If you are looking for a HOW TO on installation of Ubuntu, please scroll down a bit.
I recently bought a new laptop from Fujitsu-Siemens – the Amilo SI 1520. My requirements for this laptop was that it should be fairly cheap (max 1000 euros), run Linux with ease and feature a 12 inch wide screen.
After browsing through some local (Swedish) internet stores I soon concluded that I had to go with the high end consumer segment instead of the business segment, otherwise my budget requirement would have gone through the roof. I narrowed the selection down to either the Lenovo 3000 V100 or the FSC Amilo SI 1520. The Lenovo sported a higher build quality, but the FSC had better specs in almost any area (CPU, HDD, battery time etc). Both of them were proven to run Linux (Ubuntu and Gentoo), but the resources on the web was very limited (that is one of the reasons for me writing this article right now).
Ubuntu
Installing Ubuntu 6.10 on this piece of hardware was very straightforward. I just chose to resize my Windows XP partition (want to keep it for some experimentation) to 10 GB and use the rest for Ubuntu.
After the installation was completed it was just a matter of installing the 915resolution package to get the native resolution (1280 x 800) of the screen.
The wireless network card (Intel Corporation PRO/Wireless 3945ABG, kernel module ipw3945) was detected without problems, but ipw3945 and Gnome Network Manager applet 0.6.3 did not play together. It didn’t take long until I found out that 0.6.4 supports ipw3945 and is available in the development version of Ubuntu (Feisty 7.04).
I thought it could be fun to test the latest Ubuntu (and have nice wireless controls in Gnome) so I started to upgrade my Edge to Feisty. It is a very simple procedure. Simply make sure that your system is up to date. Then run the command:
gksudo "update-manager -c -d"
If it whines about authorization problems you must execute GPG as the super user (root) one time before running the update-manager. It is also very simple:
sudo su
gpg
[CTRL+c]
exit
Then run the update-manager again.
Hardware status
I have read a few articles about Linux on the Amilo SI 1520 and the only thing that seems a bit tricky is the built-in microphone. I can confirm that it does not work out of the box, but I have not tried to get it working. Other than that all works fine, even the so called multimedia-buttons and suspend/hibernate.
lspci – for reference
00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Mobile 945GM/PM/GMS/940GML and 945GT Express Memory Controller Hub (rev 03)
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Mobile 945GM/GMS/940GML Express Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 03)
00:02.1 Display controller: Intel Corporation Mobile 945GM/GMS/940GML Express Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 03)
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) High Definition Audio Controller (rev 02)
00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) PCI Express Port 1 (rev 02)
00:1c.1 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) PCI Express Port 2 (rev 02)
00:1c.2 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) PCI Express Port 3 (rev 02)
00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI #1 (rev 02)
00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI #2 (rev 02)
00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI #3 (rev 02)
00:1d.3 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI #4 (rev 02)
00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller (rev 02)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge (rev e2)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801GBM (ICH7-M) LPC Interface Bridge (rev 02)
00:1f.1 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) IDE Controller (rev 02)
00:1f.2 SATA controller: Intel Corporation 82801GBM/GHM (ICH7 Family) Serial ATA Storage Controller AHCI (rev 02)
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) SMBus Controller (rev 02)
01:00.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation PRO/Wireless 3945ABG Network Connection (rev 02)
07:08.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation PRO/100 VE Network Connection (rev 02)
07:09.0 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Ricoh Co Ltd Unknown device 0832
07:09.1 Generic system peripheral [0805]: Ricoh Co Ltd R5C822 SD/SDIO/MMC/MS/MSPro Host Adapter (rev 19)
07:09.2 System peripheral: Ricoh Co Ltd Unknown device 0843 (rev 01)
07:09.3 System peripheral: Ricoh Co Ltd R5C592 Memory Stick Bus Host Adapter (rev 0a)
07:09.4 System peripheral: Ricoh Co Ltd xD-Picture Card Controller (rev 05)
18 Comments
Looking good. Since you have Feisty installed anyway, you should check out XFCE 4.4 ;)
http://www.xfce.org/about/tour
Hi! I’m looking for a notebook too, and I also checked out the SI1520.
How do you find it? Is it really so light as they say in the specs?
Also, very important: how long do the batteries last?
Thanks in advance!
Hi!
Bought one the other week and installed Fedora Core 6 and it works like a charm..
Had to changed the x.org conf driver to intel to get the right resultion (1280×800) and download the ipw3945 from another repository (atrpm)…
Don’t know about hibernation, have never understod why to use it..
I can really recomend this little beauty :-)
/Perty
Thanks for the article.
