Redhat 9 on Thinkpad X31, another one

How I Setup RedHat 8.0 for my Dell Inspiron 4000

  • Grab the redhat cd iso file from the net, or get some burned CDs. Install all the packages that I need. For monitor setting, select a Generic LCD Panel 1024x768. After that, almost everything should be correctly configured.
  • Everything is cool except the touchpad. It behaives correctly as a typical PS/2 mouse, but no special functionality. If you prefer the feeling of auto scrolling, please grab the driver here. I tried it and found out that it is conflict with the current gpm. However, I don't use gpm very much. So, I decided to keep it.
  • Add following stuff to /etc/grub.conf for better console looking. 
    title Red Hat Linux (2.4.18-14) SVGA
        root (hd0,5)
        kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.4.18-14 ro root=LABEL=/ vga=0x317
        initrd /boot/initrd-2.4.18-14.img
  • Add this to my ~/.i18n for English interface, but Chinese support. 
    LC_CTYPE="zh_CN.GB18030"
LC_NUMERIC="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_TIME="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_COLLATE="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_MONETARY="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_MESSAGES="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_PAPER="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_NAME="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_ADDRESS="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_TELEPHONE="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_MEASUREMENT="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_IDENTIFICATION="en_US.UTF-8"
    Change /etc/sysconfig/i18n to: 
    LANG="zh:zh_CN.GB18030"
SUPPORTED="zh_HK.UTF-8:zh_HK:zh:zh_CN.GB18030:zh_CN:zh:zh_TW.Big5:zh_TW:zh:en_US.UTF-8:en_US:en"
SYSFONT="lat0-sun16"
SYSFONTACM="iso15"
  • Install simsun font. Find simsun.ttc from Windoz. Change it according to this article.
  • Read this to add mp3 support for redhat 8.
  • Now, if you choose suspend to memory, then recover, the Ethernet won't work. Read this to try and this to fix it.(The latter one is better and works for me)
  • Modem support can also be found at here.
  • Read this if you really need suspend to disk.