[ltp] T40 / Pentium M and Linux

[Pam Huntley]

So,  I've been doing some rather informal testing of Linux on the T40, and
it's been rather interesting.  Excellent hardware (I want one for myself!),
and the basics work under Linux.  Here's some details about what I've
found:

T40 and Red Hat 8.0
Install - required the most recent kernel (2.4.18-27.8.0) to boot after
install (although the install kernel worked just fine), which was a major
pain to get installed as the only thing I could boot off was the boot CD,
which didn't have the ethernet drivers on it.   Pheobe (RH 9.0 beta) didn't
have this problem.
Video - radeon card well supported, 2D accel.  not sure of 3D support
status currently, ATI said they made docs available (on website). FireGL
(on T40p models, 64MB RAM!) seen as a radeon, no 3d support????
Audio - configured ok.  i810_audio (ac97_codec)
Sound buttons - work (can get code for onscreen display, I think from
freshmeat)
PCMCIA - works. tested with wireless card.  had to manually specify cardctl
insert, but once I did it detected it and loaded the wvlan_cs drivers.
Power management - acpi of course not working.  apm --suspend worked
(resumed okay), as well as suspend/resume from buttons.  hibernation not
tested.
Ethernet - 10/100 card supported with eepro100 driver.  Gigabit card also
has a driver but I forgot it's name (intel gigabit card).  I only tested
gigabit with pheobe, but driver worked ok.
Wireless - 3 kinds of wireless cards.  Cisco - has driver, proprietary, no
wireless extensions.  get it from cisco's website.  Phillips 802.11a/b card
- no driver available yet, they are working on one, no formal ETA set
(probably this year tho).   Intel 802.11b & 802.11a/b - no driver, and
we're talking to them about that :-).
Bluetooth - same old card, works with bluez stack from sourceforge.
supposedly all the right stuff will be included in RH 9.0, including the
utilities, but haven't tested it.
Modem - works with Agere's driver, still not released :-(
3rd mouse button - doesn't work on trackpoint, can get patches for X and
gpm.  Actually I think the changes are already in gpm, but X acceptance is
very slow.
IR - not tested
speedstep - reports that support for this processor not (yet) available.
(although you have some control over this in the BIOS setup)

Results for SuSE 8.1 were very similar, except I had to turn off acpi in
the grub boot line, they offered to install experimental 3D acceleration
drivers for the radeon card (seemed to work), and couldn't deal with the
FireGL at all (had to configure it as framebuffer).

Red Hat 7.3 had a lot of issues, some that were fixed in updates
Install completed ok
sound card reported as not supported via sndconfig - worked with updates.
video - using radeon/M7 driver.  uses 1024x768 (correct).  some error
messages in logs, but it works.
3rd trackpoint button doesn't work (patch available for download from
Linuxcare)
bluetooth utilities not included, need to download from
bluez.sourceforge.net
wireless - cisco is only card that has a driver, Phillips (atheros) is
working on one...
modem - driver in development (some people have been able to get the
competitor's driver, by smlink, to work!)
a little confused about the pci controller, but it works.
manual suspend & resume worked okay.
PCMCIA does not work
cdrom/DVD combo works.


Please note I didn't do any kind of stress testing or detailed analysis,
just quick "does it work?" type stuff.  Also I'm not sure of the current
status of 3D support for the ATI cards under Linux.  SuSE appears to have
them though, make what you will of that.

Hopefully we will have official certifications up soon.

Hope that helps some,

Pam