Fujitsu Lifebook Redux
Posted 3 years, 9 months ago at 22:40. 0 comments
As promised, here is a listing of the various problems I had getting Linux running on my new Fujitsu Lifebook:
- Wireless: due to licensing issues, the drivers for the Intel Centrino wireless card cannot be distributed with any of the packaged Linux distributions. Sourceforge to the rescue! And no, I never thought I would be uttering that phrase. Depending on how you kernel is configured, you may need to rebuild it in order to use the new driver. I’m running FC2, and I needed to recompile my kernel to include the necessary firmware modules;
- Sound: I thought the driver wasn’t being loaded, or perhaps it was the wrong driver being loaded, despite the lack of error messages in the logs. As it turns out, the volume for the sound device is simply controlled by the headphone and PCM settings; the master volume control is useless.
My brief gaming sessions today under Windows on the Lifebook were less than successful. Jedi Academy locked up a repeatedly, and Counter-Strike was almost unplayable, although that may have been due to the wireless latency. No danger of this laptop replacing my Xbox any time soon.
