Installing Arch Linux on a Thinkpad X31

First, let me recommend the ThinkWiki as an excellent source of information about installing Linux on any Thinkpad.

Archlinux Customizations

Here are a few things that need to be customized but are not obvious. The first is installing fonts so Firefox, Open Office, and other programs will work.

pacman -S ttf-ms-fonts ttf-cheapskate artwiz-fonts
pacman -S xorg-fonts-75dpi xorg-fonts-100dpi

You also should set the locale by editing /etc/locale.gen and uncommenting the two US_ (or your own country code if it differs). `

Custom Kernel

You don't need to compile one! Fortunately, in the AUR (Archlinux User Repositories), there is a kernel designed specifically for thinkpads called kernel26thinkpad. The kernel provides all of the necessary modules and customizations for me to take full advantage of my thinkpad.

You will still want a few files, however. Run 'pacman -S acpi acpid' so that you can remap your thinkpad buttons. The ThinkWiki has an article for more information. I use the following scripts for standby and sleep. Hibernation worked out of the box after I installed suspend2, and the included hibernate script works fine for hibernation.

• standby.sh

• sleep.sh

Graphics

I built a working xorg.conf from the sample in Mark's Wiki. It works out of the box, but with this configuration I have hardware acceleration.

Audio

Audio worked out of the box after 'pacman -S alsa-lib alsa-utils alsa-oss'.

Wireless

Wireless works great with the ipw2200 driver. However, with the new version of ArchLinux I needed to install the firmware before it would work. Also, I still have not figured out how to configure wpa_supplicant so that I can access encrypted networks.

Screenshots

• Fluxbox: attachment:archfluxsalar.jpg