Table of Contents

Description

For my work, I need a stable laptop.

Hardware

It's a Lenovo x230i, pimped up like my x230 Tablet with a mSata drive for both systems (Windows 8 / Linux)
Here's the output of lspci

00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 3rd Gen Core processor DRAM Controller (rev 09)
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation 3rd Gen Core processor Graphics Controller (rev 09)
00:14.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation 7 Series/C210 Series Chipset Family USB xHCI Host Controller (rev 04)
00:16.0 Communication controller: Intel Corporation 7 Series/C210 Series Chipset Family MEI Controller #1 (rev 04)
00:19.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation 82579LM Gigabit Network Connection (rev 04)
00:1a.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation 7 Series/C210 Series Chipset Family USB Enhanced Host Controller #2 (rev 04)
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 7 Series/C210 Series Chipset Family High Definition Audio Controller (rev 04)
00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 7 Series/C210 Series Chipset Family PCI Express Root Port 1 (rev c4)
00:1c.1 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 7 Series/C210 Series Chipset Family PCI Express Root Port 2 (rev c4)
00:1c.2 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 7 Series/C210 Series Chipset Family PCI Express Root Port 3 (rev c4)
00:1d.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation 7 Series/C210 Series Chipset Family USB Enhanced Host Controller #1 (rev 04)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation QM77 Express Chipset LPC Controller (rev 04)
00:1f.2 SATA controller: Intel Corporation 7 Series Chipset Family 6-port SATA Controller [AHCI mode] (rev 04)
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 7 Series/C210 Series Chipset Family SMBus Controller (rev 04)
02:00.0 System peripheral: Ricoh Co Ltd PCIe SDXC/MMC Host Controller (rev 07)
03:00.0 Network controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8188CE 802.11b/g/n WiFi Adapter (rev 01)

I miss the fingerprint reader :-(

Partitions

I used the recover USB key to reinstall Windows 8 on the mSata drive then used the almighty Parted Magic CD to redefine partitions, shrink windows'one and label them (even though Fedora will use UUID … ).
Here's the partition schema:

Model: ATA HGST HTS725050A7 (scsi)
Disk /dev/sda: 500GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/4096B
Partition Table: gpt
Disk Flags: 
 
Number  Start   End     Size    File system     Name  Flags
 1      17.4kB  17.8GB  17.8GB  linux-swap(v1)  SWAP
 2      17.8GB  28.3GB  10.5GB  ext4            VAR
 3      28.3GB  80.7GB  52.4GB  ext4            HOME
 4      80.7GB  500GB   419GB   fat32           SHARE
 
 
Model: ATA INTEL SSDMCEAC12 (scsi)
Disk /dev/sdb: 120GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: gpt
Disk Flags: 
 
Number  Start   End     Size    File system  Name                          Flags
 1      1049kB  1050MB  1049MB  ntfs                                       hidden, diag
 2      1050MB  1322MB  273MB   fat32        EFI system partition          boot
 3      1322MB  1456MB  134MB                Microsoft reserved partition  msftres
 4      1456MB  74.9GB  73.4GB  ntfs         Basic data partition
 5      74.9GB  75.1GB  210MB   fat16        EFI System Partition          boot
 6      75.1GB  120GB   45.0GB  ext4         LINUX

The mSata drive is viewd as /dev/sdb but no real problem to boot windows/linux from it and I use the 500GB storage for /var /home and swap, it gives some read/write cycles life ore for SSD :!: Might be overkill :-D
To boot from efi I had to create that /dev/sdb5 partition …

Installation

Well, I put the CD (netinstall), struggled a bit with the anaconda installer (mostly for the 2 disk partitioning scheme). I selected the Gnome environment (will install fvwm later :P) and well waited for the complete process to finish. That was super hard :P. I installed it in 64bits since I have 8GB of RAM.

Post-install

after this basic install, I installed some other programs and tweaked a bit the system.

