Linux on the Fujitsu E4000
written for Linux on Laptops
What I bought:
Fujitsu Lifebook E4010D, from their website
- 1.4 GHz Pentium M processor
- 15" SXGA+ TFT display
- 256 + 256 MB RAM
- 60 GB hard drive (5400 rpm)
- 8x DVD, 24x10x24x CD-RW drive
- external USB floppy drive
- 56K V.90 modem
- 10/100 base-Tx ethernet
- no integrated wireless (would have been Broadcom 802.11b/54g, which didn't appear to be Linux-friendly)
- $1619+tax in September 2003
Installing Linux
I installed RedHat 9 from CDs, and it was fairly uneventful. The only tricky part was partitioning, since I wanted to keep 5 GB for Windows XP without reinstalling it.
I couldn't get parted or fips to handle the NTFS filesystem, so I did something else:
- download a Windows image of BootItNG from TeraByte Unlimited and put it on a floppy
- boot from the floppy
- choose "manual find"
- resize the partition
- close, remove the floppy, reboot, and check that XP sees a 5 GB C:\
I never installed BootItNG, like the documentation says to, but this worked fine.
(update: My hard drive died when it was a year old. Now I have a replacement drive with Gentoo on it.)
What works, and what doesn't
These items worked without difficulty:
- DVD / CD drive (after doing ln -s /dev/cdrom /dev/dvd)
- USB floppy
- ethernet
- most other things
A USB optical external mouse works fine, and simultaneously with the touchpad. A serial port mouse works, too, but not with the touchpad. By the way, I bought a cheapo Harma mouse, and it sputtered and died after 8 months, so I recommend getting something a bit sturdier.
The modem works, finally. Based on the results from scanModem (get it here) and help from the Linmodems discussion group, I tried the drivers pctel-0.9.6 and slmdm-2.7.10, which did not work, and slmodem-2.9.1, which did. Here's the procedure I used:
- download slmodem-2.9.1 from here
- untar it, make, and make install (I had no problems)
- this was supposed to create some nodes automatically, but I needed to make them by hand:
- cd /dev
- mknod slamr0 c 212 0
- mknod slamr1 c 212 1
- mknod slamr2 c 212 2
- mknod slamr3 c 212 3
- load the module: /sbin/modprobe slamr
- run the daemon: /usr/sbin/slmodemd --country=USA /dev/slamr0
- test ttySL0 with minicom: seems to work fine
The Function keys mostly work now.
- F5 toggles video compensation and works automatically.
- F6 and F7 control screen brightness and work automatically.
- F10 toggles external monitor/projector display. When using it outside of X, it works for switching between the local and external displays but can't do both simultaneously. Using it while in X is bad, but it's fine to startx once on the external display. (update: use i810switch to do the toggling with software, instead)
- F3, F8, and F9 control volume and are actually software-controlled, so they didn't work at first. I downloaded Acme, and now they work nicely.
I don't have any kind of power management working. I hear acpi is easier under the new kernel, but I haven't tried.
I have found the battery life to be roughly 3 hours under my normal working conditions (the specs advertise 5 hours), and just about sufficient to watch a movie on DVD.
Because I didn't go for the integrated wireless option, I bought a pcmcia wireless card. It's the ORiNOCO 11b client PC card gold, and it works with the pcmcia-cs-3.1.31 driver.
(update: This card doesn't seem to work with 2.6 kernels. Any suggestions???)
For several months after I got this computer, I was pretty mad about the display. The native resolution is 1400x1050, but Intel's Linux driver for the 82852/82855 GM/GME Graphics Controller does not support this, so I was stuck with 1280x1024 and a lot of wasted pixels.
But then someone told me about 855resolution. It is really simple to apply, and it works! So now I have 1400x1050 and I'm much happier. Some other patches related to this graphics chipset are here.
Obsolete
Well, now that I've gotten almost everything working, I no longer have this computer. My new laptop has a page