Ubuntu on Thinkpad X61s?

General,

After a couple of weeks of working away from home, I have a renewed hatred for the back-twisting weight of my cheap Acer laptop. I’m thinking of getting a Thinkpad X61s with Intel on-board graphics. But the X61 models are quite new, and I can’t find reports from people who have installed Ubuntu on them.

Or is there anything even lighter that’s easy to find? It’s rather annoying that there’s no IBM/Lenova online shop in Germany, and that the dealer prices seem to be twice the U.S. dollar price for the same models.

15 thoughts on “Ubuntu on Thinkpad X61s?”

  2. I’ve not seen Ubuntu on a X61, but assuming they are similar to the X60 (I believe the main difference is a faster CPU) then its trivial: Ubuntu installs out of the box on the X60 and the X60s.

    I’ll also point out that the weight difference between the X6? and the X6?s is minute, so have a look at the non-s series too. You may find the often faster CPU/bigger disks very temping (my X60 came with 1GB RAM and 100GB SATA out of the box).

  3. I’ve got one of the very first x60 (non s) sold in Scandinavia and have been running Ubuntu on it form day one. There really isn’t any compability problems – especially in Feisty everything is smooth. Suspend to RAM, Docking station, wifi and the sd-reader works out of the box.
    I really don’t think there is that much difference between the x60 and x61.

  4. Hm… the difference is probably larger than you think. The X61/s are based on intel’s new “Santa Rosa”-chipset (new GMA X3100 graphics-chip, new wireless-chip, new sata-controller-chip). The Fluendo-Christian just recently bought an Asus-notebook based around the new “Santa Rosa”-chipset (instead of the intel-graphics it uses an nvidia-chip) and e.g. Ubuntu 7.04 did not install out-of-the box on this one. You will probably need the “alternate install”-CD to get things working. The main issue was the sata-controller not recognizing the CD/DVD-drive as far as I can recall. Drivers for the wireless-card were needed to be grabbed from the net. The intel-graphics chip should be recognized by upstream Xorg/drivers. Still… Murray, if you will get one of those shiny X61, I will envy you :)

  6. Hi! for germany you should try this:

    idealo.de – there you go in the top of the site to “suche” and there you just enter the model number of the x61s (usually something like 2007qpg)

    you can also try at heise.de/preisvergleich

    you can get actually up to 400€ down in price.

  7. Yes, I know about the various preisvergleich sites in Germany. But they mostly just show all those dodgy one-man companies.

  10. You are protected by law, and if it is a GmbH, then even more.

    I bought my t60 through idealo.de by a “one-man” company.

    I have still the 2-Year-Gewährleistung, but as far as I know, if you buy a Lenovo with plain guarantee, your machine is protected either by that Lenovo-guarantee.
    The Lenovo support was rated best by C’t. (You might know C’t – one of the more professional computer magazine)

  12. Just installed Ubuntu Feisty Faun on a new X61. Aside from having to change the SATA settings in the BIOS to compatibility mode, installation went fine. Wireless (at least the 3945ABG I have) worked right out of the box. Sound and suspend do not work, at least not without some tweaking.

  14. I just got the thinxpad x61 and have been quite pleased with how it works. There is now a number of good threads explaining just about everything you will run into problems with. I would recommend using gutsy gibbion if your up for it or wait 2 months for its release because it has support for most x61 things right out of the box most helpfully wireless support.

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