Thinkpads Forum

I have a IBM ThinkPad 560X running Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition and a 16GB SSD with 160MB RAM. I was woundering how well would Google's operating system work on my 560X and how to I go of installing it. Do I download it or have to buy it like how Windows is? Thinking of turning my old 560X into a netbook as thats all it can really be for todays uses, and I use google as my search site and its my home page anyway.

There's really not much information on the Google Chrome OS yet, and it's actually still in a very early development phase, so it's still quite awhile before it's going to be released to the public.

Google Chrome OS has been announced to be free and open source, so you won't have to pay a dime like Windows to get it. I'm sure they will offer it for download somewhere.

For now, if you wish to simply use your computer for surfing the web, you could try a light variation of Linux, right now the one coming to my mind is Puppy OS, a live CD OS that boots from CD(which means your 560 will need a CD-ROM drive) and on the first startup asks you of all the settings(internet protocols, display res, etc.) and saves them to the HD so you don't have to redo them next time you startup. I dont' know if Puppy reads Wi-Fi hardware on laptops, but it will read Ethernet, LAN, and dial-up connections.

Puppy can also manage files on your HD and transfer them to a Flash Drive or Floppy if your laptop refuses to boot or function properly in Windows.

if you wanna get adventurous you can try the latest Hexxeh build.
it is still very early stage of development so there is not that broad a range of Hardware support yet.
http://chromeos.hexxeh.net/
it will not be fast on your machine, and to install the build you will probably need to image the .img to the hard drive. I assume the 560X cannot boot from USB, you can try
http://www.plop.at/en/bootmanager.html#intro and boot from a floppy.
Then again this is all guess work. I have not tried to run Chrome OS on a machine that old yet. If you can get it to work make sure to fill out a compatibility report on your model in the Wiki.

I think Puppy Linux can probably beat Chrome in terms of speed since it is run in RAM. Sorry for my ignorance, since my oldest TP is 600E, can 560X support more memory? If so, upgrade it to 256MB then it should run any LXDE Linux distro with ease. I run Linux Mint 9 LXDE on my Pentium II 600E and it is pretty decent.

ThinkPad560X wrote:I have a IBM ThinkPad 560X running Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition and a 16GB SSD with 160MB RAM. I was woundering how well would Google's operating system work on my 560X and how to I go of installing it. Do I download it or have to buy it like how Windows is? Thinking of turning my old 560X into a netbook as thats all it can really be for todays uses, and I use google as my search site and its my home page anyway.

The 600 is a little more powerfull then my collection of 760's... On those i use Debian. This is what Ubuntu is derived from and is a standard hard drive install distro unlike Puppy or DSL.

I opt for a basic install using the net cd (http://www.debian.org/CD/netinst/), after it is done, I install xfce4 to use as a window manager... This yields about an 800MB installed system with only the basics. If you don't mind a little editing and want a fully customized system, instead of xfce4... install jwm (Joe's Window Manager), it is very lightweight and i think it is used by Puppy or DSL (been a while since i tried either).

After the basic X windows is up, you can either continue to use the terminal to install more stuff or install Synaptic (Synaptic will bloat the install quite a bit)..
or to refine your search, then...
Obviously my P166 MMX machines aint gonna do flash, but as "coffee table" PC's they let me do IMDB or Wiki lookups while watching tv or whatnot. A 560 with 200MHz or 233MHz is not much better so a full blown linux distro is prolly a little much, but on the other hand, distros like Puppy and DSL are a little too... little for my liking