ThinkPad SL500 and Linux

I like the ThinkPad SL500. I know it catches flack for basically being an IdeaPad in ThinkPad clothing, but I don't care. It works well enough and the price was certainly right. Linux works almost flawlessly on it, out of the box (caveats, I don't have a fingerprint reader or Bluetooth; I use the SDHC card reader, trackpad, WiFi, USB drives, etc). The few things that didn't work were, e.g., the volume controls, hotkeys, and the screen brightness. These were all cured with a relatively painless kernel upgrade. I'm running Ubuntu 9.04 which, as of this writing, is using a 2.6.28-13 kernel; these steps bring it up to the 2.6.30 kernel with an additional ThinkPad SL500 (and perhaps other SL models) specific driver module.

1. Obtained the Latest kernel from: http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/ (e.g., http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/v2.6.30/. Files I downloaded for my Intel Core 2 Duo SL500:
   
   
   
   
   • linux-headers-2.6.30-020630_2.6.30-020630_all.deb
   
   
   • linux-headers-2.6.30-020630-generic_2.6.30-020630_i386.deb
   
   
   • linux-image-2.6.30-020630-generic_2.6.30-020630_i386.deb
   
   
   • linux-source-2.6.30_2.6.30-020630_all.deb
   
   
   
   



2. Install the kernel:
   

   $ sudo dpkg -i linux-headers-2.6.30-020630_2.6.30-020630_all.deb
   $ sudo dpkg -i linux-headers-2.6.30-020630-generic_2.6.30-020630_i386.deb
   $ sudo dpkg -i linux-image-2.6.30-020630-generic_2.6.30-020630_i386.deb
   $ sudo dpkg -i linux-source-2.6.30_2.6.30-020630_all.deb




3. Reboot.



4. Download kernel module from: http://github.com/tetromino/lenovo-sl-laptop/tree/master (I clicked through to download the 'raw' versions of Makefile and README and lenovo-sl-laptop.c to a local directory). Change into the directory where those files reside and:
   

   $ make all
   $ sudo cp lenovo-sl-laptop.ko /lib/modules/`uname -r`/kernel/drivers/misc
   $ sudo depmod -v




5. Configure the rest of the system:
   

   $ sudo depmod
   $ sudo gedit /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf
       blacklist thinkpad-acpi  # added (anywhere in the file)
   
   $ sudo gedit /etc/modprobe.d/lenovo-sl-laptop.modprobe.conf
       options lenovo-sl-laptop control_backlight=1
   
   $ sudo gedit /etc/rc.local
       # Added before the exit 0 line:
       echo 0 > /sys/module/video/parameters/brightness_switch_enabled
       modprobe lenovo-sl-laptop
   
   $ sudo /etc/rc.local

And voila, the brightness control, volume, etc., should be working! I love it when a plan comes together.