I’ve had quite a good experience installing Ubuntu on my X60. Most everything worked right out of the box and with a little tweaking I managed to get my system going just the way I wanted it.
My current configuration is a dual boot machine with an 80 GB hard drive, 1.5 GB of memory, the media slice with a multi-burner and various mice and keyboards.
I’ve got Windows XP on a 20 GB partition, Ubuntu on a 15 GB partition, 1 GB of swap space and the rest as FAT32 to share between the two operating systems.
First, I install windows. Using the windows partitioning wizard I only partitioned 20 Gigs in NTFS, and allowed windows to install. I use a DVD which auto-installs a whole bunch of windows stuff without me having to sit there and watch it. You can read more in Kroner’s post here.
After Windows was installed and set up the way I wanted it, I dug out my trusty Dapper CD (which you can get for free from Ubuntu’s ShipIt) slapped it in the drive and booted into Ubuntu.
Double click on the Install icon, and away we go! Fill in all the information you need to concerning time zones and user info. What we’ll focus on here is doing a manual partitioning for the rest of the drive.
Select ‘Manually edit partition table‘ when given the chance, and you see a handy wizard showing you your currently allocated drive space, and what’s left.
The first thing to do is to partition the linux SWAP space. Right click on the non-partitioned portion of your drive and choose ‘New‘.
Make the New Size (MB) 1024. Create it as a Primary Partition, and the Filesystem is going to be linux-swap.
Now for the filesystem that Ubuntu will be installed on. Again, make a new partition, but this time make it 18 Gigs in size. (Your mileage may vary, most people could get by fine with 10 Gigs of space but I like to have the extra to do things like convert AVI’s to dvd burnable mpegs and then burn DVDs, which takes a bit of space. I have the bad habit of just doing this in my Desktop). Parition this space as a Primary partition, with an ext3 filesystem.
Now we’ll partition the remaining space to be shared between Windows and Linux. Make a new primary partition and use the FAT32 filesystem.
Click ‘Forward‘ and tell Ubuntu that yes, you really want to do this. Let it make the changes to the disk.
You’ll then get a dialog asking where you want to mount various partitions. Here’s what I did. The first bit is the mount point, the second bit is the volume I’m mounting.
- /media/sda1 for the 20 Gig NTFS partition.
- swap for the swap file (It’ll probably default to this).
- /media/sda5 for the FAT32 partition.
- / for the EXT3 partition.
By mounting the NTFS and FAT32 partition in /media, you’ll get them to pop up on your desktop via Linux magic.
Let ubuntu install itself, and you’ll be asked to reboot the machine when it’s done. Your computer will shut down and spit out the CD at you. Take it into hand and put it safely back in it’s home.
The beauty of this install is that Ubuntu recognizes a lot of the hardware on the X60. Wireless and networking should be working right out of the box, as will the display, modem, etc.
After a restart you’ll find yourself at the default Ubuntu desktop. As the first user on this machine, Ubuntu has given you sudo rights, which means you can use the sudo command to do things as Root. We’ll be using this a lot. In fact, let’s get a terminal session going and update the install.
I like to have a terminal launcher in my top taskbar. To do this, click on Applications -> Accessories and then right click on Terminal and choose ‘Add this to Panel‘.
Now click on it and let’s open up a terminal session. The first thing we’ll do is update our sources.list file to point it at repositories that can supply us with what we need. We’ll back up the file, and use Gedit to edit it.
sudo cp /etc/apt/sources.list /etc/apt/sources.list.bak
sudo gedit /etc/apt/sources.list
Choose Edit-> Select All and delete it. Then paste in the following:
## Add comments (##) in front of any line to remove it from being checked.
## Use the following sources.list at your own risk.deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu dapper main restricted universe multiverse
deb-src http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu dapper main restricted universe multiverse## MAJOR BUG FIX UPDATES produced after the final release
deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu dapper-updates main restricted universe multiverse
deb-src http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu dapper-updates main restricted universe multiverse## UBUNTU SECURITY UPDATES
deb http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu dapper-security main restricted universe multiverse
deb-src http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu dapper-security main restricted universe multiverse## BACKPORTS REPOSITORY (Unsupported. May contain illegal packages. Use at own risk.)
deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu dapper-backports main restricted universe multiverse
deb-src http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu dapper-backports main restricted universe multiverse## PLF REPOSITORY (Unsupported. May contain illegal packages. Use at own risk.)
deb http://packages.freecontrib.org/ubuntu/plf breezy free non-free
deb-src http://packages.freecontrib.org/ubuntu/plf breezy free non-free
Now save this and exit gedit.
Let’s updated our repositories:
sudo apt-get update
Now we’re going to get both processors working correctly before we start updating the system. If you go to System -> Administration -> System Monitor you’ll see that Ubuntu is only reporting one CPU on your laptop. We’ll be adding a kernel that is SMP (Symmetric Multi-Proccessor) enabled. In your terminal session type
sudo synaptic
This will launch the Synaptic package manager. Click the ‘Search‘ button at the top, and do a search for ‘linux 686‘ (without quotes).
