[ltp] T61p with nVIDIA Quadro FX 570M / WUXGA on 15.4" ?

[Bjørn Ola Smievoll]

gneeki@gmail.com wrote:
> Quick scan of the archives and nothing definitive - briefly, can anyone
> tell me if the T61p with nVIDIA Quadro FX 570M works well under linux?
> Very general question I know!  I'm after the best build/graphics
> Thinkpad available - dual-boot - only need tip-top graphics power in
> Windows - but it has to be functional in Linux!

Had my T61p for about a week, and got OpenSUSE 10.3 Beta 3 up and 
running yesterday.  Have tried among others Ubuntu 7.04 and Fedora 7, 
but all distros have had (minor) bugs that makes installation hard (i.e. 
Fedora doesn't recognize the cd/dvd-drive after initial boot on from the 
cd).

After downloading the latest driver from Nvidia (simple shell-script 
install) I got everything up and running just fine in 1920 x 1200. Tried 
  to enable Compiz too, but it didn't work quite work.

OpenSUSE 10.3, Fedora 8 and Ubuntu 7.10 will all be released in the near 
future (1 - 2 months) and it seems they will provide a trouble-free 
installation process when available in final versions.

An additional upside was that OpenSUSE instantly recognized and 
configured the Intel wlan card.


> Any gotchas with the T61p with this card?
> 
> Also, is 1920x1200 WUXGA only readable by small animals on a 15.4"
> screen or is it ok for humans too?  I'm very happy with 1400x1050 on
> a 14.1" T40, as a comparison point.

The fonts in OpenSUSE was a tad bit too large actually. It still uses 
Xorg 7.2, I belive 7.3 might handle this better (read something about it 
configuring according to actual screen DPI).  Might just be a tweaking 
issue with the distro too.  Other than the font size I think things 
looked clearer in X than in Vista.


(bo)