I intend to switch to using haiku for my day-to-day computing, however for this to be practical I need a well supported laptop. I’ve managed to scrape enough cash together to buy a second hand X61. I understand support for thinkpads is generally pretty good, and the entry in haikuware for the X61s supports this, but I just want to check before I buy how this model behaves with recent nightlies? Specfically networking, sound, and power management (cpu frequency, battery monitoring etc).
Thanks!
I own an X61, and I don’t recall many issues. I do recall there being an issue with either shutting down or restarting where it kind of stalls sometimes, but not too much to report otherwise. I admit I haven’t tested sound in a long time, and am not sure if that works at all. Anyway, I’ll build a recent revision of Haiku and report back with the areas you are curious about.
Okay, I tested the X61 as a GCC2 hybrid on hrev44570 with the following results on my particular X61…
Not working:
Working:
Unknown:
Quirks:
The computer shuts down fine, but rebooting doesn’t work. You have to hold down the power button for 5 seconds to shut down, and then you have to power the machine back up. I really should look to see if there is a bug report for this, and report it if necessary. It’s not really an issue for me, but I could see it as being inconvenient to others.
That’s awesome, thanks so much for checking. I’ve ordered an x61 and it should arrive next week. I didn’t get the tablet version and I’m not so concerned about sound recording or frequency scaling (plus maybe this is fixed soon with the new scaling stuff from gsoc). The reboot thing is a ‘meh’.
Hey, not a problem. Enjoy your X61! If you look at the pictures in my blog post from Ohio LinuxFest 2011, you’ll see my X61 tablet, as well as my X120e running Haiku quite happily. Almost a year has passed since then, and both machines are still running great! 
I saw your blog post before - in fact it gave me the initial idea that the x61 might be a good choice for haiku!
I’ve got a really old macbook (the very first macbook from 2006) and quite apart from poor haiku support it’s not been a great experience (lots and lots of hardware failure). Plus I really miss having two mouse buttons and more than two USB ports!
Lots of my friends use thinkpad x6* series laptops, and they seem really solid without any fuss or gloss… I can imagine they are popular with developers and perhaps that’s why they work well with haiku. I’m really itching to get my hands on it! Perhaps I’ll write back here a week or two after it arrives with a report on how it’s been using it as my primary OS.