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Last update: 2010 Jun 07
Feel free to let me know your experiences or problems TBlSeHvoDSnVoH at k45NiGgn dot org. (no, my address is not that funky, remove numbers and uppercase letters).
Have been using Ubuntu 9.10 for 5 months now, I definitely recommend it over 9.04. There is only one note: if possible avoid using the wifi/bt/hsdpa before you install all the available updates, I had stability problems without updates. Even if installing 9.10, please keep this document, especially problems section.
Meanwhile, Ubuntu 10.04 has been released. Have not try to upgrade my existing installation, and I do not recommend it for the time being, but for new installation I would give it a go to see if it works all right with Lenovo S10.
Severe issue: sound record (microphone) does not work (at least out-of-the-box, see https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/344627
So you got your shiny Lenovo s10-2 shipped with Win7. If you are OK with Win7, good for you. If not, read on.
DISCLAIMER: YOU ARE STRONGLY DISCOURAGED TO MANGLE WITH YOUR OPERATING SYSTEM. IT CAN RENDER YOUR S10 PRACTICALLY USELESS. WHATEVER YOU DO, YOU DO IT ON YOUR OWN DISCRETION, USE COMMON SENSE AND CAUTION, BUT MOST IMPORTANT: I DO NOT TAKE RESPONSIBILITY IF SOMETHING GOES WRONG. EVEN A SIMPLE TYPO CAN DO THE DAMAGE.
Lets not spend precious time on design, get to the point already: Ubuntu 9.04 works almost like a charm on Lenovo: BT, Wireless, Ericsson f5307g HSxPA/GPS module, WebCam. And its fast. But it has some flaws - see section Problems.
First you need to get at least 1GByte but preferably 2Gbyte pendrive. Download an Ubuntu install CD of your choice from Ubuntu.com. I chose Ubuntu 9.04 Netbook Remix. It is rumoured that 9.10 has major problems. Rest of the documentation deals with 9.04.
Except for Alternate Install, all Ubuntu install CDs are also Live CDs. So do not bother trying
to find an Ubuntu Live CD, because it is the install CD itself. You need to write the downloaded CD Image
to the pendrive. Under GNU Linux, it is fairly simple:
dd if=ubuntu*.img of=/dev/wherever_your_pendrive_is
Ubuntu is a LiveCD. Means you can try it before you do any potentially irreversible change to your computer. You are strongly encouraged to try first.
If your bluetooth or wifi device is soft-disabled (Fn+F5) in Win7, you *MUST* enable it before you boot into Ubuntu. Maybe there is a simple solution for that, which I could not find; for now, lets just enable beforehand. I recommend doing a dual-boot setup for that reason.
You need to either do a shut down or restart in your Win7 to get to the boot menu of the Lenovo, which is accessible by pressing F12 during BIOS POST.
If you intend to keep your existin Win7 and do a dual-boot setup, and you do not trust Gparted, the GNU partition magic utility, do a shrink in your Win7 and on your windows partition (the largest partition).
If you do not intend to keep your Win7 and the utilities shipped with Lenovo, just install Ubuntu right away, let it use the entire disk or whatever you want, I am not gonna go into details on how to press Enter seven times to get Ubuntu installed (yep, its that simple.) Skip to the Problems section.
If you did not already shrink the Win7 partition, start the Ubuntu in 'do not make any change to your computer' mode. Then start gparted (either get a root shell with CTRL-ALT-F3 or start it from Gnome). Select the Win7 partition (the largest), and shrink it. Remember to turn off 'round to cylinder boundary', it will save you some time as Gparted does not have to actually move your Win partition.
When ready with Gparted, either start Installation from the Administration menu, or reboot into install mode. When asked which partition/disk to use for installation, select manual mode (or if you are brave enough, 'use largest empty space'). You need a swap partition (I suggest about 1.25-2 times your physical memory), and use up the remaining space for root filesystem, or whatever partitioning you prefer. AFAIK swap partition is required for hibernation.
If everything is well, you end up with partitions like this:
Ubuntu installs Grub into MBA of your hard drive, and includes Win7 and Lenovo Onekey recovery in your boot menu (both labelled as 'vista boot loader' or something). Anyhow, you are quite ready with your dual boot installation.
