PClinuxOS v0.93a (Big Daddy) Linux on IBM T22 Laptop
Date April 2007
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Hardware Components
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Status under Linux
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Notes
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| Pentium III "coppermine" Processor, 900 MHz. BIOS upgraded in 2005 to latest available. | Works | No special procedure required during installation. |
| 14.1 TFT Display | Works - standard install with defaults | defaults to 1024 x 768 No special procedure required during installation |
| Trackpoint | Works | No special procedure required during installation |
| Keyboard (UK) | Works | Configure to UK/104 after installation |
| On-board Video and Sound | Works for standard office/surfing | No special procedure required during installation |
| 512MB (system maximum), SDRAM, 2DIMMs | Works | No special procedure required during installation |
| 60 GB Fujitsu ATA Hard Drive (replacement) | Works | No special procedure required during installation |
| Modular Floppy Drive | Not tested | floppy drive lost |
| Integrated 10/100 Network Card with 56k modem | RJ45 ethernet Works, modem not tested. | No special procedure required during installation |
| IBM HITACHI GD-S200 DVD-ROM Drive | Works | will not play commercial DVDs unless libdvdcss2 and w32-codecs are installed from synaptic. |
| Lithium-Ion Battery | Works, needs replacing! | No special procedure required during installation |
| Onboard Sound Card | Works | No special procedure required during installation |
| HP3845 printer | Works | needs automatic printer config at boot to be switched on - default was off - see text |
| BT HomeHub via RJ45 and Firefox | Out of the box, works on BT Total Broadband only (locked) | No special procedure required during installation |
| Belkin F5U222 USB 2.0 Notebook card | Works | No special procedure required during installation Supports two USB2.0 devices. |
| USB memory stick 256Mb | Works | in Belkin card |
| Nikon Coolpix 2100 Camera | Works | In Belkin Card. Seen as a disk drive. |
| LG GSA 2164D external DVR+_RW | Works | Writes DVDs in K3b, will not play commercial DVDs - needs libdvdcss2 and w32-codecs installed. |
| Logitech Marble Mouse | Works | In USB 1.1 socket. No special procedure required during installation |
| Canon 9950F scanner | Does NOT Work | No driver in Linux kernel |
| Belkin F5D7010 WIRELESS CARD (RT2500 chipset)and Belkin F5D7050 USB wireless dongle. | Detected and BOTH WORK OUT OF THE BOX on WEP. Did not configure on WPA-PSK | No special procedure required on installation. Ndiswrapper NOT required for WEP! |
Conclusion
Highly Recommended,! This distro has improved beyond all recognition since I tried it a year ago. AND my Belkin PCMCIA wireless card (RT2500 chipset) worked straight out of the box on WEP with no need for ndiswrapper! Apart from the usual lack of pre-installed codecs and plug-ins, I can't fault it, and it is frequently in the list of top most popular distros. It is a clean leading-edge distro that is also well documented and behaves well. However lack of immediate availability of DVD playback, Canon scanner support etc has led me to use Windows 2000 Pro fortified with firewalls and malware tools as my main OS for general surfing and multimedia, using a non-administrator user ID. I then use Linux for secure online banking, where I can be more comfortable there are no rootkits or trojans lurking. I like a challenge but I like comfort too.Windows always works - it's just a constant battle with the bad guys - and I include so-called legitimate businesses in that category.
Linux works eventually, and then usually better.
As you would expect with an IBM machine allegedly designed for Linux as well as Windows , PClinuxOS does everything Win 2000 does as a "desktop" and faster. PClinuxOS had all the drivers I needed for T22 and my peripherals (apart from Canon 9500F scanner but that is Canon's problem).
Installation of PClinuxOS
Source: Single CD from from The Linux ManSoon after switching on, hit F12 several times to select boot device (DVD ROM) and boot on CD. I selected the default standard load option.
The standard option installs a live cd with an install option. Once finally loaded fully through to the KDE desktop, the install and install instructions icons appear. After checking what mount points were needed in the Install Instructions, I logged-off and repartitioned the hard disk using GParted (free download). I already had 2 windows partitions, and PCLinuxOS needs at least 3,(i.e. swap, /home and /). As only 4 primary partitions are allowed (when will they change that???), I added two more - a 500Mb Linux Swap (which really needs to be a primary partition), plus a new "extended" partition of 5Gb. Into this extended partition I added two logical partitions - a 500Mb logical partition for /home, and a 4.5Gb logical partition for /. I formatted all three new partitions in GParted. It is possible to do all this partitioning in PCLinuxOS install, but it was better behaved this way and I like to be in control.
I then reloaded the live CD and selected the install icon. As I had already established the new partitions I selected to use existing partitions. I assigned the / and /home mount points to the two logical partitions. This Distro has a nice feature - choice of Grub or Lilo in both Text or Graphical forms. I opted for Graphical Grub. It then showed me the boot options that it would be using. Note that Linux boot option is default (*). Since I have so many peripherals that just don't work well in Linux I like Windows to be default. This is done by "Modifying" the Linux boot option by removing the x in the checkbox for Default, then doing the same for the windows1 option by checking the Default box. You can change defaults in the Control Centre boot configuration at any time after install.
The rest of the install is just follow instructions.
If you don't have a US keyboard, after install go into Control Center and under Hardware option configure the keyboard. I changed mine to UK 104 keyboard.
Detected Hardware
Details.IBM HITACHI GD-S200 DVD-ROM and USB LG GSA 2164D external DVR+_RW. Both work with DVD data out of the box. Needs libdvdscss2 and w32-codecs installed from Synaptic tool to play DVD films on either drive. DVDs play SMOOTHLY! .
Sound - Works well, including Live Radio. Has MPlayer prinstalled so I could listen to Radio with no upgrade. Cannot fast-forward the audio stream in MPlayer for some reason.
Graphics - only office graphics tried - works well. I have no games.
Web video, DVDs trailers etc - Needs libdvdscss2 and w32-codecs installed from Synaptic tool to play DVD films. According to some online doco DVDs should play out of the box, but maybe they are US only DVDs??
Boot-up Times and other response times
Cold Boot, including log-on of user, 1 minutes 25 seconds. HDD falls silent almost immediately at this point.Opening Firefox browser into home page, another 9 seconds.
Open OpenOffice.org into empty Spreadsheet 6 seconds
Shut down time 29 seconds.
Compare this to Windows 2000 Pro on same laptop; takes about twice as long to boot up, depending on what anti-virus tool you have installed on Windows!.
Configuring Printers
This should be a simple and basic requirement, yet it took me while to work out. It seems that PClinuxOS comes with automatic printer configuration "turned off for security reasons"I went into Control Center and under Hardware went to Configure Printer. I selected Yes to switch printer config On. It then detected my HP3845 and I said OK to configure. Unfortunately no printer was shown, nor did the printer work. So I repeated the configuration process. This time it worked, and then showed TWO printers configured. One version of my 3845 with a faulty config set as the default printer, and underneath that the correctly configured 3845. I had to delete the first of these and then all was well. This was not a fluke, as I reinstalled PClinuxOS at a later time and the same thing happened.