[ltp] OT: IdeaPad S205 installation notes

[Richard Neill]

Dear All,

I've just bought and set up an S205 ideapad; I know this isn't directly 
  a thinkpad, but I thought some people might find the summary of interest.

1. General thoughts: quite well built, decent spec: 1366x768 11" screen, 
HDMI and VGA outputs, stereo mic (picks up sound well, and not the fan). 
Good speakers. Decent-ish keyboard. Fan not too loud, but does run even 
when the machine is idle. Mouse buttons are poor, having a "soggy" feel. 
The camera is only 0.3 MP, and is really bad, especially compared to the 
Acer Aspire One. Lenovo doesn't do Windows refunds, unlike Acer.

2. Got the software working with Ubuntu Oneiric-64; I'm not using the 
proprietary graphics driver, thought there is one available, because I 
find the fbdev one perfectly adequate for non-gaming stuff. [The 
graphics card does NOT work with Ubuntu Lucid: it won't run at the full 
resolution]

3. There is a known performance problem with WiFi; it looks like it will 
be fixed upstream soon. Also, must, blacklist the acer-wmi module or the 
wifi is totally non-functional.

4. There is all sorts of fun to be had with EFI vs Grub, resulting in 
the machine refusing to boot Linux from the HD. However, it's easy to 
fix, by installing grub-legacy. After the Linux installer has completed, 
reboot from a live-USB distro, and do the usual grub-fixing process: 
mount the target; mount --bind /proc,/dev/sys ; chroot into the target; 
apt-get remove grub2; apt-get install grub; grub-install /dev/sda, 
update-grub.

5. Not really the hardware's fault, but in Xubuntu-oneiric, each time 
the machine boots and starts X, pressing Enter will crash the X-server.
(all other keys are fine). This dumps the user back to gdm, and logging 
in the 2nd time will work ok. This appears to be a known bug in Ubuntu, 
having been present at least since Lucid; it's marked as critical, 
widely confirmed, and nobody seems to be trying to fix it!

I hope that's of use to someone.

Richard