Thinkpads Forum

Hi all. I'm just about to receive a used Thinkpad X220 from Amazon. Cost was $500 but I used my American Express points to drop it to about $420. It's an i7-2640M, 8GB RAM, 320GB HDD (5400 RPM) unit.

I also have purchased the following: 16GB RAM (2x8GB modules) and Crucial MX100 256GB SSD.

I intend to upgrade the RAM, plus replace the HDD unit with the SSD unit. Can't have too much RAM or faster disk. I also intend to replace the Windows 7 with Ubuntu 14.04 LTS. I've watched some of the YouTube videos on this, so I'm not coming in completely blind.

Anyway, I have some questions that I'd like answers to. This is my first time on this forum, so I apologize in advance if this is in the wrong thread.

(I've been a bit of a 'distro hopper' in the past (on a different machine). I want to install Ubuntu on the X220 and leave it there, applying whatever updates are needed for an LTS system)

1) The unit has UEFI in the BIOS. This is the first time I've dealt with UEFI. I'm used to the Legacy BIOS where I could install an MBR with GRUB. I need to boot the initial install from a USB attached DVD drive. I've done that before, but what changes with a UEFI system?

2) Is there anything I need to do BEFORE I do the install? I'm talking about BIOS updates and the like.

3) Ubuntu has an option for doing an LVM install. I want to do that. Anything I need to do special, partitioning wise? (I will not do the encryption. All the personal stuff I have is on another machine).

4) That's all I can think of off the top of my head. Anything else you can think of, I would be very grateful to hear about it.

--LG

You can disable UEFI by switching the option to legacy. Then you should be able install Ubuntu or any other distro without problems. I think there are ways to have UEFI enabled, but I have not experimented with it. No need for BIOS updates.

After an adventure with Amazon, I finally got my X220 i7 version via eBay. Saved $150 and got free FedEx shipping also.

It looks great, almost showroom new. It has 4GB RAM, a TN display (fine for me) and a 9-cell battery (type 29++). Did a check on the battery via the Lenovo website and it's not one that needs to be part of the recall. So far.

It comes with BIOS version 1.21. Does that need to be upgraded before I install Linux? Since it's an i7, which USB port should I connect my external DVD drive to? The 3.0 port or the 2.0 port? The DVD is already burned and ready to go.

An update after tonight's work.

Upgraded RAM to 16GB and replaced 320GB hard drive with 256GB SSD.

Then came the big test. Would the DVD be read to install Ubuntu? Would the SSD drive boot with Ubuntu?

Well, surprisingly....YES!, to both Only made one change to BIOS - turn off the Quickboot option.

By the way, I plugged the USB DVD drive into the USB 3.0 slot (the one marked in blue).

The install went surprisingly quick. Ditto for boot after install. Only thing that didn't want to work was Wifi. And that turned out after quick research to be a switch that had to be turned on (just to the left of the keyboard). Once that was done, it found my in-house Wifi system.

All is well, for now.

Some things I noticed after installing Ubuntu 14.04 on the SSD ...

1) Scheduler, by default, is the more preferred 'deadline' vs 'cfq'.

2) TRIM function has a cron job already in place to run weekly.

3) LVM config file (/etc/lvm/lvm.conf) already has discards function set to '1' (ON).

Either Ubuntu can sense the presence of an SSD for install media, or the Thinkpad is somehow telling Ubuntu that there's an SSD in the box. Less work for me.