IBM-Lenovo Thinkpad X60s

This is a guide to running Linux with the IBM-Lenovo Thinkpad X60s laptop, model 170225M.

This guide is intended to provide you details on how well this laptop works with Linux and which modules you need to configure. For details on how to actually install and configure the required modules have a look at our guides section for distribution specific instructions.

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You should use a distribution which uses kernel version 2.6.15 or greater, such as Fedora Core 5 or Ubuntu Linux 6.06 for best compatibility with the X60s.

On Fedora Core 5, the i810 X.org module will not work out of the box and you will have to use the vesa module for basic operations, but this will not let you connect to a “beamer” (lcd projector) or any kind of second monitor as the VGA port will not work. Fn-F7 will do nothing. To use the VGA port, you must install the updated module from Fedora. (In updates-testing as of August 15th, 2006). Once you have done this, you still need to do some hand editing of the xorg.conf file to get things working. The following seems to work, but your mileage may vary:
(only the Device section needs editing)

Section "Device"
        Identifier  "Videocard0"
        Driver      "i810"
        BusID       "PCI:0:2:0"
        Option      "MonitorLayout" "NONE,LFP+CRT"
        Option      "DevicePresence" "true"
        Option      "CheckLid" "false"
        VendorName  "Lenovo"
        BoardName   "Intel Corporation Mobile Integrated Graphics Controller"
EndSection

On Sound, the playback seems to work fine but recording is a bit strange in Fedora Core 5, at least as far as I can tell. It seems that “arecord” does not work, while both audacity and skype work fine, as long as you select the “Front Mic” using alsamixer as the recording device.

Fairly trouble free and easy installation on this notebook. As long as you use a recent Linux distribution you shouldn't have too many problems.