iBook--, Thinkpad++

Life sucks and then your computer breaks. As soon as a new X release is out, and it seems dual head on iBook is a possibility , the darn thing decides to fry its logic board. Again. Thankfully, Apple may make the repair for free, if the symptoms match the manufacturing problem . Again.

Well, the good news is that after 3 years of using the iBook, I got a new laptop. A Lenovo Thinkpad x60s, weighing just 1.3kg. It's so light I always think I forgot to put it in the backpack.

Ubuntu Dapper (flight 7) seems to work pretty well on the x60s. Trouble spots so far:

  • install CD corrupted display during X autoconfig: screen was in text mode, mostly black, with two or three character-size grey rectangles -- hitting enter blindly let it continue and reboot the machine

  • suspend and hibernation fail on resume

  • wlan hanged once, and didn't recover until I rebooted into Windows -- unngh. Look at this:

    ipw3945: Error sending SCAN_ABORT_CMD: time out after 500ms.
    ipw3945: Radio Frequency Kill Switch is On:
    Kill switch must be turned off for wireless networking to work.
    ipw3945: Error sending ADD_STA: time out after 500ms.
    ipw3945: Error sending RATE_SCALE: time out after 500ms.
    

    After that, any attempt to use the interface ended with:

    ADDRCONF(NETDEV_UP): eth1: link is not ready
    
  • hotplugging the UltraBay docking station does not seem to work in Linux

I especially love the dual headedness, after fighting with the ATI driver in the iBook.

Now I need to see about hooking the fingerprint reader up to PAM.

2006-05-22T07:36:00+03:00, originally published 2006-05-21T22:41:00+03:00