw-2.2.tgz /lib/firmware cd /lib/firmware tar -xzvf ipw2200-fw-2.2.tgz
On next boot, the Fedora new hardware configuration wizard prompted me to configure this device. The rest was painless.
Sub-pixel hinting is enabled for many fonts by default. On the ThinkPad's monitor, this makes fonts look terrible, with red and blue halos around the edges. (Actually, I've never in my life used a monitor for which sub-pixel hinting — whether in freetype or Microsoft ClearType — actually improves font quality, so I don't know why this technology exists.) So, I put the following lines in /etc/fonts/local.conf:
<match target="font"> <edit name="rgba" mode="assign"><const>none</const></edit> </match>
The sound driver actually works fine, but the default mixer settings are incorrect, which means that sound is muted and you will not hear anything. To fix this, use your mixer of choice (KDE, GNOME, or /usr/bin/alsamixer) to disable the following two switches:
For more detailed instructions, see Bill Moss's instructions for ALSA on FC3