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Debian on a Lenovo IdeaPad S10

I recently acquired a Lenovo IdeaPad S10 netbook for my more basic mobile computing needs - For things my iPod Touch is too small and my iBook is too big (and the iPad is too expensive). And because I despise Windows I wanted to go with Linux. And not just any Linux. There is a plethora of netbook distros in the wild, but I decided to give my second Linux distribution ever a try, namely Debian (which I still pronounce DE-bee-an, sue me). And boy, it has changed since the last time I used it.

First Step: Bootable USB Stick

I downloaded the latest netinst image from debian.org and copied it to the device. Needless to say, ISO9660 images cannot be written to block devices with the Disk Utility from Apple, so I tried to dd it to the stick. This worked, even fast, but I didn't end up with a bootable device. So after some research I found an article on how to boot Debian from an USB device. With altered instructions for Mac (cancelling the copying process twice because I thought it had crashed), I did essentially the following:

Create a bootable USB device for Debian Netinst:

  • Get the netinst image and the corresponding boot image
  • On the console:
    # Find out the correct /dev/disk number for your USB device.
diskutil list

# Assuming, it is /dev/disk1, proceed as followed:
# Unmount the device.
diskutil unmountDisk /dev/disk1

# Copy the boot image onto the device. Root access may be needed for this.
# I did the following to track the progress:
gunzip boot.img.gz
cat boot.img | sudo tee /dev/disk1 > copied.img
# Thusly, I was able to check the progress via another console:1
size=`du -k boot.img | awk '//{print $1}'`; \\
  copied=`du -k copied.img | awk '//{print $1}'`; \\
  ratio=$((100*$copied/$size)); \\
  echo $ratio percent \($copied kbytes\) copied.

# Mount the written device.
diskutil mountDisk /dev/disk1
  • Copy the downloaded Debian netinst iso image to the device.
  • Eject the device and unplug it. You're done.

1: I suppose a dd if=boot.img of=/dev/disk1 could have done the same, even trackable via a kill -s INFO (note the INFO signal used under Darwin). But after the second try with it and copying bytes at the baffling speed of about 50 bytes/s, I decided to go with the copy command used in said article. To track the process is not neccessary, either. But since it took half an hour nevertheless, I had plenty of time to write the script.

Second Step: Installation

A quick internet research already warned me that everything will work out of the box except for the wifi driver. So after installing the base system and selecting the appropriate sources for apt, I was ready to install it. The Lenovo IdeaPad S10 utilizes a BCM4312 802.11b/g wifi card. Luckily, the Broadcom Corporation offers a driver to compile for their hardware. Luckily, a German adminblogger article described the neccessary steps for Debian, so I will go through them in English again, for your convenience.

  • Get the current version of the driver for your architecture from the Broadcom Linux Driver Website.
  • Install the kernel headers (and make, if you want to compile it successfully ^_^):
    aptitude update # Not neccessary but advised
aptitude install linux-headers-$(uname -r) make
  • Unpack the downloaded archive:
    # The archive unpacks into the current directory, so you might want to change it.
mkdir hybrid-portsrc && cd hybrid-portsrc
mv ../hybrid-portsrc-*.tar.gz .
tar fxvz *.tar.gz
  • Now compile the sources with your headers.
    make -C /usr/src/linux-headers-$(uname -r) M=$(pwd)

# Copy the kernel module into the modules directory.
mkdir /lib/modules/$(uname -r)/extra
cp wl.ko /lib/modules/$(uname -r)/extra
  • Finally, unload old drivers and load the new one.
    depmod -a
modprobe -rv bcm43xx b43 b43legacy # Ignore warnings. The modules possibly aren't loaded anyways.
modprobe -v wl
  • Check if (and to which device, usually /dev/eth1) the wireless controller loaded with a quick dmesg and you're done.

Third Step: Choices

I suppose there are better tutorials out there for configuring network devices, installing new software, etc. so I will skip this part and come right to the software choices I made. The first one was obvious: as OS I use Debian GNU/Linux. But what else?

Shell
zsh - I like the vast possibilities of this shell and use it regularly on my Mac. So, yeah.
Window Manager
fluxbox - the monitor is small with 10.1" and fluxbox doesn't clutter the screen at all. There are plenty of others out there and I always have been a fan of WindowMaker. But this one is configurable like nothing else and unobstrusive to the end. I like it.
Web Browser
Iceweasel - The Firefox is the best browser out there and, since Mozilla doesn't want to have other people's compiles branded as such, Iceweasel is nothing else than Firefox with another name.
Mail Client
Mulberry, Icedove or mutt - This one is not decided yet. There is no package in Debian Lenny for Mulberry, which I would have preferred, and the compile failed miserably. So I installed both Icedove (aka Thunderbird for above reasons) and mutt to get to my mail quickly. Icedove is easy to use and I won't do much of e-mailing from this machine so I probably will stick with this one.
Text Editor
Emacs - Oh wow. I will just sit back and watch the flame wars with this one. I like Vim also, but I have the Eight Megabytes And Can Swap and I am a fan of modeless editing.
RTF Editor
AbiWord - I need an RTF editor. It's this one or OpenOffice. So it's this one. Simple.

Fourth Step: Future

Some things are still to do. I tried to login into the VPN of my university, which worked fine, but I can't connect to the wifi network at work. So this will be the next thing to do. I'd also like some software to throttle the CPU actively and some way to switch of the wifi card when not needed. And finally, the version of the S10 I got has an integrated UMTS card. I don't have a data SIM card, so this will still have to wait. As soon as I got it working, I will blog about it.

Final Thoughts

I don't have the netbook for long yet, so it's very hard to really say whether I made the right choices in every aspect. The hardware itself is decent for its price and you get a neat little computer. I was surprised to find Debian maintaining its bare Linux feel (I get to edit files in /etc! Yay!) while offering the same ease of installing software as, say, Ubuntu. Linux and netbook go together like... two things that go well together, like... let's say, whisky and cigars. And that's what I will get myself for having bought, installed and configured a netbook more or less completely in a day.