SuSE Linux 8.1
This page is now out of date and no longer maintained. I keep it here purely for reference purposes.
If you want more information about repairing laptops, or Linux on laptops try TuxMobil or Repair4Laptop.
Installing SuSE 8.1 on the B2154 was much easier again than its predecessor. As I said in the introduction Linux as an operating system has matured very fast, and the differences between SuSE 6.1 and 8.1 are enormous.
Installation
Before you start see the section on suspend-to-disk.As with the previous versions installation by both NFS and Parallel port CDROM is possible, but the installation disk has a version of PCMCIA utilities that allowed me for the first time to use my PCMCIA CDROM, or in my case DVDROM drive, to install. Please however note the PCMCIA section below. The standard Yast 2 installation will run without a hitch from the floppy boot disk (as long as you follow SuSE's instructions), the only items not picked up are listed below. The only problem with SuSE 8.1 is it doesn't come with any pre-done boot or modules floppy disks. You will have to make them up using the utilities on the SuSE CDROMs (this can be done on both Windows and Linux systems).
PCMCIA
Whilst above I've stated that the PCMCIA utilities on the installation floppy will allow you to use any CD/ DVD drive to install SuSE, the post installation running will be a problem. This is because post-install SuSE shifts to Kernel based PCMCIA. To change to external PCMCIA (& fix the problem) go into Yast 2, select the 'System' tab from the left, and then the 'Editor for /etc/sysconfig'. Once the editior is open select 'hardware' in the right hand window, then 'Pcmcia'. In the right window there should now be a set of PCMCIA options, one of them is 'PCMCIA_SYSTEM'. Set this to 'external'.
Modem
As with all other versions of SuSE up to 8.1 the internal modem is not auto-detected. The Lucent winmodems driver (ltmodem) will take care of this. More information is available from Linmodems.org, and from Christoph Hebeisens' ltmodem pages.
Touchscreen
The Touchscreen drivers for XFree 4 can be found at Conans Website (should the driver no longer be available I've a copy of V0.7.4 here and the instructions in PDF here). These are very easy to install, and come with a very funky calibration tool. If you have problems configuring it here are the touchscreen sections from my XF86Config file:
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Hibernate
To allow your machine to suspend-to-disk you need to use the package lphdisk. This will prepare a partition on your hard disk for the APM function, note; the version that comes with SuSE 8.1 can cope with any primary partition number on the main hard disk, but for backward compatibility you may wish to make it /dev/hda4. This partition should be created as you are installing linux, and its size is determined as:
physical ram + video memory + 2MB
So for example my B2154 has 192MB of ram, so my partition should be 261MB. This partition should be set to type A0, IBM Thinkpad Hibernation. Don't worry if you can't do this during installation, just set it as Linux and once your system is up change it using fdisk. After that just follow the lphdisk instructions (man lpdisk), and enable hibernate in the bios.
IRDA
The Infra-red port will work with SuSE 8.1 in the same way as it will with all other versions of SuSE; after a fashion. Only the standard serial interface is supported, which you should set up in the bios. In the sysconfig editor (see PCMCIA above) set the Infrared port (under the hardware settings) to /dev/ttyS1. This will allow use of the port under /dev/ircomm0 etc when Infrared is enabled (this is described in the SuSE book). Sadly there are more problems. If you use the PCMCIA slot or modem without IRDA first being activated the bios will switch off the IRDA port. To re-activate you must re-boot the computer. Also sometimes after the computer has been in hibernation the Infra-red port will not work until the machine has been rebooted.
Application Panel
The application panel software is still under development, I did once try the driver but failed to get it to work. Speaking personally I have never missed the panel.