Last updated: April 29, 2013
Note that there are several variants of the S206 with very divergent hardware. Some have the faster AMD E1-1500; some have Intel chips or no Bluetooth; some have bigger hard drives. This model is the cheapest — the M895AGE, with AMD E1-1200, Bluetooth, smaller hard drive, and FreeDOS installed.
Most of these instructions will also work for the similar IdeaPad S200, but the S205 has significantly different features, especially in keyboard layout.
| Hardware Components | Status under Linux | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| CPU: AMD E1-1200 dual-core APU, 1.3GHz, 18W TDP | Works | No special procedure required during installation. |
| Display: 11.6" HD gloss finish | Works | No special procedure |
| Video: AMD Radeon HD 6290 (integrated) HDMI port only |
Works | No special procedure |
| Sound: HDMI Audio;
combo audio jack |
Works | No special procedure |
| RAM: 2GB 1333MHz DDR3 | Works | No special procedure |
| Storage: 320GB (5400 RPM SATA) hard disk | Works | No special procedure |
| Wireless networking (WiFi 802.11b/g/n) | With special drivers, works — mostly | ee notes |
| Bluetooth 4 | Works — partly | Ubuntu bugs mar the experience. See notes |
| USB: (on USB 2.0, one USB 3.0) | Works | No special procedure |
| Camera: 0.3MP | Works | No special procedure |
| Card reader: 2-in-1 SD/MMC | Works | No special procedure |
| Power: 27.7 WHr internal lithium-ion battery | Works | No special procedure |
| Floppy drive | none | — |
| Ethernet | none | — |
| Modem | none | — |
| Optical drive | none | — |
This laptop is operating under Kernel version 3.5.0-27
One should be careful not to complain too much about a 200€, great looking, very thin and light, and pretty fast, laptop. That said, complaints would include: a sticky glossy touchpad partly unusable mouse buttons, stupidly placed screen-off and network-kill buttons, disappointing battery life, and no indicators for hard disk, radios, or caps lock keys. Some of these can be overcome. Not complainin' — just sayin'…
But man, once I got wireless working, and put the thing in my shoulder bag and headed to the cafe on my bike, I was sold. It's substantially smaller and lighter than my previous 12" laptops, but has similar functionality and battery life. It's cute but sensible — no girls yet, but they may be expected any minute.
Ubuntu is a good, up-to-date Debian-based Linux distribution.
Download it at: Ubuntu downloads
Note: I used the 32-bit version although in principle the 64-bit version should work fine. My reason: in a previous 64-bit installation on another computer, the proprietary drivers for my Canon printer didn't work. (Maybe I should try again though.)
You'll need a USB device to install a new system. If you're already running Ubuntu on the download machine, you can conveniently install the installer image onto a memory stick using the Ubuntu installer utility. Alternatively, if you have a portable USB CD/DVD player, you could burn the installer image onto a CD.
To install Linux from some USB stick or drive, you will need to specify the drive in the "Boot Menu". To get the menu, hold down Fn-F12 while pressing the power button, and continue holding for a couple of seconds. The USB device should be listed there along with the internal hard disk drive. Pick the USB device from the list, and reboot. The machine should then boot from the USB device.
Follow usual Ubuntu installation procedures, which are to be found on the Web.
Several partitions were set up on the hard disk for its FreeDOS system. I had no interest in this, so I formatted the whole disk, and partitioned it in a sensible way.
Quickly: if you want a dual-boot with Windows, install Windows first.
In the installer, make partitions something like this:
| size (Gb) | filesystem type | purpose |
|---|---|---|
| 2.5+ | swap | |
| 15-25 | ext4 | / (root directory) |
| 5+ | ext4 | /usr/local |
| 25+ | ext4 | /opt |
| the rest | ext4 | /home |
The swap partition really needs to be bigger than the total RAM memory in order for everything to work well. The root directory has to big enough to hold the system software, plus temporary files, caches etc. I recommend both /opt and /usr/local directories in separate partitions, to separate any personal and third-party installations from system software.
WiFi: Broadcom wireless chips as on this machine have a bad reputation — the story is, only under recent pressure from OEMs, has Broadcom begun to cooperate a bit with the free software community. Anyway, this one basically works with the built-in Ubuntu driver.
However, it did not work for me initially, and this caused a terrible headache. I could see my neighbors' WiFi access points but not my own!
Best Guess: either the wireless chip or the driver has problems with WiFi channels 11–13. Changing my access point's frequency to channel 9 made it visible to the computer.
There are at least four software packages out there for Broadcom chips. It seems two of these are known not to work on this particular version. The only one that worked for me was the one from the Ubuntu package bcmwl-kernel-source.
To enter the BIOS or boot menu, you have to be holding down the proper key as the machine is started, not shortly after, as on most machines.
The proper keys are (by default) Fn-F2 for BIOS; Fn-F12 for the boot menu.
Hotkey setting: Another curious feature of this machine is that, by default, the F-keys are accessible only when the Fn key is pressed; the other special functions (called "hotkeys": audio mute, screen dimming, etc) are the naked functions of these keys.
One of the few hardware features controllable from BIOS is the way the F-keys work. There is a "hotkeys" setting to reverse this arrangement, so the F-keys are activated with a simple press, and the special functions require teh Fn key. Because some of the default keys are extremely bad ideas, I went ahead and did that.
