Linux on a Fujitsu 6210

(debian centric)

last edited: 01/31/2006
Old versions of this document

Preface:

This document is my humble contribution to the mountain of knowledge that already exists and has been so very useful in my pursuit to run linux on laptops for the last few years.

This laptop has been a great laptop for me so far and by far the best laptop in many respects I have ever used. There are a few shortcomings, but overall the Linux compatability is pretty darn good. I think that is more due to the advancements in the Linux and open source community than anything inherent in this laptop, but it is very encouraging.

Pros/Cons

Some of the features include:

Very nice screen with good brightness settings and peripheral vision
Very comfortable keyboard and touchpad which can be rare with laptops.
Very small and light, and modular. I can have up to 7 hours battery, and be as light as 3.6 lbs.
Feels very fast and has responsible hard drive spinning and fan activation.
Most things work!

Some of the shortcomings include:

The Memory Stick/SD card slot is not functional and it would be really nice if it were, if anybody figures this out I would love it if they shot me an email with the solution (available at bottom of page).
The laptop has no built in bluetooth which I wish it did... the newer models apparently do.
The hard drive is relatively small at 40 gig, but I plan to eventually upgrade that.
The default 512 MB memory is installed in 2x256 MB chips, so when I upgraded I had to discard one of the 256 chips, which stinks.

Hardware:

Processor: Intel Pentium M Processor 1.60 GHz
Memory: DDR 333 so-DIMM, 200 pin SDRAM, 2 DIMM slots upgradeable to 2 GB
Hard Drive: ATA-100, 5400 rpm: 40 GB hard drive
Optical Drive: ModularDVD/CD-RW combo drive (8x read DVD, 24x10x24x CD-RW)
Battery: Lithium ion 10.8V 4400 mAh, 47.5 Watt Hour
Video: Intel 855GM chipset with 64 MB shared memory
PC Card: One 32bit cardbus slot
USB: 2.0 (3 slots)
Firewire: Texas Instrument IEEE 1394 (4-pin type)
Mem/SD Card: Memory Stick/Secured Digital card slot
LCD: 13.3" Crystal View XGA LCD Internal max: 1024 x 768 resolution, 16M colors
Svideo: mini S-Video (with adapter)
Ethernet: Broadcom Corporation BCM4401-B0 100Base-TX (rev 02)
Modem: Built-in multinational 56 K V.90 modem
Sound: Intel Corp. 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) AC'97 Audio Controller (rev 03)
Wireless: Integrated Intel PRO/wireless 2200 802.11b/g wireless LAN with antenna on/off switch

Installation:

(There's millions of ways to do the same thing, but I'll tell you what I did)

Make sure you have a relativiely new installer... if unsure download the netinstall from the debian website and burn it to a disc before you start.
You can generally find those at http://www.us.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/
and the specific one I used is here

1) Find a place where you can connect to the internet via ethernet cable

2) Boot up the laptop with the debian netinstall disc

3) Go through installer and generally select obvious defaults. You will need it to be able to recognize your ethernet card, so if it doesn't, your installer is probably too old. The correct driver is b44.

4) When it gets to the partitioning step, I just wipe all pre-existing partitions and then create a 1 gig swap partition at the beginning, with the rest of the disk on the next partition. Your usage and needs may vary, so you will have to figure out how you want to do this before continuing.

Useful Information:

Hotswapping

You can use the program hotswap and xhotswap to manage the hotswapping of the modular battery and cd drive. Its pretty self explanatory once you run it. You do need hot swap capability compiled in your kernel first.

Sound

For some reason the Master part of the alsa mixer doesn't do anything. The sound is instead driven by the PCM and Headphone controls.

Screen

Its a skinny laptop with little space between the keys and the lcd, so as a result, oils from your fingers and palms can stain the screen after a while. I suggest a pad to cover the keyboard when the laptop is closed to protect the screen. I use a product available at http://www.radtech.us and seem to be rather pleased.

Battery

The battery life is much improved if you use a cpu frequency scaling program to throttle the frequency of the processor. I use cpudyn (via apt-get) and am sufficiently satisfied.

Links

Files of interest:

xorg.conf .config file for 2.6.14 kernel output of 'lspci -vv' config file for Worker (file manager) GTK+ theme for gkrellm /etc/fstab file output of 'lsmod' My custom blackbox theme output of 'uname -a' config file for bbkeys My xsession file