This small and light little fellow, with its weight of only about 1.3 kilograms and size of a normal size school book, is ideal for school or travel usage. Bundled with a Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional and some useful hardware, it was very modern, sophisticated, well-equipt and stable. It still is.
PhoenixBIOS 4.0 Release 6.0 by Phoenix Techologies Ltd
Fujitsu Siemens Computers LifeBook BIOS version 1.06
It now is running the Mandrake Linux 9.2.
Installing the OS was a real pain in the ass since the B-2154 seems to power-up the PCMCIA gadgets only when an OS is running - this means you can't perform a clean OS install from CD-rom (since it's PCMCIA). Installing Linux, however, happens to be possible over the Net so it was my choice. My first attempt to install Mandrake Linux was the version 10, but it failed miserabely as the network.img did not load the eepro100 Ethernet driver properly. I tested Mandrake 9.2 and it worked flawlessly.
2.6 - no complaints
Estimated battery life rounds up to something like 45 minutes. Not good, but not that bad for such an old piece of hardware.
4.3 - no complaints
Has not been tested so far
Has worked fine so far with i810_audio.
Has worked fine so far with eepro100.
Has not been tested so far
Works out-of-the-box.
Works out-of-the-box
Has not been tested so far
None so far. See the related links, though - this document is at a very early stage.
Last updated on 5.11.2004
URL: http://jupix.info/Linux-on-Fujitsu-B-2154.html