Thinkpads Forum

I got it immediately, which is what started me reading the thread. Wanted to see what "Steve Ballmer" had to say. But it turned out to be a good move moreso due to some good Linux info from people working through new user issues. As usual, kudos to several folks for excellent descriptions of their process.

SteveBallmer wrote:Slackware -
It was a slaughter. I am not going to get into it.

I put the Slackware 10.2 CD into my wife's X40, and just pressed enter a lot. When it was all over she had a working Slack install with sound and everything.

All I had to do was run xorg.conf. I wound up putting a newer kernel into it so she could get her wifi working, and she hasn't had a problem with it since.

Lisa_T wrote:I'm a newbie here. I have an X20 that I was hoping to eventually use purely with an open source OS distro. I tried any number of Linux flavours- Suse, PCLinuxOS, Ubuntu, and a number of others that wouldn't properly boot or install, even from the live cd- and found that either they were too slow (PCLinuxOS) or refused to recognise either my wired ethernet connection or my wireless card (Ubuntu).
...
Rant over. That was a long nearly-first post!

Me too (both a newbie here, and my first post)! In fact I was reading this last night (on my X20 running Ubuntu), and then registered on the board so that I could make this first post.

Wireless under linux can be problematic, but I've had little trouble installing linux on my Thinkpad X20. I've upgraded the HD to a 40G, in part so that I could get more distros on it. Currently I have the following installed:
SuSE 10
Ubuntu Dapper Drake 6.06 (beta)
SuSE 10.1 (beta)
Windows Home XP

Each of the linux installs all "just worked". I've two PCMCIA ethernet cards, a Netgear WG511T and an SMC2635W. Under both Ubuntu and SuSE 10 both were recognized and configured w/o problem. I've not tried either under the SuSE 10.1 beta and probably won't bother because the real 10.1 is supposed to be released today, so I'll wait and reload it with the final.

Let me know if I can help you get something working on your X20

I don't know about the X41 but I installed Fedora Core 3 from DVD with an external DVD reader on my X40 and it loaded just fine, works except I made no attempt to mess with ndiswrappers for the intel bg wireless card (I refuse to use no-source stuff). I only occasionally use wireless so I use an Orinoco pc card which works fine. The x40 has been quite solid most of the time. It just gets a little weird and occasionally misses HAL events when I plug in a usb flash drive. Reboot fixes it, but I thought only Windows was supposed to need that .

I'm a windows power user, and Linux is just HARD HARD HARD. I've spent the last few years trying to learn it by myself, and spent the last few months working on it hours a day. None work.

I can't imagine anyone but an advanced user getting it to Windows level functionality. Standby (suspend to RAM) is really hard to install, and the wireless and graphics cards are a pain. I've been trying to use Linux for years, and have dedicated the last month to Linux, but it really just doesn't work for a non-expert.

I've spent the last few months trying to get various linux distros to work (FC5, Suse 10.1, Vector, DSL, Ubuntu). Each distro never worked out of the box, and I spent weeks (hours a day) searching and posting on forums, trying IRC, searching the thinkwiki, etc. No one on a forum has EVER solved one of my problems...I usually come across the solutions after googleing and trying tons of different stuff. Most of my forum posts get about 1 useless reply, which never gets another reply after I tell them that it doesn't work. Basically, if the solution to a problem is not very simple (and thus there is already a post with the solution), then only an expert AT YOUR COMPUTER will solve it. I went to my local LUG and had a few problems solved in about 10 seconds, but the LUG (linux users group) only meets twice a year for noobies like me.

I've solved about 10% of the major problems with the installs (took a month to get the triple boot working right on the X31), but many hours later and the graphics drivers, wireless and wired networks, software installs, etc., still don't work.

Ironically, the best non-windows distro I've used is OS-X, which worked really well on the X31 (except wireless and suspend and graphics above 1024 on the external monitor, which all the linux distros can't do so well). OS-X had only 3 major problems, whereas each linux distro had about 20.

Linux is great if your college roomate is an expert and can help you once a day to fix these problems, but without expert help it takes about a week of hard work to fix any one problem. That means it takes about 20 weeks for someone like me to have a basic, working linux system. Not worth the 20 weeks x 7 days x 5 hours a day = 700 hours of hard labour.

PS- Right now my Suse 10.1 won't boot into gnome on the X31. I turned on the 3d acceleration (just clicked the button "3D" in the dialogue box, hoping it would work like it does when I press similar buttons in XP). It told me to reboot, and now I can't get gnome. I don't want to even think about the 20 hours of labor to fix this one. A preliminary google and search on the linux forums didn't help. An expert could fix it in about 2 seconds. The "safe" boot won't work either.

If you want maximal frustration, you can either try to build houses out of cards in Chicago on a windy day, or try to get a linux distro to be as functional as windows.

I guess I'm the opposite as I know my way around linux very well and am less familiar with Windows. I just got this T60p and had little difficulty installing SuSE 10.1 on it. Even the wireless worked. I *did* have difficulty getty ATI's acceleratd X11 driver installed, however technically it was not necesary for me to go down that path as X11 worked just fine out of the box. But that is life on the bleeding edge.

Just as a counter point ..
This AM I booted this T60p into XP Pro. and went to add my Lexmark printer. Needed TCP/IP services because I connect to it using the JetDirect (port 9100) protocol. So I did that, also (while I was at it) changed the group from the default WORKGROUP to my home work group name, and did the obligatory reboot.

When the machine came up it had no networking *at all*. Wireless would not work, the cable connection does not work, nada! If I go into network places the only thing there is a VZAccess thingy for the Verizon EVDo service (to which I do not subscribe).

Try as I might, I cannot get networking to function again under Windows XP Pro. There is no recovery thing listed in IBM AccessConnections, adding a new profile does not do it, nothing. So I have to reboot into here (SuSE 10.1) to get to the network (wired or wireless).

Heck .. perhaps we can exchange SuSE for XP tips?

While I'm here .. you should be able to get your X31 to work again under linux by booting the system up and then switching to a text console. First wait for it to give up trying to start X (if it even does). Then hold down the CNTRL key and the ALT key and strike F2. You will now see a text login prompt.

Login as "root". Then:
init 3
(you may have to hit the ENTER key one or two times here to get a prompt)
cd /etc/X11
mkdir save
cp -p xorg.conf save/
cp -p xorg.conf.saxsave xorg.conf

You can now try starting X with tihs command:
startx

If that works then logout and you will be back to the text command prompt. Just type "init 5" to go back into X11 windows mode.

I don't mean to hijack this thread with linux help, so please PM me as needed. But hopefully that gets you back!

Lisa_T wrote:Personally, I wouldn't minds experimenting further- but i've had trouble either booting AT ALL or getting as far as the desktop on a newly installed Linux system! Right now I'm left with a virtually unusable system. I'll probably try linux again in the future- but I think I'll stick firmly to the safety net provided by live CDs.

Lisa,
I'm sorry to hear about your experiences trying to run Linux. I have successfully installed and run Fedora Core 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5, Ubuntu, and Suse 10.0 and Suse 10.1 on a ThinkPad 600E and ThinkPad T40. If you need any help, feel free to send me a message. Though I prefer Fedora, Suse and Ubuntu have very good built in support for ThinkPads.
P-