Installed LinuxMint 11 LXDE on my T60 and LOVING IT!!!

[Thomcat]

I'm a relative linux noob and this my fourth try with Linux and I think it's gonna stick. LinuxMint 11 LXDE is fast, beautiful and wonderfully functional.

My first foray into Linux was Corel Linux off a free cd-rom a 15 years or so ago. That was when desktop linux was first starting to gain traction and the distro was nice, but confusing to me to customize. It could have been my patience or technical expertise at the time but I quickly switched back to Windows as I didn't feel like searching all over the internet to find comparable productivity apps or spending hours tweaking configuration text files. I had enough of that with trying out the LiteStep windows manager in Windows.

I tried Libranet 2.6(?) after that. That was pretty good and the software update center was a big step in usability, but the Windows productivity software was much more advanced at the time. I did manage to manually install WordPerfect on it from that Corel Linux CD and felt a sense of achievement. I still have a soft spot for Libranet.

Years later I got sick of cleaning viruses and malware off my mother-in-laws Dell desktop and installed Xubuntu 8.10 (or something like that) on it. Learned to install a custom repository source, apt get, set up a custom printer driver and configuration files, set up her internet connection, preferred browser, etc.... and didn't have to touch that thing for three years until she gave it away.

I bought a Thinkpad T60 for kicks off eBay and decided to dualboot WinXP and Linux. Was going to try the latest release of Xubuntu, but decided to try LinuxMint LXDE based on favorable reviews and the lightweight desktop. Boy was that a great decision!

Everything works out of the box (with the exception of the middle scroll button) and it is lightning fast. Installed Gigolo to map to my NAS, installed Chrome, uninstalled AbiWord + GNUMeric, installed LibreOffice for MS Office compatibility (for when I'm too lazy to reboot to edit files sent to me) and I'm good to go.

Just today, I installed some KDE-based picture manager that looked great. I think it was called DigiKam. Uninstalled it as I forgot LXDE and LinuxMint plays better with GNOME packages and for some reason decided to manually uninstall a bunch of packages with the intent of keeping things small and lean. Deleted a few packages too many and lost my wireless connectivity. FUBAR'd a bunch of stuff trying to fix it including my MBR and spent a couple of hours figuring it out and reinstalling LinuxMint.

This is EXACTLY the experience I was looking for and one of the reasons I got the T60. Breaking things is the best way to learn.

BTW, I sold this exact same T60 model 3 years ago for $550. I bought this one for $150 delivered with a 500gb hard drive, 2GB ram and 1400x1050 14" LCD. This thing is noticeably faster in almost all scenarios than my 4 month old office dell laptop with an i5 processor and 4gb of RAM on WindowsXP [EDIT: Windows7 64-bit Pro] and all the bloated security software. Hehe, I love being a couple generations behind and maximizing the old hardware. Heck, I miss my old 486DX2-50 desktop with 16mb ram. If it was still in my possession, I'd probably use it as a challenge to put some internet capable OS on it and make it productive again.

Let me know if there are any packages I should try out and install. Still looking for a good Picasa-like photo management program and a simple Paint Shop Pro-like photo editor. The GIMP is too much like Photoshop.

[ZaZ]

There's no need to post the same item in multiple forums. I'll leave the other open.