2007-05-05:
Ubuntu Linux on the Panasonic Y5

Light, fast, durable.

Usually you only get to choose one. The Panasonic Toughbook Y5 gives you all three, with a decent size screen to boot. I love this notebook. It's superlight (almost to the point of feeling flimsy) but it's able to take serious abuse, as the Panasonic Toughbooks are known for. Not only that, but you can pour water on the keyboard, and it drains out the sides. And yes, I tested this out immediately upon receiving the laptop.

The only (minor) complaints I have are a lack of bluetooth, and the fact that they claim 8-9 hours of battery life when you only get just over 4 hours. And 4 hours is pretty damn respectable, it's just not even close to advertised. Also, the sound is pretty bad. I don't mind that the builtin speakers are weak, but for some reason the headphone jack isn't very loud either. Otherwise this laptop kicks ass.

Robert Thau mentions that he's able to get 8 hours on a new battery with Debian, and DVD/modem powered off through bios with half-dim LCD, and that it should be possible to get over 6 hours with normal behavior.

Also, regarding bluetooth, there is now a US version which has Bluetooth, see the bottom for how to find one.

After getting some great advice from Bernard Moret who also has an install page for the Y5, I decided to eschew my normal Debian installation choice to try out Ubuntu.

Let me add to the list of ass-kicking, Ubuntu is also amazing. It's by far the best linux install experience I've had, and it's on a bizzare Japanese import laptop. I like Debian, but they can't keep pace.

In the end, almost everything worked. First here's the machine specs, courtesy dynamism:

Technical Specifications
Panasonic	Model:	CF-Y5
Motherboard Features	CPU: L2 Cache: RAM: Chipset:	Intel Centrino Core Duo L2500 1.83GHz 2 MB CPU integrated 512MB (1.5 GB Max) / 1GB (2GB max) Intel 945 GMS Express
Storage	HDD: Optical Drives	120GB Ultra ATA100 DVD-RAM/R/RW - CD-RW
Graphic / Video Features	Chip: VRAM: Display: Resolution:	Intel 945GMS Express 224MB (shared with main memory) 14.1" SXGA+ TFT 1400x1050 pixels @ 16M colors (external 1600x1200)
Interface	PCMCIA: Modem: Integrated ports:	Type II x 1 CardBus compatible 56K flex V.90 mini PCI fax/modem 802.11b/g Wireless LAN; v.90 modem (RJ-11) x1; LAN x1 (RJ-45); USB2.0 x2; VGA x1; microphone x1; headphones x1; SD Memory Card x1
Input / Output Devices	Keyboard: Pointing Device: Battery Life:	85 key OADG, 19mm pitch, 2mm stroke WheelPad Standard Battery: 4.5 hours
Power	Consumption: A/C adapter:	~15W! (according to Power History applet) 40W
Physical Features	Size: Weight	12.1(W) x 9.56(L) x 1.29 - 1.81 (H) [inch] 309 x 243 x 33 - 46[mm] 3.3 lbs / 1.5 kg

I used an Ubuntu 7.04 Beta DVD. To boot from the DVD drive you need to go into the BIOS settings and turn the drive to always on:

BIOS (F2 after boot) -> Menu "Main" -> CD/DVD Drive Power: ON

After that it's a piece of cake, everything works with a quick change for video. The touchpad is a wheelpad, which means that circular motion does scrolling, and that works as well. I have not tested the modem, nor do I care.

Linux Status

Video

It used to be that you needed to use the intel driver instead of the 810/915 driver with the 915resolution package (to get 1400x1050).

With the intel driver currently supplied with Ubuntu, this does not seem to be the case.

If you have problems with the intel driver, you can change to i810: Simply edit /etc/X11/xorg.conf as root and change:

  Driver    "i810"

  Driver    "intel"

Bernard uses XFree86, but I found that Xorg worked fine for me. If you have the same problem he mentions about a stray line being screwed up in X after sleeping the computer, then update the driver (by installing "xlibs-static-dev" and "xserver-xorg-video-intel").

External Monitor

        Option          "MonitorLayout" "CRT+LFP,None"
        Option          "Clone"         "yes"

Caveat: The external display must be plugged in when the X server starts, and it may not be scaled to the full screen, depending on your monitor's resolution.

