Ubuntu on Thinkpad R32
ThinkPad R32 2658-N3U
Original description: P4-M 2GHz, 256MB RAM, 30GB HDD, 14.1 XGA(1024×768) TFT LCD, 8x-3.3x DVD-ROM, Modem(CDC), Ethernet(LOM), Li-Ion battery, WinXP Pro, Wireless upgradeable
I like to try out laptops once in a while and put Linux on them to see if how easy it would be to do everything I need to do without paying a Microsoft or an Apple tax. Since I “switched” to a Mac (from Linux) in 2002, I still use Linux at work, and have a family PC set up with Linux and I’ve been thinking it might be time to switch back. I’m not a big fan of Apple’s move to Intel, and while Macs are really slick, setting up house in Linux is a lot more fun. This is not a comprehensive report, but just my personal notes as I attempt to use the machine.
I’ve taken this machine home before and put FreeBSD on it (I had never played with that OS and it offered a good excuse). A Pentium 4 mobile, it’s quick enough for what I do with a computer. It’s missing some things I’ve grown accustomed to though. I have firewire devices (external hard drive and lightscribe DVD burner), this machine doesn’t have a firewire port. I like to plug my powerbook into the TV frequently to display slide shows of images, or watch Youtube videos, etc. This machine has no TV out capabilities. The battery may be shot as I only get an hour and a half of useage out of a charge. It runs hot. It has no touchpad, it just has the standard little red IBM nubbin in the middle of the keyboard (basically a strain gauge), and I think I’m the only one at work that actually likes that at all anyway.
Video
There’s nothing in the xorg.conf file about what driver X is using, but the R32 has an ATI mobility M6 and it seems to be autodetected. The display only does XGA, and so can only do 1024×768 which is a bit too small for most folks today (are our eyes getting any better?), but then my G4 powerbook is only XGA also, so it’s actually a treat for me since the screen is a lot bigger (14″ screen as compared to 12″ on the powerbook).
Wireless
Since the last time I had this laptop at home it’s been sitting in a closet and because it doesn’t have the optional built in wireless card, nobody really wanted it. I actually went so far as to start to order an internal wireless card for it, but the BIOS only accepts certain types and for whatever reason that didn’t work out through work so I eventually just brought it back in and there it sat. Recently I had purchased a Linksys wireless adapter for another machine at work, and luckily for me and unluckily for that machine’s user, it stopped working. I decided to bring it home to “test it” in the old Thinkpad. It seems to work fine (with the setups described below), which indicates the problem is with the other machine. Hopefully I can get that person another machine so I can hang onto the card, though to be honest I’d rather have an internal wireless card than the PCMCIA.
At first I tried to get the Linksys adapter working in Redhat Fedora 7 (before I returned it last time I wiped FreeBSD and tried out Fedora for abit) but I was stymied quickly. After figuring out what I had to do to get the Broadcom chip in the Linksys to work, I must admit it would probably have worked just as easily in Fedora, but I ended up installing Ubuntu 8.04 from CD, with gnome desktop leaving a 4G partition for Windows 98 which I need to put on later to run some windows only programs. There’s about 20G for Ubuntu. A PC2700 512Mb ram chip that I had recently replaced in my G4 Powerbook fit in this machine without issue and brought it up to 768Mb. This actually was the move that made it possible to load Ubuntu in the first place, because before I added the extra memory I was trying to boot the Ubuntu live CD and it was just reading from the CD for what seemed an eternity and I eventually just gave up.
The Linksys WPC54G PCMCIA card didn’t work out of the box in Ubuntu either. Network manager in Ubuntu was nice enough to let me know that the driver wouldn’t work till I had aquired the proprietary firmware which was the key piece of info I needed. I plugged in a regular network cable, and issued “apt-get install b43-fwcutter” which downloaded the open-wrt firmware, and cut out the files needed, and copied them into the right place. The network-manager icon then showed my local wireless and I could join. Connection speed is reported as 1Mb (abyssmal) though I haven’t tested it and it seems snappy enough for normal work. Others have complained about the same thing though, so will have to keep an eye on that thread for possible solution. There was another option (ndiswrapper) but my eyes glossed over reading up on that route.
