This may not be as sexy a liveblog as a black-turtleneck-clad Apple announcement event, but it may be useful to those of you considering switching to Linux! Personally, I’m switching because despite rumors, there doesn’t seem to be a mini Mac laptop coming out anytime soon. My IBM ThinkPad X31 is nearly an ideal laptop in my view – small, versatile, and able to do almost everything needed while on the go. The problems I have with it are not hardware-related, though, they are all caused by the operating system.

Don’t get me wrong, Windows XP is great for some things like gaming and running niche programs, but for day-to-day email, internet, and basic app usage, I prefer an operating system that does not slowly bloat over time as Windows often does. This brings me back to the earlier problem – I need an ultralight laptop, and Apple hasn’t built one (with an Intel chip) yet!

So, here I am installing Ubuntu 7.04 on my old laptop! This is by no means a comprehensive guide, just a quick run through detailing the main process and a few key decisions.

1.) First, backup ALL the data on the old Windows XP installation! The main data to grab was in the Desktop and My Documents folders. I also checked the Drive C root, plus got a few things (Mozilla Thunderbird/Firefox profile data) from the Local Settings and Application Data folders.

2.) After the backup, now that I’m SURE all the data was safe on an external drive, I boot up the laptop and hit the blue “Access IBM” button to boot into the IBM “predesktop” recovery console. From here I will restore the laptop to the factory XP installation with all the drivers streamlined in by IBM. Since I may still need to run some Windows-exclusive programs, I am making the laptop a dual-boot system.

3.) Once IBM’s excellent hands-free XP installation was completed and defragmented, I used the incredibly useful GParted LiveCD to shrink the XP partition and create two new partitions – one for the root linux install, and one for swap space. Swap had to be about 2GB since I have 1GB of ram (double that), and I chose the XFS ReiserFS filesystem for my main linux install. Ext2 and 3 have always worked for me, but I want to try a new filesystem (either XFS or ReiserFS) for this install.
One snag was the way to boot to a CD on the ThinkPad – usually it just shoots straight into Windows. I read somewhere that you hit F12 for a boot menu as soon as you see the first splash screen, and it worked!
After resizing the XP (NTFS filesystem) partition, I boot back into XP to make sure it works – it runs an automatic check disk, but turns out to be just fine.

4.) Finally I am starting the Ubuntu installation! I am using Ubuntu 7.04, and while I considered other distros, Ubuntu is the one I have the most experience with. Furthermore, from what I’ve read it is very easy to set up ACPI power management, so it’ll be great for a laptop installation. I am using a special bootable installation DVD, but a standard CD will do, just be sure to get the “alternate” disk for a text installation.
The key decisions in the installation come mainly at the disk installation partition (formatting) and the boot manager installation. At the disk formatting step, I chose to do it fully manually, setting the main XFS partition I made in Gparted as root and bootable, and making sure the swap was recognized by Ubuntu.

(Ubuntu text installation)

5.) Well the LILO bootloader won’t install without an error, so I tried the GRUB bootloader, and found that it doesn’t play well with the XFS filesystem. I am going back to redo the Ubuntu installation with ReiserFS, and will update this post as neccesary.

6.) (Almost) everything works! I made sure to install the GRUB bootloader to the ReiserFS partition (the Ubuntu install partition) instead of the Master Boot Record (MBR), so now I did not ruin the IBM “predesktop” restore area. After installation, the system rebooted straight into Linux! What’s really amazing is that many of the exotic laptop button combinations (to change volume, brightness, etc) work right out of the box in Ubuntu 7.04!

(GUI working! Great!)

7.) Now, to tweak everything; I just finished configuring the wireless app to automatically log in to my wireless network using PAM Keyring, but I have a few more things to do. Suspend to RAM still doesn’t work, Hibernate is problematic, and some of the key IBM hardware buttons aren’t supported (back and forward, middle mouse scroll thing, etc).

8.) For the Trackpoint (IBM middle-mouse-scroll), I found instructions here on how to get that working with a quick Xorg edit.

Applications: Other than the usual apps (Firefox, Thunderbird, Filezilla, Amarok, etc.), I installed pcmanfs as a file browser, and changed it to be the menu default using the instructions on lifehacker.

Well almost everything is working and I do overall think it is better than Windows XP, but there are still three main things that I want to get working. The main two are suspend (to RAM) and greater battery savings (I get 1.6 hrs. in Ubuntu compared to 3+ in Windows). Hibernate is also not working, but that’s not as big a deal as the other two. I’ll keep working on it, and report back in a week or so!

Posted on August 26, 2007 at 1:46 am

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Written by Eric