[ltp] F10 on T61 with Intel 965

[Juergen Botz]

I have a (new) T61 8891-CTO (Intel 965, X3100 graphics, 1400x1050)
that I installed Fedora 10 on.  At this point most everything is
working except I haven't yet managed to get native resolution
(1400x1050) for the frame buffer (intelfb).

The most important thing I've learned is not to use the PAE kernel...
it doesn't work with the intel graphics at this point.  Since I have
4GB RAM and did a 32-bit install, F10 put the PAE kernel by default. 
(This would be moot if I'd installed for x86_64 since no PAE kernel
is needed to access more than 3GB RAM on a 64-bit OS.)  Until this
is fixed "upstream", I can live with using just 3GB, so I'm using
the regular kernel.

F10 didn't even try to use its fancy new graphical boot on this
machine... I'm not sure how anaconda decided not to enable the
framebuffer.  I enabled the it by rebuilding the initrd
with --preload=intelfb and adding "video=intelfb vga=ask" to the
kernel command-line.  No mode shows up for 1400x1050, but if I
pick i.e. 1024x768 I get to see the graphical boot.  Now the
main purpose of the new graphical boot is for the framebuffer
to set the display resolution so X doesn't have to re-init the
display... this shaves some seconds of the boot process, makes
it prettier (no flashing when X comes up), and may make X happier
in other ways.  So without native res there is less motivation,
but I had some suspend/resume problems before that may have gone
away when I enabled intelfb (will do more testing to confirm this).

If anyone has solved the intelfb native res problem, please let
us know...

Other than that everything seems to be good.  3D performance seems
to be reasonable if not great (> 1000 FPS in glxgears).  Anyone
know of a benchmark for 3D that can be used on both Linux and
Windows in order to compare?

One minor niggle: Sound from the built-in speakers seems to be
quieter in Linux than in Windows.  I already cranked up all the
volume controls for both Alsa and Pulseaudio.  Anyone else
notice this?

Anyone with this machine notice any other problems on F10 or
other up-to-date Linux distro?

Overall I think this is a great desktop-alternative laptop.
I had a T42 before, which I loved, but the T61 is much faster,
runs much cooler, is much quieter, and looks and feels even
more solid.  Reliability and ruggedness were amongst my top
concerns... only time can tell for sure, but the T61 seems to
be a star in this regard.

:j