This machine came with FreeDOS installed. Even to make that run requires holding down the "QuickStart" QS key. That key is visible to Linux (via udev) — I just haven't decided what to do with it.
On the right side of the laptop chassis is a small button referred to in the S206 User Guide as the "OneKey Rescue System button". This doesn't mean much if the delivered system is wiped out. However the button is visible to Linux... Read on.
The idea of implementing "screen off" and "network off" as single keys on the keypad is remarkably stupid. I cannot imagine a scenario where "screen off" should be useful, but if you hit it accidentally and don't know it's there, you might well think the computer has crashed. The RF-kill key is likewise idiotic — on most machines it is implemented as a separate key that must be deliberately activated.
Fortunately, these problematic keys may be at least put under the Fn key using the BIOS, as described above, thereby making them less likely to be pressed unintentionally. (This unfortunately also puts more useful keys such as audio volume and screen brightness under the Fn key as well.)
Lenovo skimped on batteries to keep the weight and price down. Call it a trade-off. Doing moderate work, networking and browsing in a cafe, expect no better than 2.5 hours of power. On the other hand, the power adapter is small and light. Lenovo claims 3.5 hours, and this could be achieved with some tweeking under special conditions—read on.
I miss a "sleep" key for putting the machine to sleep.
Often for example I'm on a train, and suddenly realize I'm at my stop, and I would like to just put the machine to sleep.
The Ubuntu default is to sleep when the cover is closed, but I like to close the cover while big calculations are happening, so that doesn't work for me. Otherwise, one has to fumble with a menu, while the train doors are closing.
There is a neat solution. Read on.
The "OneKey Rescue system" button, located on the right side of the chassis, may be of little use to Linux users as-is, but it can be re-mapped to have other effects.
The button emits the 0x10 keyrelease event if it is held down for between 1 and 3 seconds and released. When held down about 3 seconds, it emits a 0x11 event. You could have those two do different things. For my purposes, it is handy to re-map the first to "sleep" and the second to "suspend".
This involves editing a rather important system file, and is therefore not recommended for the squeamish or clumsy.
LABEL="keyboard_modulecheck"ENV{DMI_VENDOR}=="LENOVO*", KERNELS=="input*", ATTRS{name}=="Ideapad extra buttons", RUN+="keymap $name 0x42 f23 0x43 f22"
ENV{DMI_VENDOR}=="LENOVO*", KERNELS=="input*", ATTRS{name}=="Ideapad extra buttons", RUN+="keymap $name 0x42 f23 0x43 f22 0x10 sleep 0x11 suspend"
Most of the existing udev rules for handling the special keys are inappropriate for this machine, but several of them are handled by the hardware, so it doesn't matter much. I'm investigating improvements.
By default, the whole touchpad moves the mouse, but unfortunately, the mouse buttons are part of the lower portion of the touchpad, so clicking the buttons invariably moves the mouse. It is usually adequate for clicking a GUI button, but for graphics work, it is an impossible setup.
To improve this situation:
InputClass section containingIdentifier "Default clickpad buttons".
Option "AreaBottomEdge" "4016"
The result should be that the touchpad's bottom half centimeter (or so) no longer effects mouse movement, but the buttons under those areas still work.
The value of this edge is of course configurable.
It can be set temporarily without re-starting X by means of
synclient AreaBottomEdge=4016
To see other related numbers, in an X-Windows terminal, type
xinput list
Look for the input device ID for the touchpad. Use this ID in
xinput list-props ID | grep Edges
This will give coords Left-Right-Top-Bottom for the touchpad.
Your friends are top, powertop. and
the laptop-mode-tools package.
To make laptop-tools start automatically,
LAPTOP_MODE_ENABLED=true
CONTROL_NOATIME=1LM_BATT_MAX_LOST_WORK_SECONDS=15
With laptop-mode working properly, I see battery discharge rates of under 9W (screen backlight at max, WLAN and bluetooth on, Firefox, terminals, text editor running under Unity). Without it, the discharge rate is more like 10W. It's a good 10% savings.
Max screen brightness costs about 3W while at min brightness it is 1W. Running a small MPEG video costs around 2.5W. FireFox just sitting costs around 0.5 W. The radio takes about 1.5 W altogether—it's not very helpful to turn it off in software: turning off Bluetooth in software (using the Gnome BT applet) is around 0.1W—but even blocking the radios in hardware with the rf-kill key does not seem to change the drain from the radio device.
With laptop-mode enabled, and under normal use (no videos etc) in a dimly lit room with the screen brightness turned down, you can get over 3 hours of battery time.
Beware of Firefox: it's a hog just idling, but often some plug-in will suck
you dry real quick — check with top, and just
re-start Firefox if power usage goes way up.
Further power savings may be had by getting rid of Ubuntu's "Unity", but it's a very involved process, which isn't for the faint of heart. I can report that I have a neat (far less annoying) Gnome desktop going, and that it runs at under 8W in normal usage.
This makes the "AMD Catalyst Control Center" available. It has a lot of controls for 3D graphics and color, which may be important to some people. There are also claims of performance improvements.
See https://help.ubuntu.com/community/BinaryDriverHowto/ATI
rfkill -l to see if your radio devices have been shut off by
the RF-kill key or by software.
powertop has some settings that (temporarily) reduce power
drain.
laptop-mode-tools package can be used to permanently implement
the suggestions given by powertop. (Note: the packages util-pm and
the power.d scripts delivered by default do not seem to do
everything laptop-mode does on this machine.)