whats your m15x mileage with Linux

Hi all,

Looking for peoples experiences with Linux on the m15x. I'm looking into dual booting with Ubuntu and wondering if there are any pitfalls/show stoppers that i should be aware of.

Also, hows your experience been running your flavour of linux ?

 

I dual booting Ubuntu Intrepid and Vista. Sound and integrated graphics works out of the box. However, haven't figured out how to get Binary GFX to work yet. Everytime I switch graphics mode it ''confuses'' the linux display manager. Also, the AlienFX can't be controlled from Linux. Everything else works fine.

EDIT: I'm also able to enable special desktop effects with the integrated graphics. And the wireless card and LAN works from a fresh install of Ubuntu.

 

I'm using Vista Business x64 with SP2 and Gentoo Linux x64

Gentoo has been using the descrete video card (nvidia) and everything is working pretty good. I've been recently trying to recompile with options to use integrated instead (Intel) to save power (since I don't play games in Linux), but it's been a challenge to get compiz-fusion working under the Intel card... especially after the nVidia drivers have/were in use.

 

what nvidia driver are you using ? i dont seem to be getting the performance i would expect from glxgears at all.

 

I know you said m15x but I figured I would just throw it out there for people that are curious. I dual boot Ubuntu 8.04 (64bit) and Vista (64bit) on my M17, with 2 separate hard drives. Ubuntu Intrepid 8.10 will absolutely not work on the M17 (because of the ATI cards) so you must use 8.04. Hopefully 9.4 due in April will work.

Wireless needs a little tweak, but everything else works right out of the box, even changing the keyboard lights, bluetooth, webcam, etc. Pretty awesome actually.

There you go, now you can go back to m15x discussion.

 

How'd you get the lights to work? Did you have to install the software for it? This is what one has to do for the AlienFX on the m15x.

 

No dude. Didn't have to install a thing. Right after I installed Linux on my second hard drive I noticed I could change the lights on the keyboard to blue, green, and red by using that same shortcut Fn + F10 I think (the same one you use in Windows) Oh, and the touch bottons for the media (play forward next stop) also work out of the box.. even the shortcut to mute the computer (Fn + F6) go figure...

 

The m17 lights are controlled via bios its the m17 x and the m15x that need the alienfx software. Also for me sound only works through headphone jack ubuntu 8.04. Is there a fix for that?

 

You probably need to configure your sound preference, maybe you muted your front speaker you just didn't know.

 

speakers aint working on mine either, works fine from earphone jack though. Will investigate further.

 

You guys have to configure the modprobe alsa base file.

1. Open a command terminal

2. Paste this in /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base
then enter.

3. A blank file will then show up, type this in options snd-hda-intel model=mbp3

4. Exit and save the file

5. Reboot the computer and now you have sound through the speakers

This will disable the headphones but the speakers will work. I can't get the headphones and speakers to switch yet though...

 

i'll try that tomorrow when i can see properly let you know how it goes.

 

After doing a bit of searching on the forums i added ' options snd-hda-intel model=lenovo-101e ' to the end of alsa-base and both headphones and speakers work fine now.

I just need to figure out how to get the mic to work so i can use skype, anyone have any joy with there mic ? Webcam works fine btw.

 

I hate to dig up an old thread, but with running Gentoo, things are a bit different for me... I think I need the specific kernel module for the lenovo-101e, but it's not an obvious link between the device model and the driver for it... the kernel options just aren't that robuts for documentation...

if anyone knows what kernel driver I should be adding to my build to make this work, I'd appreciate it a lot.