# Lenovo IdeaPad S205

## Overview

The Lenovo IdeaPad S205 has some issues with the BIOS (Boot loader), WiFi.

## Hardware

The unit used for testing contained the following hardware:

- Processor: AMD E-450 APU (integrated Mobility Radeon HD6320)

- WiFi: Ralink RT3090

## BIOS

The IdeaPad uses a BIOS based on the SecureCore Tiano Platform. It supports UEFI and Legacy booting, but you can't manually switch between them. From what I found out it depends wether the disk is partitioned as GPT or MBR. However it doesn't have secure boot.

The BIOS firmware has got a lot of bugs. If anything related to it doesn't work, try loading setup defaults.

## Installation

Follow the Beginners' guide until bootloader installation.

You can not use the GUID Partition Table and still boot using legacy BIOS. If your desired partition layout doesn't work for MBR you must use UEFI.

### MBR/BIOS

In my experiments, I could not get GRUB to work. I used syslinux and it worked fine.

    # pacman -S syslinux

Then edit /boot/syslinux/syslinux.cfg

Change the root device in the APPEND line and add other needed options.

    APPEND root=/dev/sda1 rw

Install the bootloader to the drive:

    # syslinux-install_update -iam

### GPT/UEFI

Create an EFI partition at /dev/sda1 and mount it as your /boot partition. (See the Beginners' guide )

Install Gummiboot

    # pacman -S gummiboot
    # gummiboot install

    # nano /boot/loader/entries/arch.conf

    title          Arch Linux
    linux          /vmlinuz-linux
    initrd         /initramfs-linux.img
    options        root=/dev/sdaX rw

## WiFi

Drivers work out of the box.

If you're using UEFI, your device might show up as hard blocked. This is due to a bug in the BIOS firmware. You can fix it by doing the following things:

1. Go into BIOS settings and reload factory defaults

2. If WiFi still doesn't work change the boot order so that it boots from PXE (PCI LAN) before booting from Hard Drive.

## Touchpad

Works by installing the xf86-input-synaptics package.

## Sound

Detected by ALSA automatically.

## Graphics

The open source xf86-video-ati driver works fine and is recommended.

You can also install the proprietary Catalyst driver, but it causes glitches when waking up from hibernation. Also you may run into errors when using the HDMI output on some Monitors.

Category:

- Lenovo