gtmaneki's Journal: Xubuntu 6.06 on a Thinkpad 380XD

The electric acid grandma test: My mother has been wanting to get on the Internet and send emails for a while now. Since neither she nor I knew if she'd like having a computer, I wanted to get something cheap. And since she didn't have a lot of space to spread out, a laptop was preferable. Looking through the classifieds, I found someone selling an IBM Thinkpad 380XD computer for $100: PII 233 MHz, 95 MB RAM, CD-ROM and floppy drives, and a USB port. Not bad for a starter system where you just need to do a few basic things.

I first started out installing Vector Linux, based on all the glowing reviews of its speed. It did run quickly on the laptop, but I could never get the sound card working, so I ended up putting Windows 2000 on it.

As you can imagine, Win2K was a bit of a resource hog. With her running as a standard user, I skipped out on memory-resident anti-virus and anti-spyware programs, and just had a software firewall. I suppose I could have left it out and just used the hardware firewall on the wireless router, but she liked going to coffee shops with free WiFi. But even the Win2K+firewall combo used up all physical RAM. And when Windows Automatic Update decided it was time to download and install patches, the whole system ground to a halt.

After getting my feel for Linux back with my Kubuntu adventures, I tried Xubuntu on the laptop. The computer was a little underpowered for the live CD, so I had to use the alternate install CDs. Edgy Eft kept on giving me errors that the install files were corrupted, even though the checksums always said the downloaded ISO and burned CD matched the source. Fortunately, Dapper Drake worked.

I was very pleased that the installer recognized the D-Link WiFi PCMCIA card I had installed. Unfortunately, it didn't get the soundcard. ThinkWiki gave me a lot of necessary information about the sound card, namely the model (CS4237) and the proper DMA, IRQ, etc. settings. But I didn't know what to do with the info, though.

Fortunately, this thread on the Ubuntu forums walked me through it. LordRaiden's guide is long and involves similar problems as well as the one I had. In case I accidentally hose the system (like I've done before with Kubuntu), here are the salient parts:

• Download the necessary packages: sudo apt-get install build-essential linux-headers-$(uname -r) module-assistant alsa-source
• Configure: sudo dpkg-reconfigure alsa-source
• Select the applicable drivers. I have read that both CS4326 and CS4232 work, so I selected these.
• Compile: sudo module-assistant a-i alsa-source
• Module load: modprobe cs4236 io=0x530 irq=5 dma=1 dma2=0 mpuio=0x330 mpuirq=7 synthio=0x330 synthirq=7
• Test with alsamixer. Success!
• To make sure this module loads at start, type sudo vi /etc/modules . In this new file, type snd-CS4236 and save.
• Save the alsamixer settings: sudo alsactl store 0

I'm likeing Xubuntu and XFCE. Especially when it typically uses about half the physical RAM. Here are the other key programs for my mother:

• Web browser: Firefox. I was going to install the more lightweight Opera instead, but apparently the system needs some qt libraries, and I'm afraid having to load the extra libraries would consume too many extra resources. I could use Dillo, but it doesn't have enough functionality yet. And Firefox is reasonably responsive on this system.
• Email: Webmail through the browser can be tedious on a slow system, so I'm setting up an email client. The top contenders are Thunderbird and Sylpheed-Claws. Thunderbird is a lot more intuitive, but it also is slower, so I haven't come to a decision.
• Word processing: Abiword. It's come a long way since I last used it, and has no problems opening basic Microsoft Word .doc files. And it's a lot more lightweight than OpenOffice.org. I'm leaving OO.o on the computer in case it's needed, though.

Another thing I've done is to update the Thunar file manager, using instructions at the Xubuntu Tips and Tricks Blog. Thunar 0.5.0RC2 finally gives me a trash can! I seem to remember Xffm in VectorLinux's Xfce having one, but this is Thunar's first.

The last thing that needs to be set up is a printer. She has my old HP540 deskjet that I know works with Linux, but I've also acquired a more recent Lexmark printer that prints at a higher resolution and handles color better. We'll see who works better soon.