Linux in Government: You Can Use the Desktop on a Laptop Now

The reports of my death have been greatly
exaggerated.

---Samuel Clemens, also know as Mark Twain

Many variations of this "reports of my death" quote exist. The original
note was written May 1897 in the author's hand. He wrote, "James Ross
Clemens, a cousin of mine was seriously ill two or three weeks ago in
London. The report of my illness grew out of his illness, the report of
my death was an exaggeration".

Similarly, depending on the writer, many variations exist about the
usefulness of Linux on desktops and laptops. In some ways, I understand
the confusion and the various conclusions people draw. Recently,
I had the opportunity to install Linux on an IBM ThinkPad, and both
ingenuity and a commitment to complete the job were required. That's not what
I expected at the start. I found Linux useful immediately. Later, I
found the software I needed to make it work the way one would expect
from a manufacturer.

As you read this article, keep this Samuel Clemens quote in mind. The majority of us have a tendency to avoid details
and jump on the first generalization that comes around. I'm reminded of
statement attributed to Al Gore that he "invented the Internet". In fact,
he
said, "During my service in the United States Congress, I took the
initiative in creating the Internet". And, if you look at his history,
he did take the initiative and helped create the Internet. The media, on
the other hand, ran with the quote attributed to him. Don't fall
into that trap if you can avoid it.
Desktop Linux on a Laptop
Recently, I bought a laptop. I consulted several friends to get
a consensus as to which one would work best with Linux. Tallying the
results, I decided to go with an IBM ThinkPad. I chose a barely used
model T21 with a Pentium III 800, a 20GB hard drive, 256MB of RAM and
a DVD-ROM. Prices ranged all over the place, but I found a one for less
than $300.

Once the laptop arrived, I began searching around on Google to
see which Linux distributions people used on ThinkPads. I even found a
ThinkPad mailing list and some distribution-oriented laptop ones. Then,
I found a tutorial that convinced me to go with Fedora Core 3.
Laptop or Portable Computer?
Reading through the archives of the mailing lists, I started
to conclude that most people used Linux on laptops as portable
computers. Seeing comments referring to the battery as a UPS gave it
away. Then, I started asking some hard questions and the answers convinced
me that an information void exists. You certainly can use a laptop as
a portable computer, but that's not how I intended to use it.

I went back to my friends and began asking how they used the
function keys and buttons on their ThinkPads. As you might guess, they
didn't use them. They also thought that the battery life seemed short. Of course,
having all laptop functions fully operational at all times reduces
the battery life.

As I continued to research Linux on the laptop, I found a scarcity of
new material. Furthermore, many of the items I did find seemed less than useful. But,
I did find nuggets of gold that allowed me to use my ThinkPad the way
I wanted.
Finding the Best Distribution
Although the Fedora tutorial gave me many of hints on how to configure
tools to take advantage of the ThinkPad's built-in functionality, Fedora
did not work for me. I decided to stay with 256MB of RAM, primarily so
I could help Linux users who could not afford to add the memory needed
to get to 512MB. Perhaps if I upgraded to a higher level of memory,
I could use Fedora. At 256MB of RAM, however, Fedora creeped. I felt like I was
using a memory-starved Microsoft Windows machine.

Call it a challenge, but many postings exist on the mailing lists
I follow from international users who simply can't afford to upgrade
their memory. To an American, it doesn't seem so unrealistic simply to
upgrade. To friends in Hungary, the costs seem high.

I spent the better part of two days trying a variety of
distributions. Before people start writing comments about how much
better their distributions run than the one I chose, let me say I played
no favorites. I wanted performance and I got it with Ubuntu. Contrary
to what some of you might believe, it's not my favorite Linux distro. It
simply performed the best in this case.
Making the ThinkPad Act Like a Laptop
Later this month, I will cross the globe. The first leg
of my journey will take 24 hours, and I have a speaking engagement about 12 hours after
I arrive. So, preserving battery life and connecting wirelessly seem
important. I also want to use the time to work.

I believe a manufacturer should do the things I did to get Ubuntu
working on the ThinkPad. In a way, it helps prove up my argument that if
Linux were bundled on HP, Lenovo, Dell, Gateway and so on, it would be
as acceptable to users as is OS X or Windows. More on that a little later.

