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ThinkPad X61

My experiences with running Ubuntu Linux on my brand new Lenovo ThinkPad X61.

Specs

• Intel Core2 Duo CPU T7300 @ 2.00GHz
• 3GB DDR2 SDRAM
• 80GB S-ATA hard drive @ 5400rpm

Installation

Since these ultraportables don't come with a built-in optical drive, I installed Ubuntu through a USB pen drive. ThinkWiki has an excellent article on the subject. After I had re-partitioned, formated and copied the Gutsy installation CD onto the pen drive, I just inserted it into one of the USB ports on the X61, hit F12 at bootup and selected the USB device from the list of available boot mediums. The LiveCD booted up without problems and I could start the installation. Although it was a bit tricky to get the pen drive bootable, the installation process itself was very painless and straightforward.

What works

• All of the Fn-keys work. Brightness adjust, suspend, hibernate, Num Lock, volume up/down etc. Even the ThinkLight!
• Hibernate works.
• Suspend works, but with an issue on wakeup. See below. Also sometimes uses several minutes to wake up.
• Bluetooth works, but has to be enabled first. See below.
• VGA port works, although you have to restart X to be able to use the external monitor.

Problems

Although almost everything worked out of the box after booting up my fresh Ubuntu 7.10 install, there were some issues and tweaks I had to make.

Wakeup from suspend leaves screen very very dark

This issue has been fixed in newer versions of Ubuntu.

After waking up from suspend, the LCD screen on the X61 remains so dark that it's almost impossible to see anything. If you look at the screen from a specific angle, you can barely see the password prompt and manage to log in. A quick fix is to hit Ctrl+Alt+F1 to get to a terminal and then hit Ctrl+Alt+F7 to get back into X.

Fix from the ubuntu forums: Uncomment the following line in /etc/default/acpi-support: DOUBLE_CONSOLE_SWITCH=true

Bluetooth

Bluetooth wasn't enabled by default, so I had to enable it with:
# echo enable > /proc/acpi/ibm/bluetooth

Once enabled, I could connect to my mobile phone without problems. I really like the new snazzy Bluetooth Manager which comes with Gutsy

Bluetooth mouse

This issue has been fixed in newer versions of Ubuntu.

Connecting my bluetooth mouse required that I enabled HIDD by setting HIDD_ENABLED=1 in /etc/default/bluetooth aswell as enabling the "Serial service" under the bluetooth preferences utility. It took me a while to figure this out, as I somehow thought bluetooth mice and keyboards were handled by the "Input service". Strange, huh?

Compiz fusion and Intel GM965

I've become quite fond of the eye candy provided by compiz fusion on my other computer, so I was a bit disappointed when this didn't work out of the box on the X61. Not only does it look pretty, but GUI apps run noticeably faster and smoother with hardware acceleration.

The Intel GM965 integrated graphics adapter which comes with the X61 has an open source driver, however it's blacklisted in compiz fusion (see below). To ignore this, you can start compiz with SKIP_CHECKS=yes:
$ SKIP_CHECKS=yes compiz

And watch that eye candy fly!

Compiz + Intel 965 = No XV video

This issue has been fixed in newer versions of Ubuntu with the new EXA support.

The reason the Intel GM965 graphics card is blacklisted in compiz is because it doesn't have overlay support so XV video won't work. This in turn causes all video players who use XV by default to crash (totem/gstreamer, mplayer, xine, vlc, etc.) See bug #111257. Thus the ubuntu team blacklisted this set of video adapters.

So you basically have two options:

1. Disable compiz
2. Use the x11 video output driver ("No Xv" under gstreamer-properties, mplayer -vo x11, etc.) Not only is the fullscreen quality rather poor with this video output driver, but it will also put more strain on the CPU when playing video.

Let's hope EXA support soon gets up to speed, which eventually will fix this issue in the i965.

The USB ports on the right side dies

This issue has been fixed in later versions of the ThinkPad BIOS. See kernel bug #8853

Sometimes the USB ports on the right side of the laptop will die and won't work again until you reboot. The following can be found in the kernel logs:

[41101.200000] irq 20: nobody cared (try booting with the "irqpoll" option)
[41101.200000] [] __report_bad_irq+0x24/0x80
[41101.200000] [] clockevents_program_event+0x88/0x100
[41101.200000] [] note_interrupt+0x262/0x2a0
[41101.200000] [] usb_hcd_irq+0x22/0x60 [usbcore]
[41101.200000] [] handle_IRQ_event+0x30/0x60
[41101.200000] [] handle_fasteoi_irq+0xbb/0xf0
[41101.200000] [] do_IRQ+0x3b/0x70
[41101.200000] [] common_interrupt+0x23/0x30
[41101.200000] [] sys_capset+0x12b/0x2e0
[41101.200000] [] acpi_processor_idle+0x24f/0x425 [processor]
[41101.200000] [] acpi_processor_idle+0x0/0x425 [processor]
[41101.200000] [] cpu_idle+0x53/0xe0
[41101.200000] =======================
[41101.200000] handlers:
[41101.200000] [] (usb_hcd_irq+0x0/0x60 [usbcore])
[41101.200000] Disabling IRQ #20

This is actually caused by a bug in the ThinkPad BIOS which has been fixed for the T61 family but not yet for the X61. A temporary solution is to add irqfixup to your kernel boot options.

Not tested (yet)

• Fingerprint reader - tested manually with thinkfinger-tools which works
• The back / forwards buttons above the left and right arrow keys do nothing, but they are detected by xev. Might bind Have bound them to Page Up / Page Down using Xmodmap for convenience...

Conclusion

All in all, I'm very satisfied with my purchase! Almost everything works perfectly out of the box on Ubuntu Linux. Great performance and great battery life in a very robust package

One thing I'd like to see improved though is the screen. The resolution is only 1024x768 and the refresh rate(?) is rather poor which causes flickering with fast-moving objects on the screen.