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In late 2007 I received a Fujitsu-Siemens (FSC) Lifebook E8410. This page has been written to document some of the difficulties I had when trying to get 100% hardware support with a contemporary Linux distribution. Most of the issues can be attributed to the lack of documentation from the manufacturer, although some software bugs were also found in the process. I hope this page will be useful to other users of this notebook.
There are two models of the E8410 available (both with the same name, oddly enough), I decided for the one with integrated Intel graphics chip to gain more battery time. The other option would be the nVidia graphics adapter which is probably the better choice for the latest 3D games. Both are successors of the E8210, and sisters of the E8310. Furthermore, different configuration options can be applied to both E8410 models, such as a choice of processor speed, harddisk size and integrated devices. This is my configuration:
| Component | Configuration | Remarks |
|---|---|---|
| CPU | Intel Core 2 Duo T7500 (2*2,2 GHz) | |
| Memory | DDR2-667 MHz (2*1 GB) | dmidecode says 333 MHz |
| Disk | SATA (120 GB) | |
| DVD drive | - | hot-swappable (bay) |
| Battery internal | 75 Wh | |
| Battery external | 40 Wh | hot-swappable (bay) |
| Display | 15.4" widescreen (WSXGA+, 1680x1050) | |
| Network, wired | Intel 82566 MC | Gigabit Ethernet |
| Network, wireless | Intel Wireless Wifi Link 4965AGN | that's draft-n of course; Atheros Minicard b/g also available, it seems |
On the software side, I'm running Debian/unstable with the Linux kernel 2.6.22-3-amd64. The installation went flawless, most of the basic features work instantly. Yet there are many details which do not work out of the box. Some need manual addition of utilities, some need reconfiguration, and for some issues even patching some software only helps to some extent.
Graphics: The integrated Intel graphics adapter works fine with xorg's intel device driver. You must specify that it should use the PCI id 0:2:0, otherwise it will find the wrong card. The native resolution of 1680x1050 is very comfortable. 3D acceleration works out of the box, too, with about 1100 fps when running glxgears in default window mode and about 30-40 when running Tuxracer/PPracer in fullscreen mode.
Sound: The Intel HDA card (with Realtek ALC262 chip) works without any issues (kernel module snd_hda_intel). However, as opposed to Thinkpads, for example, the hotkeys to control the volume and mute the speakers need user-space support. Read the section on Hotkeys for details.
Wireless LAN: Intel IWL4965 is supported by the intellinuxwireless.org project. The kernel module iwl4965 needs to be compiled manually. Attention: The module should not be loaded automatically. Instead, it should be inserted with the option disable_hw_scan=1 in order to find more access points. I had some difficulty first compiling the module against the Debian kernel. The bugzilla entry still exists and suggests some better documentation from Intel. Without the kernel module switch, wpa_supplicant wouldn't find mine at all even though iwlist wlan0 scan showed it with a quality of about 80/100. When using WPA or RSN (WPA2) with access points which don't broadcast the SSID, wpa_supplicant needs to be modified. The real issue might be with the Intel driver, since both comparable setups with Ralink (wext) and Atheros (madwifi) can detect the access point. However, working around the issue in wpa_supplicant seems to be the waster way. Note that the driver does see the access point (again in iwlist wlan0 scan), but doesn't update its empty SSID to the real one so that wpa_supplicant would see a match. The authors of wpa_supplicant received a patch from me, although there was already another unapplied patch of the same sort waiting for over half a year.
