MrHoatzin Posted January 29, 2009 A million years ago I bought a dinky, trusty Thinkpad T30 before Thinkpad became Lenovo. It was neato, had a decent video card, half a gig o' RAM, decent megahertzage, etc. I used it for years and then it started to clog up with random software and grow slower than I would have liked it to... I backed up stuff that I needed and formatted the machine. I formatted also the mystery partition that I learned later contained the XP restore "disk". The computer had a sticker on it that I figured was a regulation XP serial number, and I planned to install my copy of regular desktop XP and use the serial from the sticker. However, the serial didn't work because it was a serial for IBM's version of Thinkpad T30 XP restorewhathaveyou disk. There doesn't seem to be a place online where I could download this particular restore disk, and to buy one I have to phone Lenovo because they don't seem to offer it through any online store. Fuck Windows and fuck Lenovo. I will prolly use the laptop for text processing, plugging it into TVs and projectors to watch movies, light emulated gaming (with or without controllers), browsing the internets in coffee shops, light scripting work, etc. I will likely not use it for much photoshoppery any more. When I bought it I bought it because IBM had a reputation of being Linux-friendly. I ran Auditor on the laptop before without any issues. By "I ran", I mean I put the disk in, booted it just fine, then proceeded to be utterly baffled by the tools it offered, failed to use them, never tried again. TLDR: SO! My question is what is the best Linux distribution for my portable Thinkpaddy computing needs? I don't want to mess too much with trying to get shit to work. I just want it to be boring and dependable and have a relatively light footprint. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Nachimir Posted January 29, 2009 It gets a lot more difficult with notepads; you may end up screwing around with drivers and repositories. Ubuntu is worth a go, the last time I installed that on my desktop machine it was less hassle to set up than XP. I'm afraid it's more than a year since I last dabbled with Linux, so I can't be more specific, sorry. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Nappi Posted January 29, 2009 I would probably go with Ubuntu. It should be relatively easy to set up (being a "Linux for Human Beings" after all) and well supported because of its popularity. Haven't fiddled with it apart from regular usage though, and I have no idea how it really compares with the other Linux distributions. Also: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/LiveCD Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
MrHoatzin Posted January 29, 2009 Well, I found this diary of Ubuntu on T30 installation woes. It is Ubuntu from a few versions ago, but I'll refer to it for inspiration if shit don't work. Edit: also. Well, it doesn't look too bad, honestly. I was dreading more problems than this. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
SignorSuperdouche Posted January 29, 2009 (edited) The toss up is always going to be between having a small footprint and not having to configure with shit to get it to work. DistroWatch gives a fairly good summary of the pros and cons of a ton of distributions. That said, you're probably fine with any of the major distro's out of the box. Fedora and openSUSE are both easy to use and well supported. Ubuntu is another one you may wish to look at, although it is not as stable as Fedora or opeSUSE in my (limited) experience, the features might be better suited to your needs. PCLinuxOS is another beginner distro that seems pretty popular at the minute although I haven't tried it myself. You can try any of these on a live cd before installing onto your hard drive. Edited January 29, 2009 by SignorSuperdouche Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
elmuerte Posted January 29, 2009 distrowatch is a flawed popularity contest. I'd go for Ubuntu for workstations. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
SignorSuperdouche Posted January 29, 2009 You could easily argue that any discussion on linux will be a flawed popularity contest. The strength of is DistroWatch, in my view, is that it provides short summaries of each distro it lists with an explanation of the goals are and who it is aimed at. I like it anyway so bums to you Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Moosferatu Posted January 30, 2009 I've bounced between a number of different distros over the past few years, each of them falling out of favor in turn. I'm currently running Arch linux, and I have to say that I'm both enjoying it the most and have encountered the least number of irritating issues. It also has an exceptionally small footprint, which would be great for your case. The one downside (depending on how you look at it), is that it takes a fair bit of configuring to get your system initially set-up. It doesn't even come with X installed. But, its not that difficult to get everything you'll need installed, it's much easier to configure than, say, Ubuntu, and there's plenty of great documentation on the internet. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
MrHoatzin Posted January 30, 2009 Ubuntu so far has been behaving rather respectably. I'll let it sit there for a while before I raze the poor machine. Surprisingly also, the on-board wifi card works now. It had stopped working about a year ago and I had been using a usb dongle since then. I figured it was just its time to die, but I guess it was a software issue. As far as issues go, the monitor's back light turned off randomly twice, I am not sure what prompted it to do so. I had to turn the display off and turn it back on for it to reappear. If it keeps happening I will dig deeper. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