[update 5/7/08: found a post in Bug#205114 that suggested
aptitude purge b43-fwcutter
aptitude install bcm43xx-fwcutter
Speed tests at speakeasy.net are now reporting somewhat faster download speeds, but not sure if it's just faster tonight or if something really improved. Update2: nah, it was no faster. Im back on b43 which gives me anywhere between 80KB/s and 120KB/s (down) where I usually routinely get 4 to 500KB/s on the Powerbook]
Shutting Down
Getting the wireless working introduced a new problem shutting down. Shutting down normally actually brought me to a black screen after the process, but didn’t shut the laptop OFF actually. To shut off all the way I’d have to hold in the power button for 5 seconds. I found that turning off the PCMCIA slot first allows Ubuntu to shut down completely. Just have to add “/sbin/pccardctl eject” to the shutdown scripts: I wrote a little bash script
#!/bin/bash
/sbin/pccardctl eject
and saved it in /etc/init.d (and chmod to 755 so its executable)
Then in /etc/rc0.d, I made a symlink to my script named S22ejectcard
with ln -s ../init.d/ejectcard S22ejectcard
I have no issues with Suspend which works just like it does in windows. The little green Thinkpad moon lights up and it goes to sleep. I haven’t tried just closing the lid yet (I’ve been too busy wanting to keep working on it 
Mouse buttons
The R32 has three thumb buttons right below the space bar, in perfect location if you’re using the little red rocket pointer gizmo. The middle of these three special thinkpad buttons didn’t do anything out of the box. However, I remembered that I was able to get it to act like the middle mouse button or a scroll wheel (of sorts) in FreeBSD and I had notes from that install. These pointed me over to the xorg.conf file. I modified mine with the following tidbit to get the center button working. I just rebooted after modifying /etc/X11/xorg.conf although I could probably have just restarted X windows I guess.
Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Mouse0"
Driver "mouse"
Option "Protocol" "Auto"
Option "Device" "/dev/sysmouse"
Option "Emulate3Buttons" "true"
Option "Emulate3Timeout" "80"
Option "EmulateWheel" "on"
Option "EmulateWheelButton" "2"
Option "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
Option "Buttons" "3"many
Option "CorePointer"
EndSectionAudio
Audio
Ubuntu had no problem detecting the Intel audio. Rythymbox needed gstreamer codecs installed before it could play mp3s (a non-free software requirement of mine for podcasts). Also, I needed to install “bad” codecs for .wmv, .pls, .ra support which are obviously needed since I like listening to live streaming radio and so it’s not really “bad” that it works now. One wierdness was that the .pls for liveireland.com while streaming the audio OK, wasn’t actually dislaying the names of the tunes for very long before it was crapping out but kept displaying the first song. I had to keep restarti ng it so that it would edisplay the song I was listening to.
Printing
My Brother HL-1440 is shared on my Apple Airport (a nice feature of the Airport), but got some strange error when attempting to connect to it. I used Avahi (a rendezvouz browser) and found my printer was at 10.0.1.1:9100, so I just went to System-Administration-Printing and selected New Printer. I picked AppSocket/HPJet Direct. Then I entered the IP address above into the Host box; Port 9100 was automatically entered into the box for port. Clicking forward, I chose Brother and selected the driver for the HL-1250 which was the recommended driver, and clicked Forward. That was it - working good.
Software
Most of what I spend time doing can be found right in a browser, so since Ubuntu came with Firefox 3, I was just a few short addons away from my normal working environment (mainly Gmail based workflows including Document creation and calendar). Del.icio.us plugin brought in all my links.
Pidgin connected me to my instant messaging systems (including work where I chatted with the guy with the broken laptop There were a number of programs that aren’t in the default Ubuntu install that I can’t live without, including qlGo, xchat, gftp, and a CVS client as good as LinCVS. An aside: I found tkcvs, but struggled for a long time with the right CVSROOT setup till I found :pserver:username:password@myserver.org:/usr/local/projects. Installed apache2, mysql-5, and php after I realized I couldn’t work on the sites I just downloaded from CVS! phpmyadmin was just as easy to install as everything else and made setting up my database driven sites easy. I had taken some pictures with my Canon S30 digital camera which was autodetected by F-Spot photo manager, and downloading the images and storing them away was as easy as Picasa is on Windows.
I’ll probably update this post again if I find some more time to play with this machine.
Comment posted on 5-6-2008
I’ve played with Linux about a decade ago and while it was fun for a bit I found it all a bit too much like being at work. I’m certainly no UNIX guru, and having to do a lot with the command line — when I don’t know how to do what I want — was frustrating to say the least. I am a bit interested in the new distributions though, because they are supposed to be a whole lot more user friendly.
Even still, I can’t see myself giving up the advantages of a mainstream OS for the world. One of my main obsessions that I funnel into computerland is the processing and publication of images from my digital camera. If I was a LINUX user, what would my options be? Can you really do that stuff with Ubuntu?
Running OSX I can still get my occasional UNIX itch scratched though, and that is nice.
I have to ask though, why on earth would you not be a big fan of Apple’s switch to Intel? Do you hate fast computers that don’t consume a lot of power? I loved my old 12″ 800Mhz G4, but man, the thing was really a dog the day I bought it. My 14″ Intel 2.2Ghz core 2 Duo notebook is a dream in comparison.
Comment posted on 5-7-2008
I dunno - I guess the frustrations I’ve had getting things to work in Linux over the years was part of the fun - like a puzzle to figure out. That’s pretty much the only part of my job that makes me get out of bed in the morning. I guess if I didn’t enjoy it, I’d get another job.
