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Ubuntu 9.04 on X31 Thinkpad

My laptop is a second-hand X31 Thinkpad.

They’re an extremely durable and reliable device in my opinion. I love that it’s light-ish at 1.6 kilos but doesn’t compromise on the keyboard size. I actually purchased it just before the Netbook craze kicked into gear in 2007. Sometimes I wish it was lighter but I’ve read enough complaints from people regarding the keyboard problems on Netbooks that I’m happy.

I run Ubuntu on the laptop and it’s getting better with a couple of gripes. Originally in 7.10 there were some fan and wireless problems but now 9.04 has everything working except two parts broke that I’ll detail here.

  • The external sound controls are no longer responding. Annoying but not too bad. I haven’t researched what has changed but I will update this post when I find out.
  • A more pressing problem was a small change in the xorg.conf file. The result was a bizarre, sluggish effect on the entire interface of laptop that was worst when minimizing windows and scrolling a page in Firefox. By sluggish I actually mean unusable :|

The omission was (under the device section):

Option “AccelMethod” “XAA”

The responsiveness is back to normal with that inclusion.

I personally don’t need Compiz on my laptop (a waste of battery I find) so here’s my current xorg.conf file for anyone that’s interested.

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This entry was posted on Saturday, May 30th, 2009 at 5:51 am and is filed under Leisure. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

4 Responses to “Ubuntu 9.04 on X31 Thinkpad”

  1. Richard Padgett (athene8) 's status on Thursday, 13-Aug-09 19:37:46 UTC - Identi.ca Says:
    August 13th, 2009 at 7:38 pm

    [...] http://tgreenaway.com/2009/05/ubuntu-904-on-x31-thinkpad/ = Custom Thinkpad X31 xorg.conf location [...]

  2. Matthias Gallé Says:
    August 28th, 2009 at 6:32 am

    Do you achieved to fix your sound problem? I’m facing the same problem (X31 Thinpad w/ Ubuntu 9.04).
    Thanks a lot for your xorg.conf file

  3. TCMG Says:
    August 28th, 2009 at 6:38 am

    Hi Matthias,

    Unfortunately no. I haven’t had the time to look into it again. Very busy with work I’m afraid – not even enough time to blog!

    If you find or figure anything out though please let me know :D

  4. Ian Says:
    September 12th, 2009 at 2:18 am

    I started playing with some of the options listed on Ubuntugeek and my sound started working. Mind you, it worked before when I did an upgrade from 8.10 to 9.04, but wasn’t working out of the box on 9.04. This time I installed 9.04 and upgraded to 9.10 beta, which I’m currently running. I will say this – Firefox 3.5 makes all the difference in the whole wide world – it’s just THAT much faster than 3.0 ever was on this thing.

    Here’s the URL: http://www.ubuntugeek.com/simple-guide-to-sound-solutions-for-hardyintrepid-and-jaunty-jackalope-users.html

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