Things that work without tweaking include suspend to ram and disk
(both work flawlessly), DRI, wifi, accelerometer (need to build
tp_smapi module though). The only minor issue is that enabling
screen brightness buttons (Fn + Home/End) needs a small workaround
(in kernel 2.6.26 it is handled by ACPI video and not by
thinkpad_acpi). I also had to tweak minor things such as
/etc/acpi/lid.sh etc., install and configure alsa (the speaker
initially was muted and had to be fixed via alsamixer).
The boot process is also very quick and clean. There are no errors
or warnings of any sort. I simply login to a text based console and
use 'startx'. Just make a .xinitrc file in your $HOME and specify
the window manager (for example /usr/bin/jwm). The / installation
is under 750 Mb (not including /home and /opt) and the system is
fairly lean and _extremely_ fast.
Steps:
Install Debian using a USB drive made via UNetbootin without a
'Desktop environment' (but do check 'Laptop')
Reboot (using 'vga=791' and 'quiet' as kernel parameters
to get nice console fonts at a native resolution of 1024 x
768)
Wifi should be enabled (it is in fact detected during
installation itself). Simply use iwconfig to set the ESSID and KEY
and then use dhclient
Use apt-get to install xorg jwm xfe alsa deborphan vim
laptop-mode-tools localepurge klogd sysklogd mesa-utils
bash-completion (this step should also install other needed
dependencies and give you a fully working X). Fn+F4 suspends to RAM
and Fn+12 suspends to disk flawlessly (To make the laptop suspend
(from X) on closing the lid simply modify /etc/acpi/lid.sh).
Edit /etc/laptop-mode/laptop-mode.conf to enable hard disk
power management (CONTROL_HD_POWERMGMT=1) and set
BATT_HD_POWERMGMT=254 and CONTROL_HD_IDLE_TIMEOUT=0. Also create an
executable called 09my_stuff.sh in
the '/etc/pm/sleep.d' directory (we're basically bringing down the
network before sleep/hibernate and restarting laptop-mode on
resume/thaw which makes sure that the hdparm '-B' parameter is
254)
Blacklist pcspkr pcmcia yenta_socket joydev and uhci_hcd (USB
1.1) in /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist (the bluetooth, which I dont have
might be on USB 1.1 and so might any external mouse/kbd)
To change screen brightness via Fn+Home/End first (backup and
then) modify your /etc/acpi/thinkpad-brightness-up.sh
and /etc/acpi/thinkpad-brightness-down.sh
files and then
# mv video_brightnessup.sh video_brightnessup.sh.bak
# mv video_brightnessdown.sh video_brightnessdown.sh.bak
# ln -s thinkpad-brightness-up.sh video_brightnessup.sh
# ln -s
thinkpad-brightness-down.sh video_brightnessdown.sh
# sudo /etc/init.d/acpid restart
For more info look
here. To get screen notifications use the osd_cat command in
the above scripts
To enable volume keys first add the relevant keycode to your
.Xmodmap file (for example 'keycode 174 = XF86AudioLowerVolume')
and then edit the .jwmrc file to set the appropriate action (for
example '<Key key="XF86AudioLowerVolume">exec:amixer set
Master 5%-</Key>' and so on)
To handle the wifi use the console (if you really want a GUI
then you can potentially install nm-applet but it then it also
installs a lot of other bloat)
Download (using wget) and install firefox, thunderbird
acrobat-reader etc. in /opt
Install mplayer and the mozilla-mplayer plugin (But dont
install the plugin using apt as it will also install iceweasel etc.
Simply get the deb, extract it in /tmp and copy all the *.so and
*.xpt files to /opt/firefox/plugins)
Install GCC and Intel compilers/MKL or Sun Studio 12 (its totally free and includes some very nice tools such as analyzer, dbxtool etc.)
Install gtk-chtheme and qt3-qtconfig to set the font size for
applications (and then remove the packages)
If you have to run Windoze then run it inside Virtualbox
If you're really enterprising then (given the insane amount of
RAM we have) there is also the possibility of
loading our entire (relatively lightweight) OS into an uncompressed
Ramdisk and putting the HDD to sleep. After all our fully
functional machine running JWM needs less than 50 Mb of RAM (and
rarely exceeds 250 Mb with normal usage of
FF/Thunderbird/Skype/Acrobat etc.).
Here are some screenshots Desktop running JWM File Manager (Xfe) Running Open Solaris via Virtualbox (Btw Open Solaris is a great OS to run on x86 Desktops along with Sun Studio)
And finally here's a wallpaper
for those who like Debian on Thinkpads =8^)
(Thinkpad lids love grease and so I had to shell out another $20
for a leather skin from sgpstore.com)
Bottomline: The x61 is a
perfect machine to run Debian. Not only does everything work, it
works flawlessly. Though I would certainly suggest that you use a
minimalist window manager as Gnome/KDE are extremely bloated besides
being unpolished.
