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it took me a week to get a working install and a month until i could use it without messing things up ;)

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A week? You're a perfectionist! I installed it yesterday night and got a 100% working console no-wireless system. :-)

I see you too installed the 2.6.27 kernel, because of the Wifi, right? I managed to get it to work just about now (I almost asked you about it). Can you post the relevant parts of your kernel config? Or maybe we could maintain a Wiki topic on the Gentoo Wiki. There are still a lot of peripherals to go... I would particularly like changing the framebuffer console size and getting the bluetooth light off.

Any luck with fglrx or radeonhd yet? 

I just came up with a better ebuild for merging the ATI driver on Gentoo (driver 8.543, with support for the FirePro V5700).

The driver requires setting the graphics card to discrete (instead of switchable) on the BIOS.

I'm trying to get in touch with the Gentoo community to make it available.

>> A week? You're a perfectionist! I installed it yesterday night and got a 100% working console no-wireless system. :-)

I was talking about my first time installing gentoo. You have my regards if you managed to complete the base install overnight ;)

>> I see you too installed the 2.6.27 kernel, because of the Wifi, right?

>> Can you post the relevant parts of your kernel config?

linux $ grep MAC80211 .config
CONFIG_MAC80211=y
CONFIG_MAC80211_RC_PID=y
CONFIG_MAC80211_RC_DEFAULT_PID=y
CONFIG_MAC80211_RC_DEFAULT="pid"
# CONFIG_MAC80211_MESH is not set
CONFIG_MAC80211_LEDS=y
# CONFIG_MAC80211_DEBUGFS is not set
# CONFIG_MAC80211_DEBUG_MENU is not set
# CONFIG_MAC80211_HWSIM is not set

linux $ grep IWL .config
CONFIG_IWLWIFI=m
CONFIG_IWLCORE=m
CONFIG_IWLWIFI_LEDS=y
# CONFIG_IWLWIFI_RFKILL is not set
# CONFIG_IWLWIFI_DEBUG is not set
CONFIG_IWLAGN=m
CONFIG_IWLAGN_SPECTRUM_MEASUREMENT=y
CONFIG_IWLAGN_LEDS=y
# CONFIG_IWL4965 is not set
CONFIG_IWL5000=y
# CONFIG_IWL3945 is not set

>> Or maybe we could maintain a Wiki topic on the Gentoo Wiki.

I am planning to start a T400 article on the new gentoo-wiki. Let me know if you start an article.

>> There are still a lot of peripherals to go... I would particularly like changing the framebuffer console size

You can use uvesafb for high resolution console. It gives the native 1280x800 resolution if i use intel video. With ati it seems to manage a maximum of 1024x768.

>> and getting the bluetooth light off.

You can disable the bluetooth through the proc interface like so:

# echo "disable" > /proc/acpi/ibm/bluetooth

Video playback performance was unsatisfactory with fglrx. i.e. Resizing video windows was _very_ slow. That means switching to fullscreen is slow too.
Video colours were faded out with fglrx (Xv). OpenGL output for mplayer with fglrx was slow enough to lag the audio/video. I did try radeohd for a while but was put off by the lack of OpenGL support (i think).

I am using Intel(Xv) with XAA right now. x11-drivers/xf86-video-intel-2.5.1 works fine except for when I want to switch to console and back to xorg.

EDIT: After posting this I went back to try the latest driver in portage, 8.552-r2. The opengl output for mplayer is faster (read: usable) now. XVideo output still has faded colours.

The ati gpu is more stable than intel while working with maya.

ey miguel, im wont call gentoo hardcore, i've use it since 4 years now on my T41 and had it also under powerpc.. it is just the best distro along with slackware. The community and forums are far more friendly than debian who really has the hardcore attitude.... but anyway, that just my opinion based on some years of experience.

to the point:

miguel could you tell me, you went for the amd64 or x86 gentoo install and which CD, the liveCD the installer?

also, i will be happy to test your ebuild for the ATI driver.

regards,

/a

Hi, I wasn't aware of your post on this thread.

I went for amd64. I'm was using FreeBSD amd64 on another laptop for 4 years, so I see no reason for going back.

Also, I must try out the possibilities of the 64 bit address space.

Also, amd64 is faster. Particular on AMD processors.  Possibly because it has twice as much general purpose registers.

I went for the minimal install CD (amd64) as I usually do.

Network was not working with the minimal install CD so I had to copy some distfiles from another computer using a pen.

My ebuild for the ATI driver is more or less pointless as others have pointed out on the Gentoo user mailing list, because the problems I corrected did not exist in more recent driver versions. I'm using ati-drivers-8.552-r2 right now, which requires one to unmask all of Xorg 7.4. That is best done creating an /etc/portage/package.keywords directory and using the autounmask package to create a file there containing the unmasking directives for all for xorg-x11-7.4.

I'm happy to see that there are at least two more persons going for Gentoo here, I feel more secure about my choice.

Let's definitely move this to a Gentoo Wiki.

I think the topic should be T400/T500/W500. There's already a T400 topic but the guy had to use an Ubuntu CD to install...

Maybe we should start one just for T500/W500?

xslr and others,

I've started the T500/W500 topic on the Gentoo Wiki, http://en.gentoo-wiki.com/wiki/Lenovo_ThinkPad_T500/W500.

I linked to yours about the T400 mainly because yours is focused a bit on installation and I'm past that, of course.

Perhaps we should merge the two topics.

I'll try to add a part about installing fglrx, maybe about doing an ebuild for the driver from Lenovo that alejo posted.

The ebuild is important, because if the ATI installer is used, the eselect opengl functionality does not work anymore.

That functionality is particularly important for switching back and forth between fglrx and the intel driver.

Miguel

Hi migle

Do you have suspend-to-ram working? Right now I can suspend only once, the system doesnot resume from a second suspend.

I am all for merging the two articles. imo, we should do the discussion about merging on gentoo-wiki instead, to make it easier for others to follow.

regards

i just did an account in the gentoo-wiki, will add my notes there, right now im compiling a 2.6.28 kernel to test video the miguel way.

is far better to use the gentoo-wiki talk page to discuss gentoo specific problems.

I don't have suspend working properly, and I miss it a lot.

I think even without X working the video did not wake up properly. 

I've seen there is a lot of trouble about it which is graphics card specific, and that probably means trouble for us (vbetools or radeontools?).

I appreciate any help.

I started using the talk page on the Gentoo Wiki.

Since this thread is called W500 and Gentoo, its probably adequate to end it here and forward anyone who is interested to the Gentoo Wiki.