Once I installed Ubuntu on the ThinkPad, I had to add packages from
various repositories, including Universe and Multiverse. The first
packages I added include linux-image- 2.6.10-5-686, linux-source-2.10.10
and linux-headers-2.6.10-5. Ubuntu calls their kernel packages linux-images
instead of kernel-image. Once I added the packages, I rebooted into the
Linux 686 environment.

Next, I searched, found and installed the tpb package through Ubuntu's
Synaptic application. According to the tpb
Web site:

TPB is a little program that enables you to use the IBM ThinkPad(tm)
special keys.

With TPB it is possible to bind a program to the ThinkPad, Mail,
Home and Search button. TPB can also run a callback program on each
state change with the changed state and the new state as options. So it
is possible to trigger several actions on different events. TPB has a
on-screen display (OSD) to show volume, mute, brightness and some other
informations. Furthermore TPB supports a software mixer, as the R series
ThinkPads have no hardware mixer to change the volume.

I noticed the ability to change the volume and use other keys
immediately.

Next, using Synaptic, I searched for "thinkpad" and found thinkpad-base
and thinkpad-source. I marked those for installation and clicked
apply. They installed.

According to the
maintainer's
Web site:

This package contains the source code for the loadable driver
modules used by the tpctl utility for configuring IBM ThinkPad laptop
computers. Included are the sources for drivers of the Super I/O and
RT/CMOS RAM chips, for an interface to the IBM ThinkPad SMAPI BIOS,
and for an interface to the ThinkPad APM subsystem.

As the Web page refers to tpctl, I searched for that package in Synaptic
and also installed it.

According to the tpctl Web
site at Sourceforge:

tpctl is a package of configuration tools for Linux.

The centerpiece of the package is tpctl, a program that does some of
what PS2.EXE does under DOS and the ThinkPad Configuration program does
under Windows...

tpctl gives the user access to all the functions of the SMAPI BIOS
that are documented in the various ThinkPad Technical Reference manuals.
It can also control the resources used by the parallel and serial ports.
The USAGE output and the README file should give a rough idea of what
the program can do...

Packages included in tpctl include:

• tpctl -- command line ThinkPad control
  program
• ntpctl -- ncurses ThinkPad control
  program
• tpctlir -- a utility that enables or disables the
  infrared subsystem on ThinkPads with Programmable Option
  Select
• apmiser -- a daemon that automatically controls power
  expenditure mode (using tpctl) according to CPU usage

Finally, I discovered configure-thinkpad, a GNOME GUI tool for
tpctl. According to the Web
site: "configure-thinkpad is a GNOME ThinkPad configuration tool written by
Cheuksan Edward Wang. The purpose of this tool is to make configuring
ThinkPad easier. This GUI application uses GNOME 2 and is based on tpctl
and ntpctl."

Unfortunately, I didn't find configure-thinkpad in the Ubuntu
repositories. You can download the tarball from the tpctl site, though, and
configure it using these steps, once you satisfy all the dependencies.

1. Uncompress the tar.gz file
2. cd into the uncompressed file directory
3. Run the ./configure command as user
4. Run sudo make
5. Run sudo make install

Figure 1. Screenshot of
configure-thinkpad
Here, you need to do some command-line work to get Ubuntu to work with
the packages you downloaded. Let's take them one at a time. First, you
need to provide the Linux kernel source. When you
installed linux-source, it downloaded linux-source-2.6.10.tar.bz2 into
the directory /usr/src. Move to that directory, and you will see it.
To unpack it, use the command

sudo tar jxvf linux-source-2.6.10.tar.bz2

Now, your sources are available.

Earlier we referred to thinkpad-base and thinkpad-source. thinkpad-source contains the source code for the drivers. The package is set up
so that make-kpkg compiles the correct driver sources for the kernel
you are running.

tpctl contains everything but the drivers. For this, you need the
thinkpad-modules package, which can be built from the thinkpad-source
package.