Those are the problems I had to face. Actually there is only one so far that is really annoying me, and that is VPN (PPTP).
I could not find a way to enable BT and WiFi in Linux once its disabled in Windows with Fn+F5. Even with the latest Broadcom proprietary driver failed to do this. I had to boot into Windows and enable it. Keep it in mind before and if you want to remove your Win7 completely.
They recommended a workaround which does not work for me: add
options snd-hda-intel model=basic
into the /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base(.conf)
If you keep Onekey Recovery, and ever plan to use it, keep in mind that it will *probably* destroy your linux partitions. It is not for certain, but I have a strange feeling about this.
When dual booting, you may experience your clock being offset by the difference between UTC and local time. This is because operating systems store the actual time in hardware clock, which is battery powered, when shut down. Problem arise when Windows and Ubuntu disagree whether UTC or local time should be stored. You may change Ubuntu's behaviour by editing /etc/default/rcS, the line containing UTC=(yes|no).
My Sony K800i can be paired with Ubuntu without problem. And it can be accessed from Ubuntu even when the phone and linux both hidden (a setup I have never been able to achieve in windows). Browsing files is the easiest with Linux. However, after pairing, my K800i can not initiate a file transfer to the Ubuntu. Since I can initiate from the Ubuntu, I consider it a minor issue.
Ubuntu comes with presets for almost all cellular providers. Mine had bad DNS settings. Just had to remove predefined DNSs and accept the automatic (ppp) offered by my provider.
You need to install network-manager-pptp or network-manager-openvpn packages, and then restart some services (dbus?) for changes to take effect. I did not bother, just simply rebooted.
When setting up a VPN connection over broadband, you will find that resolv.conf is not set up correctly. Leads to name resolution problems if you change default route to the VPN network, and VPN name resolution problems regardless of routing.
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/network-manager/+bug/330056
The problem is that Ubuntu is intented to be so user-friendly that it lacks functionality. Network Manager is a nice user interface, I like it very much - looks and works just like the one in Win7. Behind the interface, the hard work is done by good old utils like pppd, pptp client, etc, and if you are lucky, you will never have to read their manuals. However, automatic configuration, especially for VPN, does not work well in certain situations, and you are not provided with advanced options normally available in the helper applications mentioned.
PPP debug, MTU/MRU settings missing in Network Manager - severe issue, this may prevent you from a stable VPN tunnel. For now the only solution is to set up VPN manually. Which is a fairly good solution if you know how.
PPTP client '--nobuffer' option missing. Certain network problems trigger a bug in pptp packet
reorder logic, which can be worked around if you disable packet reordering. But Network Manager
lacks this option too. Can be fooled by moving original pptp binary to, say, pptp_orig, and place
a shell script in its place that passes additional param to pptp, like this:
#!/bin/sh
/usr/sbin/pptp_orig $1 --nobuffer $2 $3 $4 $5
Lenovo offers advanced power management, for example, you may decrease performance so much, that the cooling fan never has to rev up. All in all, with windows, you may achieve 6 hours autonomy, with linux it is about 5 hours.
Windows is nowhere near to Linux when it comes to memory usage and utilization. Even with 2 gigs of RAM, Win7 constantly accesses HDD. And its slow. Ubuntu is faster even from a pendrive. I mean, come on.
I think it is related to memory use, but not just that: even when suspending and waking up from suspend, Win7 just loves to access HDD. And when waking up from hibernation: now thats really annoying, having to wait for another 30 seconds after Win7 seems to be awake.
Linux will do things as expected: fast suspend, resume, no more having to wait till Win7 finishes killing your HDD.
Somehow things just will not work with Win7 and BT visibility turned off. But Linux... just works. Even my BT mouse, which were unable to connect to my Win7 when invisible. And the file browser, its amazing.
I do not say Linux is perfect, far from it. But Win7 always surprised me with something: HSDPA driver failure once a week, OSD failure (volume setting not shown), Network Manager menu not displaying any more. All in all, I had to reboot like, every other day I used the s10.
I managed to hang the linux once. I tempered with the Ericsson f3507g GPS module as root. Oh well.
Did Lenovo care to mention that the Ericsson F3507 Broadband Module has a GPS built-in?