Thinkpads Forum

After a seven year hiatus from geekdom I am setting up a linux only machine, a T61 with 2gigs of ram and a SSD disk that will be used only for work. Word processing, email etc. Nothing too intense but as it a work machine I would like it to be snappy with a highly functional desktop environment and no distracting eye candy. I was a gentoo+KDE user back in the day, leaning toward a clean minimalist Arch install but I don't have weeks to sort out weird compatibility issues. Are there any arch-based distros that will play nice with the T61. And what is the state of desktop environments today?

Thanks in advance,
1kgcoffee

I'm not amazingly up-to-date with Arch as I've become an addict of Debian. That said though pretty much all modern Linux distributions have much better driver support for older or unusual hardware, along with support for the latest gadgets. As the old annoyance of Linux was usually WiFi support the Intel WiFi cards are usually supported out the box and if you have a TP specific card in there the modern Kernels have the Thinkpad ACPI built in.

The SSD will help a lot with the snappy factor, although 2GB RAM may slow down a small amount with some of the more flashy desktops. Things like Gnome and KDE tend to like a bit of eye candy and have become a bit bloated, XFCE offers a nice usable desktop with good functionality and a relatively light footprint by todays standards (it's a bit like Gnome used to be), LXDE would go a little lighter although, personally I'm not too keen on LXDE (although you may prefer LXDE as it has more of an old KDE feel).

Although if you are willing to strip back to a very basic desktop, as usual with Linux, there are hundreds to chose from. My personal preference would be XFCE but in reality it depends what you get on with.

Hope that helps
Jim

Crunchbang linux is a good alternative. Fast, slim, with openbox wm. As for arch, what compatibility issues are you having? I have installed and been using arch linux on my T61 and T60 without any issues. The beginner's guide was all I needed to read through.

I like Arch, but the couple of times I attempted to get a full KDE running under Arch, Network Manager always acted up and does not set default routes correctly. This wasn't a big deal actually, since I don't really intend them to leave home, and therefore all I need is netctl. However it's still annoying.

If you want to see what KDE looks like in its newest incarnation, try a Kubuntu or Linux Mint KDE live cd. I have installed Mint KDE on a T60 before and it ran pretty well. Of course those two distros are on the heavier end of the spectrum.

Manjaro Linux is based on Arch. I've tried the live CD a few times on a few of my thinkpads, and didn't have much luck with them, unfortunately. There's also ArchBang. I thought Arch had their own live CD nowadays?

I had it installed on an old Compaq Presario desktop (P2 366 mhz, 386 Mb) and it worked very, very well. (Unfortunately, I don't have that computer any more...and I actually miss it!)

I've used a variety of distros on my T61s and for the last two years have been very pleased with CentOS. Stable, easy to work with, and now Red Hat has joined forces with them.

http://www.redhat.com/en/about/press-re ... oin-forces

I like 6.5 and am installing 7 on another T61 as I type. If I want a bleeding edge distro I can always run it in a VM.

I flash the Middleton BIOS to every T61 I work on. (Thank you, thinkpads.com!)

I strongly suggest upgrading to 4GB, but I'd do the SSD first since stock hard drives are dog slow.

Fu-rch is an easy way to install Arch, Antergos and Manjaro are both great distros based on it

I have been really impressed with Fedora 20 and 21. For historical reasons I use Archlinux, but for family members I've set up Fedora and it's really polished. I would also suggest more RAM/SSD, if possible.

For desktop I like Gnome3 and i3. I used to use i3 a lot, but these days, Gnome-Shell provides a really fast and distraction-free workflow (maybe since v3.. A lot of things like bluetooth, writing ISO files, emulation, integration of OwnCloud etc. just work which I guess is the benefit of using a full DE.