Wednesday, March 9, 2011

thinkpad x120e w/ debian linux (sid)

I purchased a new lenovo thinkpad x120e recently. It arrived 3-7-2011. Be sure to back your MS Windows install up (if you really want it), using clonezilla or some other means, becuase it does not come with recovery discs. The build of this machine seems very solid. In short, its awesome. Small, powerful, low power (~15watts @ idle + lcd at its brightest), and linux friendly. I used debian sid, which has proper support for the GPU via fglrx. However, I did run into some issues.

first, the bad:
  • I have no display when resuming from suspend to ram...I probably need to force unload fglrx before suspending...
  • the wireless didn't work out of the box. It can be downloaded and compiled from realtek's site, but there will also be kernel support for it in 2.6.38. I will probably compile the kernel after it gets out of rc status.
the good:
  • fglrx from debian sid's non-free repository works, if you follow debian's wiki instructions on how to install it.
  • Two finger scrolling works great.
  • The realtek ethernet controller works great (i believe this requires firmware, so I installed it with the 'firmware-realtek' package)
  • cpu frequency scaling works 'out of the box', just make sure to load powernow-k8 kernel module. I used powernowd, which, by default, increases the frequency when I need it. The e-350 has three pstates, 800, 1280, and 1600mhz.
  • The card reader seemed to work, although xfce seemed to be confused about the card's format. I mounted it manually with no issues.
  • The webcam works. I installed cheese, and the default resolution was 1280x720 with a really low framerate. I set it to 640x480, and it looks great.
  • The audio card works. Its an ATI HDA. The hdmi audio out also shows up in the mixer, but I have yet to test this on my TV.
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10 comments:

  1. UnknownMarch 17, 2011 at 11:07 PM

    Thanks for the tip on using fglrx from sid, I have done the same and have gotten the display working correctly on my x120e.

    In regards to the touchpad, you state that two finger scrolling just works, wish I could say the same. Would you be so kind as to share your xorg.conf or any similar configurations relating to the touchpad?

    Thanks.

    ReplyDelete
  2. RMay 13, 2011 at 6:08 PM

    Section "ServerLayout"
    Identifier "aticonfig Layout"
    Screen 0 "aticonfig-Screen[0]-0" 0 0
    EndSection

    Section "Module"
    EndSection

    Section "Monitor"
    Identifier "aticonfig-Monitor[0]-0"
    Option "VendorName" "ATI Proprietary Driver"
    Option "ModelName" "Generic Autodetecting Monitor"
    Option "DPMS" "true"
    EndSection

    Section "Device"
    Identifier "aticonfig-Device[0]-0"
    Driver "fglrx"
    BusID "PCI:0:1:0"
    EndSection

    Section "Screen"
    Identifier "aticonfig-Screen[0]-0"
    Device "aticonfig-Device[0]-0"
    Monitor "aticonfig-Monitor[0]-0"
    DefaultDepth 24
    SubSection "Display"
    Viewport 0 0
    Depth 24
    EndSubSection
    EndSection

    ReplyDelete
  3. RMay 13, 2011 at 6:17 PM

    sorry it took so long to reply David :)

    an update, the wireless is supported in wheezy, which also includes Linux kernel 2.6.38. Unfortunately, the firmware for the wireless is missing when i last checked. I used the in-kernel driver for the card, but used realtek's firmware, by dumping it into /lib/firmware. the radeon hd 6300 seems to be working just fine with the version of fglrx in wheezy. s3 still seems broken.

    ReplyDelete
  4. UnknownMay 15, 2011 at 9:04 PM

    Hi, you might want to check this out:

    http://www.dei.unipd.it/~pettarin/debian-wheezy-x120e.html

    You can find the solution to the s3 issue.

    ReplyDelete
  5. RMay 16, 2011 at 2:34 PM

    Thanks Alberto, your guide is great. Looks like what I did for an install, with the exception of the ssd and lxde (i kept the 250G drive and used xfce). I was being too vague w/ s3, my fault...I have been unloading the module before suspend, the issue seems to be w/ fglrx, as it can take quite some to resume from s3. The backlight will take is sweet time to reinitialize...but will eventually resume.

    ReplyDelete
  6. UnknownMay 16, 2011 at 10:00 PM

    Hi,

    so, are you unloading the r8169 module?

    I was accusing fglrx for the very slow resume too, but it turned out r8169 was the actual guilty guy.

    Indeed, I tried to unload both modules, then only r8169 and then only fglrx: the first two ways work as expected, the third has the anomalous behavior that you are experiencing, so I am willing to conclude that r8169 is the module responsible for the slow resume.

    Are you using my /etc/pm/config.d/unload_modules configuration and still experiencing a slow resume? Mine has:

    SLEEP_MODULE="uswusp"
    SUSPEND_MODULES="r8169"

    ReplyDelete
  7. RMay 17, 2011 at 4:35 PM

    Hi,
    I thought I was suspending in the proper manner, but wasn't. 1) I had both 8169 AND rtl8192ce in my SUSPEND_MODULES, which were separated by a comma, not a space. 2) I forgot to make my script in config.d executable. Doing both of these things resolved my slow suspend issues. Thanks Alberto.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Christopher MeiklejohnAugust 5, 2011 at 12:11 AM

    I'm still experiencing a problem:

    -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 56 Aug 5 00:06 /etc/pm/config.d/unload_modules

    cat /etc/pm/config.d/unload_modules
    SLEEP_MODULE="uswusp"
    SUSPEND_MODULES="r8169 rtl8192ce"

    Any advice would be appreciated!

    Thanks.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Christopher MeiklejohnAugust 5, 2011 at 12:11 AM

    I also tried with just:

    SUSPEND_MODULES="r8169"

    ReplyDelete
  10. RAugust 12, 2011 at 4:59 PM

    Hi Christopher,
    I just took a look at my config...if have the following in my '/etc/pm/config.d/suspend':

    SLEEP_MODULE="uswusp"
    SUSPEND_MODULES="r8169 rtl8192ce"

    hope this helps

    ReplyDelete

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