Lenovo X200 and Ubuntu 8.10

Last time I was looking for a laptop I chose the hp 2510p. The 2510p is a great laptop and I will continue to use it. Unfortunately the pokey 1.8 inch drive in it was really starting to annoy me, so I decided to look for a new laptop, something that would be able to churn through VMs and the like.

Ok, I lie ... I didn't /need/ a new laptop that bad, but as many of you know, I am a Thinkpad junkie and I just couldn't bear to not have one, so I got a new Lenovo X200. Pics here. I've had it for about a month and thought I would share my opinion of this laptop.

First things first. I decided to skip the fingerprint reader this time around because I found myself never using it in my old laptop. It only comes with Intel video so that was an easy decision, for wireless I opted for the Intel 5300. Unfortunately for me Lenovo instead sent me an Intel 5100 wireless adapter in the X200. I was wary of the 5100 due to it's apparent regression in performance vs. a 4965. I haven't had any issues with the 5100 other than the feeling in the back of my head that I should have gotten a 5300. I could just mail Lenovo but I didn't want to ship my laptop back, and I wonder if they would even just send me the 5300 in the mail so I can install it myself. Either way wireless isn't an issue with this laptop in Ubuntu.

From ThinkpadX200

Installing Ubuntu

Thanks to evand's awesome usb-creator I was able to make a USB stick installation on my desktop in a few minutes and then installed Ubuntu 8.10 via USB. I am really starting to prefer this method of installation because it's easy, doesn't need a CDR, and best of all, it's quicker.

Initial X configuration was kind of borked - I was seeing bug 273899. After finding information from the thinkwiki and the always excellent Ubuntu Forums I was able to find a xorg.conf that did the trick. Chris Jones also happened to have an X200 handy and added some information to the bug.

Suspend and resume was fixed by adding a acpi_sleep=s3_bios to the kernel boot parameters. I also followed the thinkwiki recommendations for BIOS settings.

The webcam was also not working in Cheese, see bug 290506 and bug 287888.

The fan sometimes goes nuts and thinkwiki recommends this thing called tpfand. I did not try this because Chris Jones recommended not to have a userspace daemon to control the fan. I don't know jack about things like this so I just let it go crazy, I suppose it's better to have it on than having it shut off and overheat the laptop. New thinkpads have redesigned fans so even when it's at maximum I can barely hear it

I will be following up on the X bug and the fan thing with the appropriate people at the Ubuntu Developer Summit.

The X200 itself

I was attracted to the X200 because it is much cheaper than the X300, which is a tad large for me anyway. I purchased it with 1GB of RAM and will likely bump it up to 4GB prior to UDS. (I usually don't max out RAM from a manufacturer because their prices are usually terrible). I didn't go with an SSD because it was an extra $600 and I would rather wait another 9 months now that Intel has upped the ante with their SSDs.

I've owned an X40 in the past and the X200 is a "widescreen version of the X40/X60". However it does feel bulkier than I think it should, it feels more like a smaller T series than a widescreen X. Still it is quite small and compact though.

Build quality is what you expect from a Thinkpad, it's a tank. I have no qualms about grabbing it from the top of the screen and moving it around (something I wouldn't do on Jill's M1330). The keyboard is what you expect of a Thinkpad, nearly perfect. I wish they would fix the F1/ESC thing though, it's annoying for vim users. The Fn/Ctrl order is different from the hp, so I have to get used to that. I have 3 beefs with the hardware:

• As you can see with the pictures the bezel on the top of the LCD is real thick. Too thick.
• Two of the USB ports are toward the front of the machine, making the "sitting on the couch with a USB key plugged in" use case kind of scary for me. I much would have rather had the USB ports in the back or more towards the rear of the case.
• No LED backlight. That's right; my hp 2510p is a year older and has an LED backlight; this option is only available on the X300. Boo.

