Warning!

Please be aware that Lenovo have been caught shipping adware called Superfish on their laptops. This is a dangerous piece of software which can compromise cryptographic security of Windows in order to perform man-in-the-middle (MITM) attacks.

More information here: Lenovo Is Breaking HTTPS Security on its Recent Laptops.

Introduction

2 Jul 2010

Here is a brief summary of hardware:

The notebook had a bit of a keyboard flex in the upper left corner (under the ESC key) and a really slight one under the right SHIFT. Fixed with some 3M command strip. Not perfect, but better than before.

There was also a bit of a creaking noise coming from under the right palmrest. Fixed with - you guessed it - a bit of 3M command strip.

For the first fix, the keyboard had to be taken out. For the second one, both the keyboard and the keyboard bazel assembly.

Overall, I'd say that internal construction of the laptop is excellent. External shell, however, is rubbish. Not something I'd expect from a manufacturer that is supposed to be known for robust machines.

Fedora 22

This will be the last Fedora update on this notebook. After it, the notebook will be retired.

If you want to avoid really annoying problems, I recommend staying away from Fedora 21 and 22 on this laptop. Both releases are generally unstable on this hardware and require frequent reboots and restarts of vital services of the OS.

Upgraded to Fedora 22 Beta using fedup this time, just to see whether it will work. Apart from not rebooting the system post upgrade, it worked fine. Also worth pointing out is that I upgraded two other machines using fedora-upgrade script, which also worked fine.

Looks a bit smoother than F-21 when it comes to GUI. NetworManager appears to get through its connection establishment sooner. However, the hangs that started in 21 are now even worse. Often times, a reboot is the only solution.

Given that the old window manager themes are gone with Gnome 3.16, I found it essential to override that massive amount of white space in window title bars. Various solutions are floating around for this. I used this in ~/.config/gtk-3.0/gtk.css:

.header-bar.default-decoration {
    padding-top: 2px;
    padding-bottom: 2px;
}
.header-bar.default-decoration .button.titlebutton {
    padding-top: 1px;
    padding-bottom: 1px;
}

The Wayland login session does not work properly. There is flickering on the screen, so I had to uncomment the line WaylandEnable=false in /etc/gdm/custom.conf.

Fedora 21

Upgraded to what will probably become Fedora 21 x86_64 using fedora-upgrade. I have to say, this is the ugliest and most annoying release of Fedora in a while. If you can wait - do. Not even Xorg would start without trouble...

Working with two users on this machine and Gnome is now impossible. After the second user logs out, the screen goes black and no key combination can bring it back. The only "solution" I've found so far is to ssh into the box and reboot.

The sssd and NetworkManager services keep crashing and hanging. Often, a reboot is required to fix that. So, my recommendation is to stay away from this release for as long as you can on this hardware.

On another machine where I tried this upgrade, systemd-logind crashed, which caused the upgrade process to become glacial.

Fedora 20

Upgraded to what will probably become Fedora 20 x86_64 using fedora-upgrade. Everything still works, with additional minor annoyances in Gnome. Oh, well...

Fedora 19

Upgraded to Fedora 19 x86_64 using fedora-upgrade. Everything still works.

Fedora 18

Upgraded to Fedora 18 x86_64 using yum. Everything still works.

Fedora 17

Upgraded to what will most likely become Fedora 17 x86_64 using yum, with one issue. The F-16 kernel dies on reboot, as described in Fedora bug #821289. You may want to install F-17 kernel before performing distro-sync.

Fedora 16

Upgraded to what will most likely become Fedora 16 x86_64 using yum, without issues.

Suspend works fine now. Hibernation has been fixed (see: kernel bug 37142) and the fix will be in version 3.3.1 and above of Fedora kernel RPMs.

Fedora 15

Upgraded to Fedora 15 x86_64 using yum without issues. Most things work, including suspend (although, with most recent kernels, based on 3.0.x and versioned 2.6.40.x for F-15, there are problems with programs dying on resume: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=728044). Hibernation still has issues. After a few hibernate/thaw cycles, memory becomes corrupt. You can track that issue in multiple places, one of them is: https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=37142, another is: https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=41705.

Fingerprint reader appears to work with fprintd (although I did not bother to set up authentication yet).

Nokia E72 can be used as a broadband modem without any additional software, when connected in PC Suite mode.

I now have a ThinkPad GOBI 2000 Broadband Option (78Y1399) in the system. It does indeed work once you have:

Note that:

The newer card, ThinkPad Mobile Broadband (0A36186), won't work in this machine (gives error 1804: unauthorized card), unless you are willing to hack your own BIOS to avoid this (which I'm not - too valuable to risk bricking). The card physically fits into the machine and it would probably work, were it not for Lenovo's obnoxious device white list.

Fedora 14

Upgraded to Fedora 14 x86_64 using yum without issues. Most things work, including suspend. Hibernation still has issues. After a few hibernate/thaw cycles, memory becomes corrupt.

The system also feels a bit snappier than with F-13, which is always welcome.

Fedora 13

Installed Fedora 13 x86_64 without issues. Most things work, including suspend. Hibernate is also working better these days, but still has issues.

Occasionally, however, the graphics mode switch is unsuccessful: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=624236.

For wireless to work (and not hang the box), install the updated kernel. This can be selected during installation as well.

Integrated webcam appears to be detected as well. Bluetooth works. Haven't tried fingerprint reader yet.

Copyright © 2010 Bojan Smojver.
Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the licence is here.