David Tansey, a Ubuntu user and contributor who has written HOWTOs
for the community, provided us with some commands through the ThinkPad
mailing list. He suggested going to /usr/src/ and running
tar -xzf thinkpad.tar.gz. Then:

cd modules/thinkpad/2.6/drivers
make
sudo make install

This creates the /dev/think device needed to run tpctl.

Next, run ./autogen.sh. You need to install the
following dependencies so you can build configure-thinkpad:

libbonobo2-dev
libbonoboui2-dev
libgconf2-dev
libglade2-dev
libglib2.0-dev
libglade2-dev
libgnome2-dev
libgnomeui2-dev
libgtk2.0-dev

Now You Have a Linux Laptop
When you log out of GNOME and log back into the desktop,
you will find configure-thinkpad on the Applications -> System
Tools menu. When you try to run this application, though, it says
you don't have permission for the device /dev/thinkpad. I suggest
running the command sudo configure-thinkpad from the command line
until we have time to write a HOWTO on changing permissions in the
/etc/udev/permissions.d/50-udev.permissions file. I'm sure we'll get to
that soon.
Final Thoughts
As I stumbled across various information on Linux and Thinkpads, I
discovered that SUSE Professional has the tpctl and configure-thinkpad
components built into its distributions. One of the friends I consulted
runs SUSE on his Thinkpad and didn't notice the presence of either
utility. I found that unusual because he uses several Thinkpads
for varying reasons, as portal computers.

On the tpctl Web site, I couldn't help but notice a new entry that says,
"Cheuksan Edward Wang has written a TrackPoint configuration tool for
GNOME: configure-trackpoint. It uses GNOME 2 and the linux kernel 2.6
TrackPoint driver written by Stephen Evanchik." That reminded me of the
many projects for the desktop that I see reaching maturity today.

Since I began focusing on the Linux desktop in late 2002, I have
seen remarkable developments emerge from the community. In some ways,
the Linux desktop has spoiled me. It works well, even though Red
Hat and others haven't put together all the tools they could to make a
new user's life easier.

To make up for the lack of desktop focus from the major vendors,
many developers, such as Fabio Marzocca, have built applications that provide
more functionality for Linux than you'll find from the so-called desktop
market leaders.

While I enjoyed doing research on the Thinkpad and figuring
out what to do, not all PC users like to solve puzzles. Many want the
product handed to them ready to go. Many people think that's a reasonable
request. I do too.

As part of my work, I had to install and use Windows XP this past
week. I had not used a Windows desktop for a couple of years for anything
but testing. I found using it painful. I finally reorganized the program
menu like my GNOME desktop so I could find programs easier. I installed
Zone Alarm's free firewall, Grissoft's free Anti-Virus program and Spybot
S&D. I made sure every port was closed or at least was running in a stealth mode. I
was surprised at the number of times Zone Alarm warned me that
an application I just launched attempted to access the Internet. That's
really freaky.

It took about a day before the system got infested with spyware and
icons showed up on the desktop leading to various Web sites. I couldn't
believe it. Then, the system began slowing down--in fact, grinding
down. I fed Windows 1 GB of fast DDR RAM, but it didn't seem
to matter. Finally, I defragmented the hard drive, which took an hour.

Soon, programs began to freeze and in the top bar I saw the message
"Not responding". I waited a little while and they eventually came back. I
couldn't believe how many times I had to stop work while XP gathered
itself. And this is what media analysts consider ready for the desktop?

I know I'm not the only one who has written this, but I'll do it
again. If the major manufacturers put as much engineering into the Linux
desktop as they put into Windows, they would produce a superior product for
their customers. I'm sorry I don't have a billion dollars to give
you for marketing so you can keep your stock prices up. Maybe you could
make it the old-fashioned way--by offering a superior product.

Tom Adelstein is a Principal of Hiser + Adelstein, a consulting
and operating company specializing in free and open-source software
solutions and support. Tom is the co-author of the book Exploring the
JDS Linux Desktop, author of an upcoming book on Linux system
administration and has written prolifically since 1985. Tom's business
career began in public accounting where he first learned to program and
develop software and later progressed to Wall Street, where he became
the designated principal of a NYSE firm. He later returned to technology
and has consulted and worked with start-ups as well leaders of the
Fortune 500.