I have just finished installing and configuring SuSE Linux 10.1 on my IBM T43 laptop and I must say that I am quite happy with the results. I had to fight with a few things to put on it everything I wanted, but the result is just great.

What works :

• Wired Lan (out of the box)
• Wireless Lan (ipw2945abg) - almost out of the box
• ATI Radeon Mobility M300 - requires manual intervention
• Dual head config (mirroring or desk expansion) - immediate once ATI drivers are installed
• 3D Desktop (very simple once my ATI card was configured)
• Sound & Sound buttons - out of the box
• Sleep and Hibernate - out of the box (a real first for me, specially for sleep - S2 - state !!)

What does not work :

• Nothing found yet, but I haven't tested the modem so far which seems to be recognized out of the box

Software I installed :

• Gnome desktop - even though I have a tendency to go back to KDE, I make a point to try every new version of GNOME as I really prefer its look and feel. We will see in a few days how it goes...
• vlc - first time it was easy to do so on Suse !
• nvu - just make sure to pick the right repositories
• Open office, and all other productivity packages that I generally use on my desktop, nothing special here...

Here are the steps I went through to do this :

1 - Download and install

Here I have chosen to download the DVD image that can be found on many mirrors. Personally I picked the french mirror at cict.

Once burned on a DVD, installation was pretty straight forward, but in order to have my ipw2945 wireless lan card be functional I made sure to add to the default selection of packages the "Non-Open Source Packages" which contains, among other the daemons, drivers and firmware for Intel cards.

Full install took about an hour, with only one reboot.

3 - Configure your installation source

In order to have any of the following steps work, you'd better modify your installation sources. This is necessary because

• The DVD we downloaded does not contain all of the Suse maintained packages (7Gb do not fit on a single layer DVD)
• a lot of good packages are considered "barely legal" in some countries, so we need to go fetch them in a less official source...

Doing so with the graphical interface is quite easy (right click on the software update icon in the icon tray and select configure), but here is how to do so using the command line:
#rug sa http://ftp.gwdg.de/pub/linux/misc/suser-guru/rpm/10.1/RPMS/ guru
#rug sub guru
#rug sa http://packman.mirrors.skynet.be/pub/packman/suse/10.1/ packman
#rug sub packman
#rug sa http://opensuse.cict.fr/distribution/SL-10.1/inst-source/suse/ install
#rug sub install
Other advantage of this: you do not need to have the DVD with you if you need to add additional software...

3 - Install the ATI M300 drivers from ATI

This step was maybe the most complicated one. Gladly I found a how-to at linux.wordpress.com. Not all went as described, here is precisely what I have done.

1. First of all, make sure you have installed the following packages :
   • compat-expat1
   • kernel-source
   • gcc
   • make

   For this I used zlm installation tool which is found in the Gnome menu Applications > System > Configuration > Install software. It works almost as nicely as the equivalent apt graphical tool synaptic found on ubuntu, if not a bit slower... Just make sure you have modified your installation sources as described above. Note that some people have had problem if they had not rebooted once prior to using it.

2. Execute the following commands as root :
#cd /usr/src/linux
#make mrproper
#make cloneconfig
#make modules_prepare
#make clean
#rpm -e $(rpm -qa | grep fglrx)
3. Download the drivers from ATI using Firefow or your favorite browser. It is found in "ATI Customer care > Drivers and software > Linux > Linux x86 > Radeon" and click on download on the line that says "ATI Driver Installer". Make sure you remember where you put the file. Personally I put it /home/nbarcet/tmp/. I ended up with a file titled ati-driver-installer-8.25.18-x86.run
4. Exit the graphical environment:
#init 3
5. Log in as root and cd to the folder where you downloaded the above file
6. build, install and configure the package:
#sh ./ati-driver-installer-8.25.18-x86.run --buildpkg SuSE/SUSE101-IA32
#rpm -ivh fglrx_6_9_0_SUSE101-8.25.18-1.i386.rpm
#ldconfig
#aticonfig --initial --input=/etc/X11/xorg.conf
#sax2 -r -m 0=fglrx
7. Restart the graphical environment:
#init 5
   and login
8. Verify that you see the following after executing the command fglrxinfo:
#fglrxinfo
Xlib: extension "XFree86-DRI" missing on display ":0.0".
display: :0.0 screen: 0
OpenGL vendor string: ATI Technologies Inc.
OpenGL renderer string: MOBILITY RADEON X300 Generic
OpenGL version string: 1.2 (2.0.5814 (8.25.18))
9. Same with glxinfo:
#glxinfo
name of display: :0.0
Xlib: extension "XFree86-DRI" missing on display ":0.0".
display: :0 screen: 0
direct rendering: No
server glx vendor string: SGI
server glx version string: 1.2
server glx extensions:
GLX_ARB_multisample, GLX_EXT_visual_info, GLX_EXT_visual_rating,
GLX_EXT_import_context, GLX_EXT_texture_from_pixmap, GLX_OML_swap_method,
GLX_SGI_make_current_read, GLX_SGIS_multisample, GLX_SGIX_hyperpipe,
GLX_SGIX_swap_barrier, GLX_SGIX_fbconfig
client glx vendor string: ATI
client glx version string: 1.3
client glx extensions:
GLX_EXT_visual_info, GLX_EXT_visual_rating, GLX_EXT_import_context,
GLX_ARB_get_proc_address, GLX_ARB_multisample, GLX_ATI_pixel_format_float,
GLX_ATI_render_texture
GLX extensions:
GLX_EXT_visual_info, GLX_EXT_visual_rating, GLX_EXT_import_context,
GLX_ARB_multisample
OpenGL vendor string: ATI Technologies Inc.
OpenGL renderer string: MOBILITY RADEON X300 Generic
OpenGL version string: 1.2 (2.0.5814 (8.25.18))
[...]
10. Go back to graphical mode:
#init 5
11. Your card should be enabled with 3D!

4 - Enable 3D Desktop effet

Once the above is done, we need to

1. install the following packages :
   • xgl
   • compiz
2. Configure the 3D effect from the Gnome Control Center > Desktop Effect Settings
3. In the first pane of the control panel, click on "Update 3D Desktop settings"
4. This should prompt you to log out : do so to restart X
5. Log back in and look at the configuration options you have in the other panes of the 3D Desktop settings
6. Close the panel : 3D effects are now enabled! Have fun.