Laptop musings

[elfs]

So, what does a Linuxhead do when his computer starts to go flaky? He rebuilds his kernel. Which is what I did today. And I'm rather pleased with the results. I upgraded from the 2.6.18-r6 to 2.6.22-r8 kernel, and so far haven't noticed any tics. The video driver is much more solid, the audio seems to work, I'm getting good responsiveness from the thinkpad controls, and I even have the infra-red drivers working again. W00t! So far the only thing odd about the kernel is that it seems to take forever (like, two minutes!) for the USB 2.0 driver to read the drive status off the iPod, but it's much faster and much more stable; there used to be a decay point, past which you could no longer eject the ipod without risking corrupting the iPod's filesystem but that problem seems to have been corrected.

Anyway, I seem to be heavily leaning toward a T60/2GB m/120GB hd/1.63GHz/WXGA 15.4". The ATI 1400-based systems seem to be very nice, but I don't know if I want to afford the extra $200 that they require. And the closed-source drivers make me itchy. The 120GB drive is a must, though.

Comments

[featheredfrog.livejournal.com]

Did you look at the Lenovo Clearance page? Machines never delivered (brand spanking new) at a discount...

637L3BB591 ThinkPad T60 $795.02 $2,171.00 Intel� Core? 2 Duo processor T7200 (2.0GHz, 4MB L2, 667MHz FSB) Genuine Windows Vista Business 15.4 WXGA TFT 2 x 1 GB PC2-5300 DDR2 SDRAM 667MHz SODIMM Memory 80GB Hard Disk Drive, 5400rpm CD-RW/DVD-ROM Combo 24X/24X/24X/8X Max, Ultrabay Slim Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 950 Intel PRO/Wireless 3945ABG 9 cell Li-Ion Battery Microsoft Office Professional 2007 - English 1 Year Standard Depot Warranty

http://shop.lenovo.com/SEUILibrary/controller/e/web/LenovoPortal/en_US/special-offers.workflow:ShowPromo?LandingPage=/All/US/More%20Ways%20To%20Shop/Outlet&PID=1225267&CJURL=http%3A%2F%2Fshop.lenovo.com%2FSEUILibrary%2Fcontroller%2Fe%2Fweb%2FLenovoPortal%2Fen_US%2Fspecial-offers.workflow%3AShowPromo%3FLandingPage%3D%2FAll%2FUS%2FMore%2520Ways%2520To%2520Shop%2FOutlet

[elfs.livejournal.com]

Thank you An excellent suggestion! I called after narrowing down my choices to two. They were both already sold.

Ah, well. I'll try again with a bigger list later.

[zanfur.livejournal.com]

Stay away from ATI on the T60! Starting with 2.6.23, the proprietary drivers break the suspend and hibernate capability.

Now that ATI is owned by AMD...

[(Anonymous)]

Hasn't the Linux support for ATI cards taken a sudden upturn? Not that I have tried this, of course, but what I've been hearing sounds promising...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=887&num=1

There is also the point that these drivers are very new and the level of caution required of something of this (lack of) vintage.

I was thinking I really should try out the latest Ubuntu on my ThinkPad T42 with this driver, but then I found the Mobility Radeon 9600 I have isn't one of the ones supported. (Oh well, so much for that.)

Bryan.

[ewhac.livejournal.com]

I take it you're looking at a T60 due its having been discontinued (and therefore cheaper)? The T61 is the new flagship machine, and they may still be offering their 15th anniversary discounts on Lenovo's Web site. The T61 is available with Intel, NVidia, or ATI graphics, depending on what you order.

AMD/ATI recently announced they're going full Open Source on their graphics drivers, and the initial release is reputed to be quite good. Intel went full Open Source on their graphics drivers (http://intellinuxgraphics.org/) some time ago. NVidia still hasn't (and probably never will), but they have been very dilligent in providing quality Linux/X drivers.

And yes, 2.6.22 has overall been a rather nice release.