Mark Alford's Fedora Core 4 GNU/Linux on an IBM Thinkpad T23
Last modified 2006-Sep-17
My experiences with other thinkpads and older versions of RedHat
are available here.
Linux distributions are available from
many sources.
For Fedora it is most convenient to get it on a single DVD.
|
Hardware Components
|
Status under Linux
|
Notes
|
| 14.1 SXGA+ TFT Display |
Works |
Select Generic LCD Display in Installer |
| Savage video card |
Works |
kernel option cleans up screen |
| Integrated Network Card |
Works |
None |
| DVD Drive |
Works |
None |
| PCMCIA Dell TrueMobile 1150 Wireless Card |
Works |
None |
| Intel sound card |
Works |
minor apmd configuration needed to restore
sound after hibernation |
-
Suspend/Hibernate
In /boot/grub/grub.conf, add "acpi=off" to the kernel line.
Then, as long as you have a
hibernation file, suspend and hibernation work perfectly.
-
Shrunken junk-filled console screen
When I resume from hibernation or switch to a console screen (CTRL+ALT+F1 etc)
the screen shrinks to a colored rectangle, with random characters
spread across it. Mohammed Farag
showed me how to fix this:
in /boot/grub/grub.conf, add "vga=791" to kernel line to
use the frame buffer console. Other possible modes
(obtained from this URL):
| Colors | Depth | 640x480 | 800x600 | 1024x768 | 1280x1024 | 1600x1200 |
| 256 | 8 bit | 769 | 771 | 773 | 775 | 796 |
| 32,768 | 15 bit | 784 | 787 | 790 | 793 | 797 |
| 65,536 | 16 bit | 785 | 788 | 791 | 794 | 798 |
| 16.8M | 24 bit | 786 | 789 | 792 | 795 | 799 |
Wireless
Use a linux-friendly card like the
Dell Truemobile 1150.
-
Sound
Sound worked immediately on installation, however it always stopped working
after hibernation. This is fixed by reloading the sound module on resume.
Set RESTORESOUND="yes" in etc/sysconfig/apmd
-
Mount options
I added the following lines to my /etc/fstab.
They allow anyone to write
files on the FAT32 partition /win, and /media/floppy
and anyone to unmount them again. Flash memory sticks are
mounted in /media/mem
----
/dev/fd0 /media/floppy auto noauto,users 0 0
/dev/hda1 /win vfat users,uid=99,gid=99,umask=000 0 0
/dev/sda1 /media/mem ext3 noauto,users 0 0
----
Note /win is mounted as vfat, not msdos,
so that long file names come out right.
-
local libraries
If you want to use applications installed in the
/usr/local tree, you
should add /usr/local/lib to the library load path.
Create file local.conf in /etc/ld.so.conf.d, containing
----
/usr/local/lib
----
this will then be automatically included by /etc/ld.so.conf.
-
Miscellaneous
For information about keeping your system updated,
disaster prevention, firewalling, etc,
see my Linux hints page
alford(at)physics.wustl.edu
Mark Alford's home page
