I’m running Ubuntu Maverick 10.10 on a Lenovo ThinkPad X100e. Everything runs well. I thought I’d share the steps I went through in order to set up Ubuntu on the machine. Some of these steps are personal preferences rather than required steps of course.
1. Using (the pre-installed) Windows 7, shrink the size of that Windows partition to make space for Linux – I’ve chosen a 250Gb Windows to 35Gb Linux ratio (6Gb of which is swap for my 3Gb RAM)
2. Install Ubuntu from USB key and reboot at the end when prompted. If the system then fails to boot (a problem with grub2) you may find this useful.
3. Set a root password: sudo passwd root
4. Change your Ubuntu account’s uid to match the uid on other Linux boxes I use (it can make file transfer and management easier.) To do this, log out, Ctrl-Alt-F1, log in as root:
usermod -uUID USERNAMEThen Ctrl-Alt-F7, and log in normally again
5. sudo visudo – change the last lane to add the NOPASSWD: option:
%admin ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD: ALL
6. Bring your ubuntu installation up-to-date:
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
7. Get wireless, sound, webcam (inc. mic), compiz, hotkeys, external monitor, sleep/hibernate, printing working
8. Set up keyboard shortcuts for the Windows-key: D (to minimise all Windows), E (to launch Nautilus home), T (to launch a terminal window), L (to lock the machine), R (to launch the Run Application dialog.)
9. Install useful software:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:sun-java-community-team/sun-java6 && sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install ubuntu-restricted-extras network-manager-pptp-gnome network-manager-pptp openssh-server mailutils postfix apache2 mysql-server subversion sun-java6-jdk libjtds-java libmysql-java startupmanager build-essential php5 php5-cli php-apc php-pear php5-curl php5-gd php5-mysql php5-pspell php5-sybase php5-xdebug php5-xmlrpc freemind thunderbird thunderbird-gnome-support gnome-do docky vim
10. Use select-editor to choose vim.basic as your editor.
11. Set up VPN, email, Empathy
12. In Thunderbird > Tools > Add Ons, add the Thuderbird Indicator add on, downloaded form here: https://launchpad.net/libnotify-mozilla
13. From their respective websites: Chrome, Netbeans, Skype, DBWrench, Dropbox, SquirrelSQL, Balsamiq Mockups, Tweetdeck, Picasa