Ubuntu Karmic Koala on a Lenovo ThinkPad X60 Tablet

Last updated: 2009.11.12

Now even easier to install!
(Thanks to the proprieter of http://luke.no-ip.org/x60tablet/ for letting me use his page design. It's good.)

My Hardware

6363-2AU (1.6 GHz) with 3 GB ram, 320 GB disk, and SXGA+ screen (1400x1050).

At a glance

Display X.org
External VGA
Brightness Control
Automatic Screen Rotation
Input Trackpoint
Pen
Special keys
Fingerprint Reader
Networking Ethernet
Wireless (3945ABG)
Others
External Connections USB
Firewire
Secure Digital
PCMCIA
ACPI CPU Frequency Scaling
Suspend
Hibernate
Extra Features Reducing Power Consumption
Connecting to iPhone
Detect tablet orientation
Active hard drive protection
Works out of the box
Needs tweaking, but works
Hacking required
Only partly works
Does not work
Unchecked

Details

External VGA

X freezes when attempting to run two displays with a combined resolution of more than 2048 in either dimension, see here and here for more. The workaround is to turn off Compiz (System -> Preferences -> Appearance -> Visual Effects).

Brightness control

Out of the box I only get four brightness levels when using Fn+Home/Fn+End. However, when dragging the slider in the Power Management application, it's clear that there are 7 possible levels.

Automatic Screen Rotation

There are (at least) three things that need to be performed when rotating the screen: the screen rotation itself, plus changing the stylus orientation and remapping the tablet buttons to match. Here's how to get all of it working. The screen should now rotate on its own. If it's not working automatically, check that the acpi events defined in the swivel files are correct with acpi_listen. I haven't attempted to set up automatic orientation since I invariably use the tablet in the default mode.

Special Keys

Volume keys don't work for some reason. Install hotkey-setup/hotkey-setup_0.1-23ubuntu7_i386.deb with
dpkg -i hotkey-setup_0.1-23ubuntu7_i386.deb

Reducing Power Consumption

Thinkwiki has a nice page on this. In particular, reducing the power of the wifi device helps keep the palmrest from bursting into flame.

Connecting to iPhone

To get my laptop to talk to my iPhone 3G (firmware version 3.1) via gtkpod, I followed the instructions here.

Useful Tablet Software

Other Resources