Last updated: 2009.04.24

My intent here is to present the current state of Linux on the X60 tablet--what works, what doesn't, and how to get things working. I have installed kubuntu gutsy on my tablet, so some of the information presented here will be kubuntu specific, and some will be specific to the hardware present in my tablet. Hopefully this will serve as a guide for people interested in running Linux on this machine. Please feel free to contact me if you have more information or questions relevant to the topic!

• ThinkWiki -- Volumes of information about running Linux on ThinkPads, much of which was used in my installation.
  • X60 Tablet Installation Page -- currently just links back here, hopefully will replace this site soon
  • X61 Tablet Installation Page -- much of this stuff applies to X60 as well.
  • X41 Tablet Ubuntu Installation Page
• http://www.ugcs.net/~yukon/x60t.html - Instructions on getting Hardy with Gnome running.
• http://dev.cavatina.no/wiki/index.php/X60_Tablet - Fellow x60 user with lots of tips on extending battery life
• Ubuntu wiki page
• Thinkpad Forum
• http://ofb.net/~wnoise/lenovo-x60-tablet/

Intel Core Duo (looks like 2 CPUs) SATA Hard Drive Sound Display X.org + AIGLX acceleration External VGA Input Pen Touch screen Trackpoint Special keys Fingerprint Reader Networking Wired ethernet Wireless Others External Connections USB Firewire Secure Digital PCMCIA ACPI Power Management Suspend and Hibernate Extra Features Detect screen swivel Detect tablet orientation Active hard drive protection

Works out of the box Works, some effort required Partly works, some problems Does not work I haven't checked yet

My model number is 6365CTO. My screen is the SXGA (1400x1050) model, and the pen component is a wacom tablet described by /sys/bus/pnp/devices/00:0b/id as "WACf004". The CPU as indicated in /proc/cpuinfo is "Intel(R) Core(TM) Duo CPU L2500 @1.83GHz". The rest of the hardware is described by the output of lspci:

        00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Mobile 945GM/PM/GMS/940GML and 945GT Express Memory Controller Hub (rev 03)
        00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Mobile 945GM/GMS/940GML Express Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 03)
        00:02.1 Display controller: Intel Corporation Mobile 945GM/GMS/940GML Express Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 03)
        00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) High Definition Audio Controller (rev 02)
        00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) PCI Express Port 1 (rev 02)
        00:1c.1 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) PCI Express Port 2 (rev 02)
        00:1c.2 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) PCI Express Port 3 (rev 02)
        00:1c.3 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) PCI Express Port 4 (rev 02)
        00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI #1 (rev 02)
        00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI #2 (rev 02)
        00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI #3 (rev 02)
        00:1d.3 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI #4 (rev 02)
        00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller (rev 02)
        00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge (rev e2)
        00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801GBM (ICH7-M) LPC Interface Bridge (rev 02)
        00:1f.1 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) IDE Controller (rev 02)
        00:1f.2 SATA controller: Intel Corporation 82801GBM/GHM (ICH7 Family) Serial ATA Storage Controller AHCI (rev 02)
        00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) SMBus Controller (rev 02)
        02:00.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation 82573L Gigabit Ethernet Controller
        03:00.0 Ethernet controller: Atheros Communications, Inc. AR5212 802.11abg NIC (rev 01)
        15:00.0 CardBus bridge: Ricoh Co Ltd RL5c476 II (rev b4)
        15:00.1 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Ricoh Co Ltd R5C552 IEEE 1394 Controller (rev 09)
        15:00.2 Class 0805: Ricoh Co Ltd R5C822 SD/SDIO/MMC/MS/MSPro Host Adapter (rev 18)
      

• X.org + AIGLX
Ubuntu Feisty and Gutsy both currently offer two driver options for the intel graphics chipset: "i810" which is older and more stable, and "intel" which will eventually replace i810 but still needs work. In general I recommend using the intel driver if you are running Gutsy and the i810 driver if you are running Feisty. The basic differences I have noticed are:
• The intel driver automatically uses the correct 1400x1050 resolution for SXGA screens, whereas the i810 driver requires the 915resolution package (see below) to work properly.
• The intel driver currently has difficulty rotating in Feisty, while the opposite appears to be true in Gutsy.
You can switch between these two drivers by making sure the proper packages are installed (xserver-xorg-video-i810 and 915resolution or xserver-xorg-video-intel) and editing the proper "Driver" line in /etc/X11/xorg.conf.
• SXGA resolution (1400x1050)
As mentioned above, the easiest way to get SXGA resolution working is to use the "intel" driver in Gutsy. If you are using Feisty. however, some extra work is required:

• Make sure i810 driver is installed and in use:
  # apt-get install xserver-xorg-video-i810
  check that the "Driver" line in /etc/X11/xorg.conf uses "i810" instead of "intel".
• Install 915resolution (I believe this package is in the universe repository, see repository section):
  # apt-get install 915resolution
  ..then edit /etc/default/915resolution using my example.
• External VGA
In gutsy the external VGA connection works when using the intel driver (see above). You can configure the two displays to be in any position/orientation relative to each other. For example, the command
xrandr --output LVDS --mode 1400x1050 --output VGA --mode 1024x768 --right-of LVDS
sets the LCD to its native resolution of 1400x1050 and puts the external monitor to the right with 1024x768 resolution. The extra monitor is automatically detected, so no editing of configuration files is required to make this work. Currently KDE is not able to perform these configurations (expect that in KDE 4), however there are a number of small GUI frontends to RandR floating around the inter-tubes.

