What "big" thinkpad to buy?

[phr]

I'm interested in upgrading my beat-up A20p. I'm thinking of a T42p. I definitely want 15" SXGA+ or better. UXGA preferred but I guess I could live with 1680x1050 or whatever that weird widescreen format is. It should be a modern machine with usb2 and 2GB worth of dimm slots. I guess there will be no 64 bit Thinkpads soon so I don't need that. I want to run Fedora Core or maybe Ubuntu with 100% free software and am worried about hardware compatibility issues with the new Lenovo stuff. (100% free software means source code to everything, *NO* NDIS wrapper or binary-only X driver. I'll use my 802.11b prism pc wifi card instead of internal wifi if necessary. Any advice? Thanks.

[techflavor]

Ubuntu 5.10 recognized everything on my T43. I am using the Atheros mini-pci ii wireless card so it using Madwifi drivers instead of the ndiswrapper drivers.

ThinkPads are very linux friendly.

[christopher_wolf]

Yup; I run Ubuntu 5.10 as well, although I also have tried out and kept other installs along with Windows XP. Set it up with help from the Forums (Thanks ), ThinkWiki, Ubuntu Forums, and various other places on the Net.

What do you meann exactly by "Big Thinkpad" ?
Do you need lots of mobility?

[djpharoah]

luckily for all the linux ppl out there, thinkpads have always had superb support in linux.

i have installed gentoo linux on my laptop and friends/family thinkpads and never had a problem. these laptops ranged from A's, T's and a few X's.

-dj

[chubes]

I agree with dj. I've had nothing but success with Thinkpads running Linux. I've got a 600e running as a slackware rsync backup server, and my main machine is a T30 running fedora core 4.

I actually have a work machine that is a T42p 2.0ghz w/ 2gb of RAM and a 14.1 inch screen. I wish that machine was my own personal machine.

I have no use for windows anymore and prefer free software too.