This page represents my efforts to get Debian fully working on my S7010 Lifebook. I'm a bit of a Debian novice so far (cut my Linux teeth on RedHat) so I'll put in a lot of obvious information, sorry. I'm also trying to do most things with Debian packages (stable where possible for sanity's sake) using apt-get for the moment as updates will be a lot easier. I will also include some information on software installation, this is mostly for my own benefit in case I forget.
The rationale behind the choice of laptop is that I am an applied mathematician who does a lot of intensive numerical simulations using PETSc, LAPACK and BLAS. This laptop is a nice combination of power, weight and temperature.
Another page about installation on this laptop (by someone with a lot more Linux knowhow!) is here.
Works - initially the resolution was 800x600 but I got it up to the full 1024x768 by adding "1024x768" to the display settings in /etc/X11/XF86Config-4.
I needed to install the ipw2200 driver for the Centrino wireless card.
Only the version from the "unstable" branch seems to work with this
wireless card. I got this by adding "unstable" settings to
/etc/apt/sources.list (also need to add "non-free" as ipw2200 driver
contains firmware). I want the package manager to continue to get
stable versions of other packages though, so I added
APT::Default-Release "stable";
to /etc/apt/apt.conf (I actually had to create the file as it didn't exist
on installation).
After changing these settings you need to run
apt-get update
before you do anything else. We can now get the ipw2200-source package:
apt-get -t unstable install ipw2200-source
I needed a more recent kernel to get the drivers working so:
apt-get install kernel-image-2.6-386
apt-get install kernel-headers-2.6.8-2-386
Before continuing, boot the new kernel. You might want to notice at
this point that at the front of the laptop there is a hardware wireless
on/off switch (useful for aeroplanes when you have to prove wireless is
off!). I spent a long time wondering what was wrong before I spotted it...
A couple of other packages that you should apt-get are "module-assistant"
and "wireless-tools". To build the ipw2200 kernel module, do
module-assistant a-i ipw2200-source
Now download the
firmware (choose the right firmware for your version of ipw2200)
and install:
tar -xzvf ipw2200-fw-2.2.tgz
mv *.fw /usr/lib/hotplug/firmware/
modprobe ipw2200
and the module should be installed. You can use the command iwconfig
to configure the wireless connection and use the command dhclient to
bring up the connection.
I bought an Attache 256Mb USB stick which didn't work right away - it reported some bus errors in dmesg and wouldn't mount. This was strange because I had mounted in under Windows and on a RedHat Enterprise machine. I finally got the stick working by formatting it with "mkfs -t vfat -c /dev/sda1". The first time I attempted this it mounted but the system thought it had 1996.3Gb of memory! I wish. I repeated this and it seemed to work, but only with 240Mb of memory available. It now mounts and unmounts properly (plugging the stick in brings up an icon in Gnome, it properly unmounts after selecting "unmount" from the menu you get from right-clicking the icon). I've yet to check that this now works properly on a Windows machine or a Mac, will do this soon.