Powersaving: Saving power and throttling the performance in general works ok. This includes ACPI suspend to RAM (suspension) and suspend to disk (hibernation) with the uswsusp package. Attention: s2ram must be called with -f -a3 to enforce the recognition of the machine. Update: This isn't necessary any longer with uswsusp 0.8, see fixed items on the bottom of the page. The hibernation tool s2disk works without any issues. The recommended tool s2both (which hibernates but still allows to suspend from RAM) didn't work since no override options can be given like for s2ram. Fortunately, this was also fixed with the update. Note though that due to differences in the config file format between Debian's uswsusp.conf and upstreams suspend.conf, which might as well be an incompatibility between versions 0.7 and 0.8, this is not a drop-in replacement. Further powersaving issues: The backlight of the display isn't dimmed after some time of inactivity or when plugging the power adapter. There is a new kernel module fujitsu-laptop as of Linux 2.6.24, however this doesn't work with Lifebook E models. The module author was contacted to explain the compatibility issues. Another strange issue is that when the cpufreqd configuration powersave is used, which sets the speed of both CPU cores to 800 MHz fixed, the effective speed can still be at 1200 MHz. The fact that cpufreq-set doesn't return an error value when powersave instead of userspace is activated doesn't improve the situation. Even with userspace, the frequence cannot be forced to be 800 MHz. (This is when acpi-cpufreq is used. Maybe it works better with speedstep-centrino, although it shouldn't really need that anymore since Linux 2.6.20, apparently.)
Hotkeys: The notebook has 4 special hotkeys on the so-called application panel, and several other hotkeys reachable by pressing Fn+Fx for volume settings, display dimming and projector settings. The special keys as shown on the photo (they're called launch keys) are eco button, recovery, lock workstation and mobility centre. Only F1 and the volume buttons generate keycodes (verified with showkey and xev). Using the hotkeys daemon with the appropriate settings makes them work automatically. A configuration suitable for the E8410 was submitted, but using e.g. aceraspire1300.def in the current version also works. Fn+F1 has been assigned the lock screen command, but this can be used for anything (see tips section). There is an additional kernel module and tools project called apanel. It relies on a System ROM sequence which doesn't exist on this notebook (in fact, no System ROM segment can be found in /proc/iomem). The module author was contacted for advice. FSC was also contacted for specs. The Japanese Fujitsu branch seem to be heavily involved in Linux kernel development, but I'm sceptical about FSC's committment.
Touchpad: The E8410 uses a Synaptics touchpad with two buttons, a middle button to scroll up and down (buttons 4+5) or alternatively to insert the buffer contents (button 3). All virtual buttons not mapped to physical buttons can be emulated on the touchpad by scrolling or double-clicking on it. The qsynaptics tool can be used to configure the buttons easily. Run qsynaptics --restore in your .xsession file unless you use an integrated desktop mechanism for it.
Tips: It is advisable to disable UMTS and Bluetooth in the BIOS if those are not needed. To prevent data theft, secure the hard disk with a password, and afterwards lock the BIOS, too. In addition, the system is fast enough to warrant a full hard disk encryption, including swap and system partition to make sure no contents from /var/tmp and other such directories can be read. To lock the system temporarily when being away or after wakeup from suspend, it is advisable to lock the X display with a screensaver and all open terminals with vlock. This heavily depends on the desktop environment and personal preferences. The scripts section contains a useful default configuration.
Many of the notes above are suitable for generic setups without making assumptions on the desktop environment. If only one such environment is used (e.g. KDE or GNOME), one should resort to its integrated mechanisms for powersaving, hotkeys and the like. Unless, of course, there are issues with them, since they aren't always fully configurable, such like the GNOME power manager which can only call s2ram but not s2ram -f -a3.
When compiling a module against a kernel source in Debian, find the correct .config file in /boot/config-`uname -r`. The Debian package linux-source-2.6.xx does not put it in there automatically, unfortunately.
List of remaining issues: When the following list becomes empty, then Linux support for the Lifebook E8410 will be perfect.
List of solved issues:
Not tested: I don't have all sorts of hardware and devices around, so feel free to add to the following items or wait until I come across them:
List of Computers
To know more about my other computers, click the link above.
iBook:
Back in 2003 I also wrote some information on how to run Linux on the Apple iBook G3.
You can find it archived on this page.
TuxMobil/Linux on Laptops:
This is a great resource site by Werner Heuser which lists thousands of notebooks and other
devices with links to user-contributed installation and compatibility notes.
Visit TuxMobil and have a look especially at the
Fujitsu-Siemens page where some models
similar to the E8410 are already registered.
German-speaking users:
You can find the original German-language blog posts which led to this page
here and
here. They might be outdated though.