This is supposed to be a small guide on how to configure Debian on an IBM Thinkpad X21. Specifically this guide is for my 2662-64G with two additions: 1) Linksys wireless PC-Card and 2) An USB mouse.

You can also look at IbmsWebsiteForX21 to see my model - and yes, I guess I paid for that Windows98 that it came with :-(

Kernel configuration

This is for Linux 2.6.x kernel. At the moment I am running 2.6.9.

The important parts are:

APM

Make sure you "Allow interrupts during APM BIOS calls".

Cpu-scaling

Its a Pentium III so it cannot cpu-scale automagically - I'm using the 'default' performance governor and "Intel speedstep on 440BX..."

PC-Card

Its a yenta bridge.

PCI-hotplug

Not needed, where are your pci clots to hotplug into? :-)

PCI IDE chipset

Its a Intel PIIXn chipset (PIIX4).

Network card

Its an Intel e100 pro, use the 'new' driver.

For my extra hardware:

Linksys wlan card

Enable Hermes support, and Hermes pcmcia support. Remember to enable PCMCIA network device support, even though you dont need any of the drivers there.

USB mouse

Enable full USB HID support.

Compiling/installing the kernel

This should be done the debian way: make-kpkg --revision=mylaptop1.0 kernel_image

Thanks to http://www.debianguiden.dk/ (Danish online guide for debian) on how to do this ;-).

Compiling will take along time on this older Pentium-III CPU, so you have time to do some shopping or the like while it compiles.

Configuring XFree86

This worked using the normal debian configuration tools (when installing the xserver-xfree86 package). The card is an ATI Rage Mobility.

---