RSS feed

Categories

  • Ubuntu 11.04 on Thinkpad T420s

    Posted on July 17th, 2011 14 comments

    Just bought this thinkpad 420s. The first thing I did when I got it was install Ubuntu 11.04 on it. Most everything worked on first install, including things which many people seemed to have problems with on the forums.

    Working:

    • Displays work fine with 3d effects and everything (dual monitor with and without docking station) (Intel HD Graphics 3000)
    • Built in speakers and headphone jack both work
    • Built-in mic and web-cam both work - I used skype and google hangouts and both worked flawlessly.
    • wireless worked with my open network connection (I haven't yet tried it on secure networks)
    • Bay battery seems to work.

    Not Working:

    • Audio output on docking station
    • Dual Displays sometimes reset to showing the same image on both rather than two seperate displays. This has always been fixed by reseting the settings in the Monitor configuration page.

    I am impressed with how flawless the install was. I was dreading it because last time I did this on my last laptop 4 years ago, I spent a few hours getting everything in working order. So far I have not yet had to do any custom installation. Everything that I needed working, worked out of the box!

    Let me know if you want me to test anything out and I'll try if I can.

    fyi, linux

14 Responses to “Ubuntu 11.04 on Thinkpad T420s”

  1. MrD August 2nd, 2011 at 3:15 pm

    What options did you choose on the T420s? I’m thinking of buying one and running it as a dual boot. There are a lot of cool options – fingerprint readers, WIMAX etc but I think I’m better off keeping it plain vanilla.

  2. dwiel August 2nd, 2011 at 3:34 pm

    There was a 2-3 week delay if I were going to buy it directly from Lenovo, so I bought it through newegg instead. I actually preferred the newegg shopping experience too. Technically there are fewer options there, but I was able to get exactly what I wanted. Specs can be found here: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834246117 (under the details tab). I believe the model I got is pretty vanilla.

  3. Sandy August 10th, 2011 at 10:00 am

    Which version of Ubuntu did you use 32 bit or 64 bit ? I am buying new T420s and worried about compatibility with Ubuntu.

  4. renee August 12th, 2011 at 12:50 pm

    Just got a t420s and having the same problem you mentioned with the audio output not working with the docking station – was curious to know how you solved that one

  5. dwiel August 14th, 2011 at 2:31 pm

    @Sandy: I installed the 32 bit version of Ubuntu. Didn’t try 64 bit.

    @renee: I haven’t tried fixing the problem with the docking station yet, but would be glad to hear if you come up with anything

  6. Andy September 6th, 2011 at 9:06 am

    I had the same problem with audio while in docking station on my new W520 and fixed it by adding the following to the /etc/modprobe.d/alsa… files:

    options snd-hda-intel index=0 model=thinkpad

    Hope it helps you too…

  7. dwiel September 7th, 2011 at 11:04 am

    @Andy: Adding that line to /etc/modprobe.d/alsa worked for me. Thanks!

  8. Anatoliy September 25th, 2011 at 7:43 am

    What is your imression on battery life under Linux vs Windows? Have you already tuned it with powertop?

    Could you please pubish a bit more detailed spec on your laptop, e.g. CPU, GPU (itegrated vs. standalone)… lshw could be useful to generate.

    Thanks.

  9. Anatoliy September 25th, 2011 at 8:31 am

    >> Could you please pubish a bit more detailed spec on your laptop,
    >> e.g. CPU, GPU (itegrated vs. standalone)… lshw could be useful to generate.

    Ah, sorry, I’ve already found your answer on this point in comments.

  10. Anatoliy September 25th, 2011 at 11:25 am

    >>Could you please pubish a bit more detailed spec on your laptop,
    >>e.g. CPU, GPU (itegrated vs. standalone)… lshw could be useful to generate.

    ah. sorry, noticed you have already answered..

  11. dwiel September 25th, 2011 at 10:47 pm

    I have a bay battery which helps me get more time unplugged, but in general I kind of figure that I get 5-6 hours of battery life between the two batteries. I did use powertop once which didn’t seem to help much, though it did show that chrome has way more interrupts than firefox, but battery life isn’t normally a problem so I never made the switch back to firefox. Give the difference between the two browsers that I noticed I wouldn’t be surprised if I could get 7 or 8 if I used firefox instead and perhaps even more if I had the screen on less bright settings, etc.

  12. Qing Li October 29th, 2011 at 5:39 am

    I installed Ubuntu 10.04 64bit, the graphic card can not work. I install Ubuntu 11.10 64bit in, the graphic card can work, but sometime it out of control.

  13. Volker November 18th, 2011 at 5:47 am

    How did you manage to get a second display working? I have a W520 and don’t get it. On which port (vga, display port) did you attach the display? Have you changed any bios-settings?

  14. dwiel November 18th, 2011 at 10:52 am

    I’ve had bad luck with the DisplayPort, but VGA seems to work. I’ll have to double check when I get to the office, but I think that I use the VGA port on the docking station too.

Leave a Reply