Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron beta successfully installed on new R61

Good news for those interested in Ubuntu on a new Thinkpad! I just finished an install of the 8.04 Hardy Heron beta on my new R61 and it went extremely well. I'm now dual-booting with XP Pro. All the primary functions were recognized out of the box, including the display (the new Intel X3100 chipset) with the correct resolution, the wireless (the Intel Pro A/B/G), and even the shortcut keys for sound. So far I am very happy with the speed and stability, though I've only had it running for an hour or so.

(After some odd problems with the live CD that I burned, I used a USB key for the install instead, following the instructions that I stumbled on here: Team Teabag Hardy Install from USB. Once I made the change to the BIOS to allow booting from USB, this worked flawlessly, and significantly faster than a CD.)

I used the AMD64 distribution to make full use of the 64 bit processing in the Core 2 Duo. I don't know how much difference it makes. As I understand it, the x386 version will also work.

One thing that is not working correctly is the suspend. It tries to suspend (and even recognizes the Fn+F4 hotkey), but it flickers to a login window, as though I had locked the desktop instead of suspending. Suspend has been trouble for a while with Ubuntu, so I'm not surprised about this. I will look around for a fix and report it if I find one.

I have not yet checked the bluetooth or webcam functions. I won't be able to do any more until tonight when I get home, as I already seriously abused my lunch hour to get it done.

Overall this is good news. I had a lot of trouble getting Gutsy to work correctly on a Dell Latitude a few months ago, so this is a big step forward.

 

Ubuntu is slightly similar to SUSE, and I was able to run it on my T61p with no problem.

 

Were the screen brightness buttons recognized out of the box?

 

I too had Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy installed on my R61i and the screen brightness buttons nor the volume buttons worked. They do however work just fine in Gutsy along with suspend. In fact the only reason I still have dual boot with Windows is that I need IE7 for work and there no good way to do it including Wine.

 

Use VMware to run windows in a virtual machine.

 

At first it didn't seem like the buttons worked, but after a delay of a couple seconds, an on screen display popped up with a status bar for brightness. That bar goes up and down as I manipulate the screen brightness. That said, though the bar goes up and down, I couldn't see any change in the screen itself. Even when the brightness is set all the way down according to the OSD, it's still just the same as when it's all the way up.

I tested some other hotkeys to see what works.

• Fn+PgUp: Thinklight works
• Fn+F2: Lock desktop works
• Fn+F3: Displays power info
• Fn+F4: Suspend tries to work, as mentioned before
• Fn+F5: This was most interesting. It appears to cycle through configurations. Wireless is on at boot. When I press Fn+F5 bluetooth comes on (see below). When I press again, wireless goes off. When I press again, bluetooth and wireless go off. When I press again it cycles back to the beginning with wireless only on. (By the way, wireless is working great with WEP security. It hasn't dropped that I can tell and reconnects very quickly every time I boot up. The connection strength is very high here. I'll be curious to see how it performs at home.)
• Fn+F7: No effect, but I don't have an external monitor set up
• Fn+F8: No effect that I could tell. Not sure what this is supposed to do.
• Fn+F9: Eject works
• Fn+F12: Hibernate kind of worked. It did shut down with some complaints. When I powered on it went through GRUB as on a normal boot and then loaded into a screen lock page instead of the normal login screen. It came up with the same folders open. I think that I could say it worked, but it didn't seem like the boot was much shorter than normal. At least it didn't fail...
• Fn+Arrow Keys: Play, Stop, Forward, and Back all worked with Totem Player
• The dedicated page forward and back keys do not appear to work.

The new thing here is the bluetooth, which is working well. I made the laptop discoverable and was able to find it and pair with my cell phone. I've never used it before, so I wasn't sure what to do next. I'll try to figure out how to transfer files, just to check that it works.

Again this is all amazing to me. I'm very impressed with how much is working with such a little effort.

 

I think I'll wait until the final version comes out next month. Glad to hears it's going well.

 

I'm having a problem getting the 8.04 with 2.6.24 to work with my wireless card. Intel 3945. With everything up to date I can use the 2.6.22 kernel just fine. I'm just glad that I can use the live cd with my ati card. I can't wait for the final version to be out. It's come a long way since 4.10.

Scott

 

After reading this post I gave 8.04 a try, and am running it now via LiveCD. It works great, and the guide that the OP posted was great as well. In fact, right now I"m making space for a 20 GB partition to install it just so I can see the "high end" desktop effects setting... I've never run Ubuntu before on a computer other than as a LiveCD. This will be interesting. What I like is that everything is supported... my Atheros G WiFi is working (says something about restricted drivers, I dont care), so is my X1400, even the brightness works! Sig is below to show what hardware i'm running. Even the resolution! <3.

Although I am not really a fan of the default background... the version without the swan looks decent though

 

How about Power Options? Does it work well?

Looking forward to a DIY Linux install thread soon.

 

I'm still repartitioning my hard drive, so you'll have to wait

I didn't realize it'd take so long using Ubuntu's built in Gparted... it reads as a test THEN copies partitions when you are resizing them... ugh.

 

Well after installing, it works flawlessly. I installed the restricted ATi drivers to get the full graphic effects, which i have got to say are pretty damn cool. The only thing I dont understand is how to get PowerPlay to work by itself. I have to go into Terminal and use aticonfig --list-powerstates - it shows 3.

alex@alex-laptop:~$ aticonfig --list-powerstates
core/mem [flags]
-----------------
1: 128/135 MHz [low voltage]
* 209/135 MHz [low voltage]
2: 324/135 MHz
3: 446/351 MHz [default state]

And what's weird is that when I set it to the 1st (above), it doesn't entirely set the core to the 128MHz, but that 209! Power states 2 and 3 work correctly...

The fan is also constantly running, I am not sure how to go about fixing that. Wireless works though, and I see the CPU scaling appropriately. I just installed all the updates, so I have to restart. maybe that will fix some things. As for Power States I'm not sure entirely what you mean. Pressing the power button on my T60, I have to hold it for a bit, and then it seems to lag... and then the screen comes up for what do I want to to do. As for closing/opening the lid it works, I hear a distinct beep for closing and another different beep for opening. Will restart and report back shortly.


So just to recap...

-ThinkLight works
-Brightness works
-Atheros ABG wireless works
-Sound works
-ATi X1400 kind of works (still wondering how to get powerplay to be automatic)
-CPU scaling works, but fan is constantly on (high setting I believe, but the T60 is kind of quiet to begin with)

 

Well, I tried to install a ThinkPad fan control but because I dont know Ubuntu that well it didn't work. If anyone know exactly what steps (where to go, what to type, etc etc) I am open to try it on mine. I tried using this but it said installation failed when installing the .deb for the driver.
http://www.gam*****ess.org/moin.py/ThinkPad_Fan_Control

EDIT: one interesting thing is that the fan will go off once i unplug my laptop then plug it back in. However that is only brief, as after some time the fan kicks back in again ~.~....