Battery life so far has been a tad over 5 hours. Note that I usually don't dim my display when on battery and I also haven't gone through the powertop recommendations as of yet. Performance is excellent (I got the C2D 8600, 2.4ghz), but like I mentioned above I have not maxxed out the RAM so I can't say anything about VM performance just yet. The 160gb 7200rpm drive is quick, no issues with it so I suspect it will run multiple VMs fine. Heat dissipation is great, it doesn't get warm or uncomfortable.

Overall I'm very happy with the X200 and I recommend it. Like all new notebooks there can be some gotchas as far as hardware support in Linux goes, but that usually works itself out after a release. Many thanks to the Thinkwiki and Ubuntu contributors who have documented the quirks and reported bugs.

Blog note: I have no idea why planet keeps bumping my Banshee entry to the top of planet, I promise I am not doing it on purpose, heh.

Comments

[schweeb]

They'll send you the wifi adapter, it's a CRU. They sent me an upgrade to mine a while back for free

[Michael Gauthier]

You bought an Intel 5300 and they shipped you a 5100? If I were you I'd have been on the phone when it arrived. You should definitely get them to ship you the correct card.

[ethana2]

I've never seen a high resolution webcam work right with Ubuntu 8.10, but that bug should be fixed automatically within the next few days-- and since the gnome .2 release comes out also, I think most of the bugs I'm seeing will go away very soon, which will be very, very refreshing.

[John L. Clark]

> I wish they would fix the F1/ESC thing though, > it's annoying for vim users. I know what you mean. It did, however, force me to learn that Ctrl+[ is equivalent to ESC in vim. This has actually been really beneficial, because, in my opinion, Ctrl+[ is even more convenient than ESC, as my left hand doesn't have to leave the home row. (See for details.)

[John L. Clark]

Ok, Typepad totally mangled my comment. /me sighs. Anyway, everthing up to and including the first period is a quote, the rest is my response, and this is the URI I tried to post: http://vim.wikia.com/wiki/Avoid_the_escape_key

[directhex]

"Blog note: I have no idea why planet keeps bumping my Banshee entry to the top of planet, I promise I am not doing it on purpose, heh."

No, feel free, Banshee is awesome ;)

[Lure]

Thanks for report, I am also looking at x200 series as my next laptop. Good to have first hand linux info. Are you using 32-bit or 64-bit distro?
BTW, you should probably go with x200s (new model), which is supposed to have LED backlight display with higher resolution (1440x900 AFAIR).
And yes, you should replace wifi if you paid for 5300...

[jorge]

@Lure: Yes, the X200s is impressive, but too expensive - I wish I would have been able to afford it, but such is life.

@John: Wow, I didn't know about ctrl-[, thanks!

@All: Yeah, I should probably bug lenovo about the wifi card.

[bbb]

That's a nice laptop Jorge... Thinkpads are serious business. The only thing thats missing is a touchpad. I picked up a used T42 for $300 off Woot.com a few months back. I got lucky because the unit they shipped me ended up having better specs than advertised. Sure its a bit dated but still lots of life left in it. I believe everything worked out of the box with intrepid too. Bonus!

[Shot]

I also would like to know whether you went 32- or 64-bit (and why), as I’m toying with the idea of installing 32-bit Intrepid instead of 64-bit Hardy on my X60 with 3 GiB of RAM.

I’m also waiting for sanely-priced Intel SSDs, as well as a ThinkPad with a DVI (or DisplayPort) port; it sucks to connect via the VGA port to my nice Eizo LCD (and then work in 1280×1024, because that’s the highest resolution with 70 Hz sync – all the higher ones make the pixels look even more fuzzy…).

And when you’re at it, consider subscribing to the linux-thinkpad mailing list; not only will you find valuable info on power conservation there, but also tricks on how to best preserve your battery’s capacity over time.

