think tank forum

information on running ubuntu 6.06.1 lts (dapper drake) on the lenovo thinkpad x60s (1705-43u) follows.

so i would naturally like to run one of the BSDs on my new thinkpad (tp), but i'm worried about suspend functions working well. as a result, i decided to try out xubuntu, ubuntu that is based on the xfce desktop environment.

here is some of the information i am using:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/LaptopTestingTeam/ThinkpadX60s
http://www.thinkwiki.org/index.php?title=Inst … nkPad_X60s
http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=25885


the next time i boot up ubuntu, i'll post some short "how-to" steps for getting everything working.


challenges for bsd users:
1. swap apparently must be added as a slice. in bsd land, there is a distinct between slices (partitions, what you edit in fdisk) and filesystems (what you label via disklabel).

when i have a dual boot machine running freebsd and windows 2000, i only have two slices on the disk: ufs2 and ntfs. within the ufs slice, there are multiple filesystems, including /, swap, /tmp, /var, /home, and more.

under ubuntu (and perhaps all/most linux distros?), swap must be a distinct slice. i find this repugnant and appaling.

2. documentation is horrible. i come from the dream world of bsd, where openbsd's man pages are exhaustive and error-free, and freebsd's handbook is all you need (besides the occasional mailing list search for quirky hardware). in ubuntu land, you are stuck with documentation that provides virtually no help, leaving you with google, forums, and mailing lists. it sucks.

the hardest part is there's no easy reference for bsd users like me. so i know that i'd like to find something like openbsd's ifconfig or freebsd's wicontrol. what's the command name? how do i find it? there's no handbook or faq that describes how to set up wifi! after a bunch of googling, i stumble upon iwconfig.


how-tos are on the way.

I don't know if you know of these sites, but they can provide good packages for installation. Granted, Ubuntu uses the apt package system. But they link to the package homepages, which often have good documentation.

http://sourceforge.net/

http://freshmeat.net/ (<---- Very good)

These have some documentation and HOWTOs

http://www.linux.org/docs/

http://www.linuxhowtos.org/

http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/HOWTO-INDEX/howtos.html

http://www.justlinux.com/

I am currently working with the Linux From Scratch (LFS) distro. I compile all of the packages myself, so I spend much of my time finding dependancies and looking for documentation. I guess the best advise I can give is to use www.google.com/linux and don't get frustrated too quickly. A lot changes from BSD, but more stays the same.

well, frankly, linux is a waste of my time. i have no need to get it running when windows xp works better. i thought that linux would be cleaner and faster; but naturally that all depends on the distro. and the distros that are likely to support the features that i want are also likely to be bloated and slow.

nevertheless, i might post up the few things i did do while on linux.

bluetooth mouse on linux:
http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p= … ost1440347

I have S3 (Suspend-to-RAM) working on my ThinkPad R51 with FreeBSD 6.1. Did you try Free on your X60s ?

no. have you gotten suspend-to-disk (hibernate) to work yet? you probably need your swap fs to be bigger than your memory.

if hibernate works in freebsd, i'm there! (what about net, open?)

In 'nix the rule of thumb on swap is twice your RAM. And if BSD development is similar (I suspect it is) Suspend-to-disk is possible, but very icky. From what I have read, there is a chance the swap partition is destroyed.

I have not played with it much. Just be wary.

Hess

how can a swap partition be destroyed?

in bsd, i usually make swap be about half the size of my ram. i never use any of it, anyway.

My apologies. The partition is not destroyed. Sometimes it may get corrupted and needs to be reformatted. It is a problem with device drivers and not the suspend system.

From one of the developers: http://kerneltrap.org/node/6878

Hess

thanks for the info.

how is rat poison treating you these days? i still need to give it a try.

Nop. I don't think S4 (Suspend-to-disk) works. But yours is a different model. Just give it a try. And I usually make swap double the size of my RAM.

Rat poison was working fine. I went out and bought a PII Gateway for $20 and made that my Linux box. I reformatted my laptop and it is completely Windows now. I continue to tinker with it. I found a $15 Wireless G PCI card at Fry's. Much of my time was spent configuring that. I am using Linux From Scratch (http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/) now. That is quite fun. I get to learn more about how different files interplay. But since it is not a typical distro I have issues finding support most of the time. Lots of muddling through and messing up. I don't plan on getting GUI working anytime soon. Too many other issues to fix first. Like sound. <--Grrr.

Hess

linux from scratch is sick.
i was talking about it with my lab partner during the lecture in server 2k3 networking yesterday.

hahah

LFS. I did it in college. It was fun. We got a simple small (around 700mb with kernel source) system with gui.

That's pretty big. Mine is maybe half that. Were you using KDE/Gnome? Those are huge. Did you ever get a package manager? I have read about getting apt to work with LFS. It might take the fun out of it though.

I know that Damn Small Linux (DSL) can get around 50mb. Pretty damn small.

No. We used Fluxbox. And it included all the source. Also we didn't do much optimizations.

With NetBSD I got a full system with X and web browser in about 300 megs.

new ubuntu!

http://lifehacker.com/371194/first-look-at-ub … heron-beta

again? is this a monthly thing?

haha yeah no kidding. iunno.

i'm torn on ubuntu.

i think the release schedule is like openbsd's. that is, twice a year

FkUbuntu

... my favorite linux distro.

i have the strong desire to go back to *nix on my workstation, as one of my housemates just migrated to ubuntu

but then i think about adobe creative suite, ipod/music collection, my random hardware setup... and it doesn't seem worth it