Upgraded works laptop - Lenovo Thinkpad X60 running Debian Etch

I have just upgraded my works laptop to a very lovely Lenovo X60 after reading about how easy it is to install Linux on Thinkpads at ThinkWiki (an excellent site).

The laptop is unbelievably thin and lightweight whilst still having an excellent spec (Core Duo 1.8GHz, 1GB RAM and 40GB HDD). I will probably upgrade the RAM soon and the hard disk may need an upgrade but it will do for now ;-)

The installation of Debian went well too so I thought that I would detail some of the specifics here...

1. A stock install of Debian Etch was performed from CD without problems (I did not choose to use a mirror during install)
2. Removed some bits of rubbish from the install
3. Updated the distribution after specifying a mirror in /etc/apt/sources.list
4. Added a few of my favourite packages (such as gaim and synaptic)
5. Followed the instructions on ThinkWiki to enable some of the Thinkpad-specific bits and bobs (such as tpb for the special buttons and acpi for hibernation and the like)
6. Installed packages to enable wireless (it uses an Intel 3945 chipset so the following packages were needed - firmware-ipw3945, ipw3945d and ipw3945-modules-2.6.18-4-686)
7. Followed the instructions at http://wiki.beryl-project.org/wiki/Install/Debian to install Beryl... I then needed to change the 'Rendering Path' in 'Advanced Beryl Options' to something other than 'Automatic' because the contents of Nautilus windows did not display but now all the wonderful wobbling and cube effects work OK
   
8. Checked that my USB-Serial adapter worked... it did without having to do any configuring!

PyKota Update

Today I have been mostly migrating to PyKota from Print Manager Plus... as I have mentioned earlier.

An updated guide on how I have been doing this can be found at http://edugeek.net/index.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&p=78029#78029 - still a bit of a work in progress though at the moment.

There is one little niggle with doing this mid way through the year... a lack of abiility to export the existing print quotas into PyKota from PMP. What this means is that anybody who doesn't have approx. £2 of credit left (the default balance given at the start of the year) has to be manually created in advance with their initial balance set. You can probably imagine that this is taking some time (approx. 1000 to do!!!!!).