IBM ThinkPad T40 setup
I have a new IBM ThinkPad T40, which I'm running unstable on. It
turns out that there are very good instructions for setting the
machine up (http://www.w-m-p.com/linux-on-t40.html), as well as a
driver for the 802.11a/b combo wireless card
(http://sourceforge.net/projects/madwifi/). I haven't tried setting
everything up yet, but:
-- I have a dock for the laptop. The dock's USB connectors don't work
(though the dock video, mouse, and Ethernet work fine, and the
laptop's USB works fine even in the dock). I also can't seem to
eject from the dock without powering down. Are either of these
solvable? ("Eject from dock" likely seems like a tpctl function,
but I don't know for sure.)
-- Can I use the IR port to sync with a PalmOS device?
-- Does ACPI not suck on this laptop, the way it sucked on my previous
Dell? :-) Do I actually want ACPI? Patching and rebuilding my
kernel doesn't scare me; the 2.6 kernel does, a little.
-- The "volume up", "volume down", and "mute" buttons don't seem to be
recognized by xev, though it does recognize the "page back" and
"page forward" buttons in the cursor key area.
-- What Fn+Fkey options are there that work? I understand Fn+F4
("sleep"), but not Fn+F3 (has a screen with an X next to it) or
Fn+F5 (looks like a vibrating laptop). In Windows, Fn+F9
(unlabelled) is "eject from dock". Do Fn+F7 (switch CRT/LCD
display) or Fn+F12 (suspend to disk) work? Are there other
undocumented key combinations? In Windows these have ~pretty
on-screen controls, is this something provided by the Windows
driver?
-- I seem to have gotten about two hours of battery life on the normal
(not extended) battery with moderate 802.11 usage. This seems
short; are there easily implemented tricks to extend it?
-- For bizarre personal reasons, I like X to know the physical screen
size. With my last laptop I hard-coded the size of the LCD in
/etc/X11/XF86Config-4, but this meant that I got a ridiculous 180
dpi using an external monitor. Right now I have it set for "always
100 dpi", which is differently wrong but saner. Is there a good
way to set this up? The DDC information seems to be there but
ignored. (Using XFree86 4.3 server binaries off of xfree86.org in
/usr/local, and Debian XFree86 4.2 in unstable for everything else,
which is a *much* saner world than what people seem to be going
through with backports.)
Thanks for any advice,
--
David Maze dmaze@debian.org http://people.debian.org/~dmaze/
"Theoretical politics is interesting. Politicking should be illegal."
-- Abra Mitchell
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