Sound

Supposedly the microphone works if you upgrade your ALSA version: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/HdaIntelSoundHowto

I used OSS at first. Hibernate would sometimes kill sound, but it seems that doing a suspend and waking back up will restore sound.

I upgraded to Ubuntu 7.10 and the ALSA that comes with it seems to work.

2010 Note: ALSA needs you to set your default card properly:

% asoundconf list
Names of available sound cards:
Intel
% asoundconf set-default-card Intel

Wireless 802.11

/etc/init.d/dbus restart

This will probably force a few things to reload, but it shouldn't do harm.

DVD/CD

echo foo > /sys/devices/platform/bay.0/eject

The DVD uses the Intel ICH7 chipset, so you need to:

# modprobe piix

Doing that got me from 2MB/s to 8MB/s (using "hdparm -t /dev/scd0")

You need to install a bunch of packages to watch DVDs:

(as root)
# echo "deb http://medibuntu.sos-sts.com/repo/ feisty free non-free" >> /etc/apt/sources.list
# wget -q http://medibuntu.sos-sts.com/repo/medibuntu-key.gpg -O- | apt-key add -
# apt ins libdvdcss2 libdvdnav4 libdvdread3 w32codecs
# apt rem totem-gstreamer
# apt ins totem-xine
# apt ins gmplayer

For gmplayer, you need to specify the 'x11' driver with the -vo option. For some reason, zoom isn't on by default, so add -zoom. The volume is awfully low, so I increase it with the 'volume' audio filter, and I set my default language to english. The final command line looks like this:

% gmplayer -vo x11 -zoom -af volume=20:0 -alang en dvd://

System -> Preferences -> Removable Drives and Media -> Multimedia

I was also having problems with mplayer crashing
MPlayer interrupted by signal 11 in module: decode_video

it helped if I turned up the RTC max freq: (As root):

% echo 1024 > /proc/sys/dev/rtc/max-user-freq

dev/rtc/max-user-freq=1024

/etc/init.d/sysctl reload

I also noticed that if I had framedropping set to 'hard' then mplayer would immediately crash. Using framedropping 'enabled' instead fixed the problem.

I'm also trying to recompile mplayer to see if I can file a proper bug report.

If you have problems with the DVD player (or any video player) dying if it starts in full-screen mode, then you likely have a video installation problem.

Hotkeys

# modprobe pcc_acpi

If that doesn't work, you need to patch and compile the module (fairly simple):

• Get pcc_acpi module from http://www.da-cha.jp/letsnote
• Apply the following patch
• Get hotkeys and power tars from http://www.da-cha.jp/letsnote
• Untar above into /etc/acpi
  If hotkeys untars into a hotkey directory, then move the files into /etc/acpi, and move the events/ files into /etc/acpi/events

• Most importantly: Mute/unmute is only for the speakers, not for the headphone jack. So you may find that suddenly the speakers stop working but the headphones work. Check and make sure the *FnF4* mute is off!
• It seems that the hotkeys are handled in two places, one that shows the on-screen icons (such as the volume changing), and one that does the change
• Brightness ends up adjusted twice - I commented it out of the %dispatch hash in hotkey.pl since I couldn't figure out where the other adjustment was happening and it was adjusting the brightness by too much for each keypress.
• I had to change 'mixer_mode' in hotkey.pl to be 0 so that it would actually change volume for me.
• Function keys are firstly the F1-F12 keys, you need to press the Fn key to get the hotkeys to work. I haven't figured out how to swap this, but would like to as I rarely use the F1-F12 keys. I tried creating a hotkey-setup that used setkeycodes but it didn't actually create the events that change the volume, so I gave up.

Where To Buy

• dynamism.com
• icube.us
• pricejapan.com
• conics.net (has good prices for 1G upgrade)
• panasonic.portablecomputersystems.com
• buytough.com
• toughonline.com

Evidently there's a US version that comes with bluetooth, and you can get it from the last three retailers. There's also a Y7 that was just released, but I don't see anything compelling about the Y7 over the Y5, except for the 160G HD which I would love to have. And sadly it's the same price. Makes me wish I'd waited three weeks.

Thanks