Do you have an idea how I can make the build in microphone to work?
Thanks a lot
@Stelios, try the instructions here: http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=1717589&postcount=10
Thanx. I own one now. It works very well with Feisty (didn’t try firewire and cardreader). Unfortunately the keyboard layout is terrible: fn and ctrl are swapped (lower left), left shift is split, and \| is left of Enter (instead of above). Fujitsu says that there no (real) us-international keyboard available, but I very much doubt that information: they mention spanish and french as the only alternatives, despite the pictures on their (and this) webpage. But I’m starting to get used to it…
Luca: the weight is 1.7 without battery, 2.0 with, and 2.25 with powersupply as well. Battery life in a low-light environment browsing and typing: 3.5 hours (better than my best previous laptop, so I’m satisfied ;).
@Rob: I’ve bought one too… can’t reach more than 2.5 hours of battery life with Ubuntu 7.04 beta. Also, on my laptop, after a suspend/resume the touchpad won’t work anymore, and with the latest kernel, the card reader would stop working. No problems with the keyboard, though. Everything works fine there.
I’m now trying OpenSUSE 10.2, just to see how that works out.
I’ve also opened a blog about this nice little laptop, if anyone’s interested:
http://si1520.blogspot.com
Hi,
I’m looking for Intel VT and this is one of the laptops I’m looking at. can you do a ‘cat /proc/cpuinfo’ and post the results?
Thanks
Matt
Hello,
Sorry, but I do not have the laptop any longer. Perhaps someone else here can help you.
/Emil
Hi,
I bought it, in the Rev2 version, which has a 7200 processor. It’s really good and does have the VT extensions on the processor. Only problem with Linux on it is that it seems to want to do 1280×1280 resolution sometimes (easy changed with the GUI res switcher) and external widescreen monitors seem impossible to configure, I didn’t manage it. It is a superb laptop though
Thanks anyway Emil
Why did you sell it? :(
I have a MacBook Pro and installed Parallels Desktop + Ubuntu instead. I only used the Amilo for Linux so when I could use it seamless in OS X I didn’t have use for it anymore.
Got it emil. You could also try to install MacOS on the Fujitsu. :-)
For Matthew Forrester (a little bit late, I know):
processor : 0
vendor_id : GenuineIntel
cpu family : 6
model : 15
model name : Intel(R) Core(TM)2 CPU T7200 @ 2.00GHz
stepping : 6
cpu MHz : 1000.000
cache size : 4096 KB
physical id : 0
siblings : 2
core id : 0
cpu cores : 2
fdiv_bug : no
hlt_bug : no
f00f_bug : no
coma_bug : no
fpu : yes
fpu_exception : yes
cpuid level : 10
wp : yes
flags : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm pbe nx lm constant_tsc pni monitor ds_cpl vmx est tm2 ssse3 cx16 xtpr lahf_lm
bogomips : 3996.01
clflush size : 64
processor : 1
vendor_id : GenuineIntel
cpu family : 6
model : 15
model name : Intel(R) Core(TM)2 CPU T7200 @ 2.00GHz
stepping : 6
cpu MHz : 1000.000
cache size : 4096 KB
physical id : 0
siblings : 2
core id : 1
cpu cores : 2
fdiv_bug : no
hlt_bug : no
f00f_bug : no
coma_bug : no
fpu : yes
fpu_exception : yes
cpuid level : 10
wp : yes
flags : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm pbe nx lm constant_tsc pni monitor ds_cpl vmx est tm2 ssse3 cx16 xtpr lahf_lm
bogomips : 3991.80
clflush size : 64
Hi. I purchased a AMILO Si1520 which was delivered today (two days later than expected) and the touch pad doesn’t work. This is a brand new computer which ran through the first 20 minutes, etc. I called and spoke with a technical support person from the computer store and then from Siemens, but neither could help solve the problem. Luca said that he had a proble with his touch pad after installing software, just wondering if he or anyone else has any suggestions? I live in Germany, but am leaving to visit family in the US in 36 hours and wanted to take the laptop with me, but if I can’t get the touchpad to work am thinking about sending it back instead. Any help would be appreciated!
a good read
i love mine! unshure to upgrade. what do you think?
I tested this camera for a client. I didn’t have the light running for more than 15 minutes. The battery lasted approximately 6 hours before recharging. The LCD, however, had a few dead pixels – never saw this before. Tried returning for exchange and had to put up quite a fight. Anyone else seen this? http://www.batterylaptoppower.com
Well some like this way, Buy I think you should consider the another side of the toppic too. Thanks