Whatever ‘advantages of a mainstream OS’ you’re talking about are lost on me, frankly. While OSX is slick and all, cost certainly isn’t one of them. I have to pay a premium for new hardware, and I have to pay $130 for every major release of the OS. The only “advantage” might be that there is more commercial software available, but for what I do (at home) with a PC I don’t *really* need any commercial software at all - give me Firefox, my plugins, CVS, mysql, apache, php, and a few other open tidbits and I’m good to go.
What software are you currently using to aquire and process the images? I don’t even use Image Capture on the Mac - I use Graphic Converter. Personally I love Photoshop (I have been using it for years and know it in and out) and I only dabble in photography, but have friends who are seriously into it that don’t use Photoshop at all so I know it’s possible to live happily without it. Besides, I used the newest version of the Gimp last night and was blown away (sure, you have to learn the differences, but man it’s pretty robust now). I plugged in my Canon camera into the old Thinkpad, and F-Spot aquired all the images, stored them away neatly in directories and I was able to upload them to my online gallery with no issues. I’m sure this could all be easily automated in Linux or OSX without much difference if thats what you mean.
I refused to buy a new Intel Mac when they first came out because the reliability was in question (and for good reason at first), then there was the question of battery life and heat (much worse than on the G4 from what I read). I’m not a big fan of Intel because of their historic compact with Microsoft (WinTel) instead of embracing open standards (like IBM) even if they are based in Ireland
Why should I pay twice as much for nearly the same exact hardware just to run an operating system with a slick GUI? For iPhoto? (gak!). I don’t even use Safari on the Mac - I use Firefox! I may change my mind someday, but my G4 is still working fine (and YES what a friggin dog), and now that I was given this old Thinkpad my choice may have been made for me.
Comment posted on 5-8-2008
I have been using Aperture on my mac for photo developing and it has been awesome. I’d love it if someone wanted to buy me a copy of Photoshop, but the cost is out of my reach. Buying Aperture ($199!) hurt bad enough, although I justify that purchase by using it all the time.
I’ve played extensively with Gimp, and I still love it to death. After arguing with my wife about how it is as good as Photoshop for the noob like myself I eventually gave up the argument and went away a loser. What made me give up in defeat was all of the wonderful things that I could do with Aperture, which are also of course possible in Photoshop. Going back to Gimp I found a bunch of missing options and tools. Hell, I couldn’t even adjust highlights and shadows in Gimp. Like so often is the case, my wife was right.
Comment posted on 5-8-2008
I hadn’t heard of Aperture before. I know next to nothing about the Gimp, but I think one of it’s advantages over photoshop is script-fu and plugins. Just like Firefox, the plugins allow you to extend what you can do out of the box. It didn’t take very long to find a plugin this *sounds* like it would do highlighting and shadows for you here. There’s a discussion about your very question here with lots of links to various extensions that might do just what you want (not really sure what that is).
Comment posted on 5-8-2008
I ran to the script you linked when I found myself coming up short in my Gimp debate, and quite frankly it isn’t what I needed to win the argument. ;P Don’t get me wrong, I love my beloved Gimp, it is just that it really isn’t cutting edge and specialized to allow a work flow through the digital darkroom. That is the difference, Adobe Lightroom and Apple’s Aperture are specifically made to process and adjust a batch of shots from a camera. It is the digital darkroom. I can rip through 30-50 images, making all kinds of adjustments in no time.
But as far as Linux goes, I agree. It’d do most of what I use a home computer for. I use Firefox too.
Comment posted on 5-9-2008
I’ve been dumping images from several digital camera for years for work, usually under 100 shots per session (product shots and other assorted whatnot), and I have never had a workflow which required post processing on all of them other than renaming (which I use ACDsee for at work, but can do easily in any number of programs). Most of the time after the raw photos are dumped, they get printed out (as contact sheets for which I usually use ACDSee or Picasa and not Photoshop because its faster and easier), or just viewed on a big screen, then images are selected for use. Only these images are post processed (usually just levels, color adjust, brightness/contrast) though generally we also have to crop out the product so it stands on a transparent background as well. The point is, I never process a bunch of images exactly the same way because no two images are exactly the same (some are darker, some are more exposed, etc.) The images I don’t use are either achived or deleted. My home workflow is similar. I don’t really understand the batch processing requirement I guess because I am selecting the best images to process, and how can a computer do that?
Comment posted on 5-11-2008
I’m not batch processing, or putting the same processing on a bunch of images. I shoot in RAW format and then go through and rate, sort and delete. From what is left I typically tweak something on each image, even if it is just a little thing. The difference after a levels or white balance adjustment is astounding. Aperture lets me fly through a ton of images in short order and then allows me to upload them to Flickr from within the app. It is pretty nice.
The real necessity comes from my new Canon 40D, which lets me snap off shots so fast that I end up with a couple hundred every time I go out shooting.
Comment posted on 5-11-2008
Your shots are looking really good lately, so you’re clearly doing something right!
Comment posted on 6-7-2008
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