I currently use

modprobe tp-smapi
echo 30 > /sys/devices/platform/smapi/BAT0/start_charge_thresh
echo 80 > /sys/devices/platform/smapi/BAT0/stop_charge_thresh

as (a) battery charging should be avoided unless you really need it, (b) dropping below 20% is bad and (c) ThinkPads use impulse charging over 80%, which is also bad for the battery’s life. (I do charge it to 100% if I know I’ll need it, of course.)

[Matt Jones]

Does suspend and resume work?

How is not having a touchpad?

[Bob]

Was it possible to buy your Lenovo without Windows?

[robl]

I've found on the x200 that you get a lot better battery life if you turn off the fancy 3d/compiz effects.

Also, I had to disable one CPU core during suspend/resume or I'd just get a blank screen:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=6105510&postcount=12

[jorge castro]

@Shot: I usually never run 64-bit but for some reason with a new Flash for amd64 I convinced myself to try it this time.

@Matt: Yes, suspend and resume work. Not having a touchpad is lovely. :D

@Bob: Not as far as I know. They used to have an option for SLED but I didn't find one this time. If they still have an option it's hard to find.

@robl: I've not had that suspend/resume problem. Worse battery life with a compositing video manager is a bug.

[James]

I have a Lenovo X200s (9-cell battery, Intel 5300 AGN,12.1 WXGA+ 1440x900 LED, Intel 4500MDH) running Ubuntu 8.10. I initially installed 64 bit, but reverted to 32 bit. I've been running 64 bit for a couple of years on all of the systems I use, but got irritated that my webcam wouldn't work with Skype, partially due to the slow development of commercial software for 64 bit Linux. I have 3 GB of memory so there wasn't really any reason to run 64 bit and the headache finally caught up with me.

With both 64 and 32 bit Ubuntu, my suspend and resume works much faster than it did under 8.04. I generally get more than 6 hours on my battery. You can read my post on Ubuntuforums regarding battery life. That link doesn't show up in preview, so here is again: http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=6229511&postcount=86

When I pick up my Thinkpad T-60, it makes me wonder how I ever lugged that brick around airports. I love the X200s.

[johnny-B-good]

Jorge - with the 2510p, have you considered putting say a 32GB SSD eg: OCZ Vertex, on a "2nd drive caddy" to replace the DVD drive? VMs would be much faster..

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=360120773471

[Hob]

Jorge - looks like the 2510p and 2530p use very similar components, according to the "Service & Maintenance" guide for both.

The "pokey" 4200RPM drive and adapter could potentially be replaced with the 2530p's primary connector P/N 495026-001 giving a USATA output, rather than ZIF. There's a stack of cost effective "slim SAMSUNG SSD" offerings on EBAY with a usata :)

Also, some 2510p came with a L7700 CPU, which is supported by the Santa Rose platform (FSB=800, RAM still at 667Mhgz). Not sure if it would require desoldering or not (they are BGA cpus.. but come pin attached as well). Have you ever opened the 2510p? Would be interested to know the PLL to see if setfsb could improve performance as well.

As the chassis appears the same, if any 2530p requiring repair turn up, the whole chassis could be replaced with the newer offering (which may include the motherboard too!) A modders dream machine.

[Hob]

Whoops, I've reviewed the 2530P "Drives XP" guide and it seems they have changed the motherboard end of the connector. It is a ZIF, rather than a socket.

However, on the 2730P "Maint&Serv" guide, it appears unchanged from the 2510p. Problem is there is the SSD part (usata ended cable) is only included with the SSD, ie:

Hard drive (includes bracket, isolator and connector cable)

120-GB, 5400-rpm 501491-001
80-GB, 5400-rpm 501490-001

80-GB solid-state drive (includes bracket, isolator and connector cable) 501492-001

Hard drive connector cable (not illustrated) 504519-001

So the requirement *APPEARS* to be the connector cable that comes with 501492-001. The Hard drive connector cable specified above looks like the original 2510p supplied ZIF ended one, judging by the pics of the hard drives.

This site came up when I did a search for 2510p, so maybe 2510p owners may benefit from this info.