Problems

Wifi

I don't know why but randomly I was out of network when using my wifi (WPA2 Personal with Hidden SSID). Symptoms where: all of a sudden no more network activity possible, no way to ping even my local network … while the wifi card was still attached to the network. First reaction:

service restart NetworkManager.service

Which kind of work for some time, then I had to do it again … Notice: I like when something is called “service” and/or Manager and it just doesn't work!
Of course NO logs nor error in dmesg / /var/log/messages nor the new ultimate shit of journalctl m( (applause)
Rebooting was also fixing the crap - Windows solutions arriving to Linux!
“Solution so far” : disabling IPv6 globally … yeah sorry at home I still have an IPv4 network …
I edited /etc/sysctl.conf

sudo vi /etc/sysctl.conf

Then add:

net.ipv6.conf.all.disable_ipv6=1
net.ipv6.conf.default.disable_ipv6=1

I know I should put it in /etc/sysctl.d/whatever but it works like this and I'm pretty sure in some future update it will have to be in another repository…
I also edited the /etc/hosts

sudo vi /etc/hosts

Commented the last line and configured the first one …

#127.0.0.1   localhost localhost.localdomain localhost4 localhost4.localdomain4
127.0.0.1   localhost localhost.localdomain yoru
#::1         localhost localhost.localdomain localhost6 localhost6.localdomain6

I have NO idea why there's all these localhost4/6 … sounds super funky.
Since we did some magic with Linux's kernel we have to reboot to make it work.
Here's the reference: http://lifeofageekadmin.com/how-to-disable-ipv6-fedora-1718/ Many thanks to this guy!
Note: I didn't had to delete interface like it's said on this article

Other

Well so far that was the one and only problem!!!

Added software

I installed a bunch of software on top of this basic installation:

Adobe / Flash

Yes I know proprietary software, bla bla … I want them ! feel fre not to use them ;-)
Reference: http://lifeofageekadmin.com/how-to-install-adobe-reader-and-flash-on-fedora-18/
I added both 32 and 64bit repository from adobe:

sudo rpm -ivh http://linuxdownload.adobe.com/adobe-release/adobe-release-x86_64-1.0-1.noarch.rpm
sudo rpm -ivh http://linuxdownload.adobe.com/adobe-release/adobe-release-i386-1.0-1.noarch.rpm
sudo yum update
sudo yum install flash-plugin nspluginwrapper AdobeReader_enu

And that's it!

Skype

It's so nice to see a widely spread software like this in 32bits ONLY!!! Good Job …
Reference: http://www.unixmen.com/how-to-install-skype-on-fedora-18-64bit/
Anyway to install it:

sudo yum install alsa-lib.i686 libXv.i686 libXScrnSaver.i686 qt.i686 qt-x11.i686 qtwebkit-2.2.2-2.fc18.i686

Then download the rpm from skype's website, selecting Fedora 16 :-D (so up to date … but it works)

sudo rpm -ivh Downloads/skype-4.2.0.11-fedora.i586.rpm 

:!: US international doesn't work until you install ibus-qt.i686

sudo yum install ibus-qt

Chomium

I like Chrome/Chromium largely better than Firefox (installed also) Reference: http://doc.fedora-fr.org/wiki/D%C3%A9p%C3%B4t_Fedora_Chromium

su -lc 'cd /etc/yum.repos.d && wget http://repos.fedorapeople.org/repos/spot/chromium/fedora-chromium-stable.repo'
sudo yum update
sudo yum install chromium

Enjoy!

Other funny stuff

Other stuff that I installed:

sudo yum install claws-mail rxvt-unicode-256color xscreensaver wavemon htop iftop iotop irssi fvwm ImageMagick xosview

I'll dig in claws plugins to see if I use this mailer or evolution or at worse Thunderbird. I'll also search replacement for hsetroot since it's not in default repositories (I use it for transparency of menus in fvwm)