The only thing you might have to watch out for here is that certain configurations will require the Virtual option to be larger in xorg.conf. I have found that sometimes this degrades performance, so the values are currently a little lower than I'd like (for example, I can't run the external monitor in 1280x1024 with the current Virtual values).

• Brightness control
The brightness controls work with one small change--add a single line "blacklist video" into the file /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist. This prevents the "video" module being automatically loaded, which apparently fixes the brightness keys.
• Screen rotation
The intel driver (or i810 on feisty) supports rotation through xrandr. See above for instructions on getting either driver running. Getting the screen to automatically rotate with the pen requires a little more work:
• Download my rotate script and copy into /usr/local/bin/. Make executable with
  chmod 775 /usr/local/bin/rotate
• Download x60t-swivel-down and x60t-swivel-up and copy them into /etc/acpi/events/. the screen should rotate on its own now if you swivel the screen. You can set your preferred default rotations by editing the rotate script.
• See the keyboard section to make the rotate button work.
• Add a line to your /etc/sudoers to allow the script to remap your arrow keys on rotate:
  %admin ALL=NOPASSWD: /usr/bin/setkeycodes
There is currently a bug that slows down drawing operations when the screen is rotated. This is currently fixed in Hardy, which is still quite unusable. Patiently we wait..

TrackPoint Wacom Pen Touchscreen (multitouch) I do not have a multitouch screen to test, but there is some information about getting the x61 multitouch screen working on this forum: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=503233&page=2. There is a bug report here.

Special Keys

Fingerprint Reader

Suspend and Hibernate

Battery

The tablet detects the battery/AC state and battery charge properly. The battery (I have a 4-cell battery, not 8) lasts 2-3 hours. You can improve battery life by using the ndiswrapper wireless driver and by enabling laptop mode in /etc/default/acpi-support.

CPU frequency scaling

Works, no problems. By default both CPU cores are scaled back to 1GHz, and increase speed under heavy load.

Hard drive spindown

The hard drive is _capable_ of spinning down, but this must be enabled to work. Edit /etc/default/acpi-support and uncomment ENABLE_LAPTOP_MODE=true. (download my example). Laptop mode is enabled when the tablet is running on battery, so this is the only time you will notice the hard drive spin down on its own.

Fans

Fans work, no problems. They turn on automatically and maintain the core at about 55C. I wasn't sure if they were working at first because they are so quiet :)

The tablet does get fairly hot for my liking, particularly under my right palm, but this seems to be a general feature of recent thinkpad models, so I'm not sure if there's anything to be done here. The (very quiet) fan is usually running, and seems to maintain the CPU around 50C. Typically the area under my right hand is about 40C, and the same area underneath the tablet is about 50C. You can knock off a few degrees by turning off the wireless power.

Update:Using the ndiswrapper driver instead of the ath_pci driver (Atheros wireless cards only) reduces surface temperature significantly.

• Orientation Sensor, Active Hard Drive Protection
A little work required to get the orientation sensor running:
• Load the module:
  # modprobe hdaps_ec
  
• ..and edit /etc/modules to load the module at boot time. You can now verify that the sensor works by running "cat /sys/devices/platform/hdaps/position"
• Calibrate the orientation sensor. Set the tablet on a horizontal surface and run:
  # cat /sys/devices/platform/hdaps/position > /etc/hdaps.calibration
  Then add a line to your /etc/rc.local to restore these settings at boot time:
  cat /etc/hdaps.calibration > /sys/devices/platform/hdaps/calibrate
• Set the invert flag:
  echo 3 > /sys/devices/platform/hdaps/invert
  This value may be different for other machines. You can check it by running hdaps-gl (in the package hdaps-utils) and making sure that the laptop image tilts the same way as your tablet. If not, try running the same command with other numbers (0-7). Next set this value at boot by adding the same command to /etc/rc.local. See the README from the tp_smapi source for more information.
• Screen swivel detect
Getting your tablet to detect when the screen swivels is very easy. First, install my rotate script (just copy it into /usr/local/bin and make sure it is executable). Next, create two files in /etc/acpi/events: x60t-swivel-up and x60t-swivel-down. These files just tell the ACPI system to listen for certain events (the screen swivelling) and run the rotate script when they occur. You can easily rewrite these files to run any other command you want.