Linux(Manjaro) on Lenovo Thinkpad P70

[mr.mjau]

Hello,

I have looked around and have not found any thread about the P70 running linux, and so I have started one.

I have just managed to get my hands on a Thinkpad P70, and I was wondering if anyone has any experience running linux on it. I thought about keeping the drive with windows on for safety reasons, and getting a new SSD for linux, just in case it wont work the way I need it to. Having looked around there seems to be a few issues, mainly with Thunderbolt3© and the dual fan system (though another thread made me think that may have been solved). The ArchWiki states that most things should work, and since I'm going to run manjaro on it the ArchWiki should work some of the time.

My last laptop was the X260, on which everything has worked almost perfectly, even the docking station. The most high-tech thing I had to do was modifying the keyboard in X11, and that was not strictly necessary.

I don't know if I'm even in the right place, so Mod's can feel free to move it to a more appropriate place, or remove it; I'm new to all this forum related stuff.

I have no question in particular. It's more if anyone has any experience with this machine and has any useful tips

[farmall]

It shouldn't be a problem and you can always boot live off a USB or external hard disk with USB adapter to test. You'll probably be installing via USB anyway and can save that flash drive as your rescue and reinstall disk. (Of course since Linux is so portable you can install to your new SSD using any PC. I've done that in advance of getting a computer since it's so convenient. I keep old T61s around for the Ultrabay for notebook drive data rescue and installs.

If it has a spinning rust hard disk those are trash as an OS drive but can be useful for storage so I'd do what I always do and install the largest SSD my wallet permits. When I bought my P52 I ordered the cheapest option (spinner 1TB junk, 8GB RAM) so I could do what most do who order that minimal combo and add more RAM and an SSD.

If you don't get the results you like Linux is easy to tweak and it's trivial to switch distros. The nice thing about a powerful notebook for me is I can run a variety of VMs on a stable host to have Linux, Windows and test live WinPE-ish custom builds and other utility .isos without burning them to media.

I would make sure the BIOS is updated to the latest version. Fortunately I immediately installed Linux on my P52 so I never updated to the bad version. I use Linux because it gives me more control of my operating system vs. helplessly relying on Redmond, and since you're interested in a Arch-based distro you clearly appreciate that. I use Xubuntu as I also prefer xfce's simple minimalism.