We’re going to check of three things to install. Find the latest (i.e. highest number) of the following. For this guide, I’ll put what I’ve found now.
- Linux-headers-2.6.15-26-686
- Linux-image-2.6.15-26-686
- Linux-restricted-modules-2.6.15-26-686
Once you’ve checked these off, click the ‘Apply‘ button in Synaptic and let it install these packages. You’ll have to reboot your machine when it’s done.
Back with a freshly rebooted machine? Great. Launch the System Monitor again and you should see two CPU’s!
Now we’re going to make some changes to how Ubuntu controls your CPUs so you can get the most out of them. We’re going to install a couple of packages and modify how your CPU is governed.
sudo apt-get install sysfsutils rcconf
sudo gedit /etc/sysfs.conf
Let’s add these two lines into the sysfs.conf file:
devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/scaling_governor=ondemand
devices/system/cpu/cpu1/cpufreq/scaling_governor=ondemand
Now we’re going to use rcconf to turn of powernowd (the daemon that’s currently controlling your CPU speed) and reboot so that sysfs will take control.
sudo rcconf
Use your arrow keys to scroll down until you see powernowd. It should be marked with an asterisk, like this [*]. Hit your spacebar to remove the asterisk, and then the Enter key to save your change.
Reboot and sysfs will have control.
Back? Great, let’s update the other packages on your machine. Open up a terminal session and enter the following:
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
This will take a few minutes to download and install all of the latest and the greatest. Contemplate your navel now.
Done? Let’s install my favorite Ubuntu tool, Automatix. This will ease the installation of a number of programs from Google Earth to video and audio codecs needed to play MP3s and watch movies.
First, we’ll edit our sources.list file again and add the Automatix repositories. Then we’ll have to let our machine know that we can trust this repository. Check the Automatix wiki ( for more info if you want to.
sudo gedit /etc/apt/sources.list
Add the below line to your sources.list file and save it.
deb http://www.getautomatix.com/apt dapper main
Now back in your terminal session, enter the following three commands.
wget http://www.getautomatix.com/apt.gpg.asc
gpg –import key.gpg.asc
gpg –export –armor 521A9C7C | sudo apt-key add -
Now we’re ready to install Automatix.
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install automatix
One this is done you can launch Automatix from either the terminal by typing ‘automatix‘ or by going to Applications -> System Tools -> Automatix.
Run it and install what you want. Note that Automatix will replace your sources.list file with it’s own. Once it’s done doing what you’ve told it to it will ask you if you want to put your original sources.list file back in place. Click OK to do so.
Here’s what I generally install:
- Acrobat Reader
- Archiving Tools
- AUD-DVD codecs
- Backup and Restore
- Beagle
- Bittornado
- Debian Menu
- DVDRipper
- Flashplayer
- GAIM 2.0
- GFTP Extra Fonts
- Multimedia Codecs
- Network Manager
- OpenOffice Clipart
- Ripper and Tuner
- Sun Java 1.5 JRE
- Thunderbird
You can decide what it is you want and don’t want.
At this point you are done with what I’d call my minimal Ubuntu install. You can check email, browse the web, watch movies, listen to music, and do many, many other things.
There are a few packages that I install which you may be interested. You can get all of them through Synaptic, or through various websites. They’re listed in no particular order. Linked items below are to write-ups that have been done on this site.
You may want to install the following packages. These are utilities and programs that will help you install programs from source. They’re useful to have and don’t take up much space. You can install them by doing this:
sudo apt-get install binutils gcc make
K3B – my favorite cd/dvd burning tool.
K9copy – great for making archival copies of DVDs.
GkrellM – the everything monitor.
Monit – Process monitor for local or remote machines.
Deskbar – Super search tool.
Grip – CD copying tool.
Tellico – Collection management.
chkrootkit – Does just that, makes sure you’re not trojaned.
Alexandria – Library (as in paper books) management.
Planet Penguin Racer – Downhill skiing with penguins.
Tovid – Burn media files to a DVD.
Avidemux – AVI editing software.
FFMPEG – Get audio tracks from video.
xDVDShrink – Archive DVDs.
Stellarium – Your very own planaterium.
Etherape – Network Monitor.
Frozen Bubble – Very simple, very addictive game.
Questions, comments or suggestions welcome!
geek out.
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October 19th, 2006 at 9:47 pm
Hi there. I also have an x60s and also installed dapper in it. I am disappointed with the battery life; I have an extended battery and it is giving me 30/40% less than with winxp. I use scaling and ondemand governor as well, but I use powernowd. I was wondering if sysfs for you? how does your battery life compare to winxp?