Thinkpads Forum

Hi !

I sadly enough have to switch operating systems for technical reasons.
Now I'm seriously considering giving Linux a try, since MacOS X support on none Aplpe HW seems spotty at best and always relying on un-official un-supported patches.
One of the shortcomings I'm already trying to escape from with my current OS.

But I don't want to escape from the Titanic, only to end up on the Adrea Doria.

So here are my questions:
What advanced Linux distro is best supported on Thinkpads (I would like to go for the Novell SuSE Distro, because of their MS-Office support).

I need(!) support for at least the following on either T43p or T60p systems:
LAN, WiFi, USB, EIDE or S-ATA, PC-CardBus , PCI Express, Sound and full Video support.

All else would be a benefit, but not required.
But those listed above I need, or I'll end up with Windoze after all.

Also, I'm a total newbie to partitioning Linux on a Laptop.
I know I need a swap and a boot partition.
Are there any benefits to setting up extra partitions and if yes, which ones?

Are you purchasing a new laptop or looking to install on one of your current systems?

You don't tell us why you need Linux, just that you need it. Linux is not and has never been an OS for total newcomers. That is *not* a flame, just pragmatic reality.

So, if you need Linux for compiling and that kind of technical work, then what I do in those types of circumstances is run Linux (Ubuntu in my case) in a Virtual Machine inside Windows XP Pro via VMware 5.5.x. Works well, gives me the best of both worlds.

For people who are not newcomers and can run Linux as their host operating system, you can reverse the above paragraph and run Windows XP Pro as a guest.

The value of a Linux guest machine for newcomers is that you can build a machine (doesn't take long), experiment, throw the machine away if it doesn't work to your satisfaction and start again. Doing this for real is very troublesome and time consuming.

I happen to have a SuSE guest, but I like Ubuntu better. Of course, use whatever you wish.
... JD Hurst

Not sure what my reasons for Linux have to do with my questions.
I don't think I need to "justify" my desire to run Linux..
And I'm also not a newbie, I've been working as a computer consultant for 20+ years and I know my way around Unix boxes.

Its just that I normally deal with commercial *x Servers and don't have to bother about such trivia like USB or sound support.

Now can someone *please* answer my very specific questions about HW support for Thinkpads in Linux or is this something one just has to find out via "try & error" as a right of passage?

Maybe there is a Linux specific Thinkpad website out there.
If yes, can then someone please provide me their URL and I'll take my questions over there.

So far I found only dead links for Linux-Thinkpads forums.
And this nice URL: http://zeniv.linux.org.uk/~telsa/boom/

I'd like to take this topic somewhere where I can get answeres.
So if anyone knows of a working Thinkpad/Linux forum, please give me the URL.

See what an hour of Googling dragged in:
http://www.hardwareinreview.com/cms/content/view/49

It should be mandatory to ask Google first, as there you always get an answer to your question and not more questions as an answer.

Sound, Video and Network seem fine, only USB is not mentioned anywhere.
But I don't remember huge differences in the USB chip set for the T43p & the T60p, so it should work. Hopefully....
Specially since the T60p has official support for SLED.

Lazarus wrote: What advanced Linux distro is best supported on Thinkpads (I would like to go for the Novell SuSE Distro, because of their MS-Office support).

I believe that the best Linux Distro depends on what you want to do and which one that you like. Myself I am partial to the Ubuntu and Fedora Core distributions. Now I use Ubuntu on all of my personal Desktops and will be setting up Ubuntu instead of Fedora Core on my parents the next time that they want an upgrade.

I have a T60-2623-D6U.

I have tried and used

• Bluetooth
  ATI x1300 Drivers
  Intel Pro Wireless
  Secondary Display
  Sound
  Wired Ethernet
  Hibernate
  Suspend (or Standby)

I have never used (doesn't mean that it won't work)

• CardBus
  ExpressCard.

If you try Ubuntu, it doesn't install the ATI Proprietary driver by default. You will need to install it after the fact (very easy.) It will be initially configured to use the VESA driver which works, but is very slow. (I'm not sure if any Linux Distribution installs the proprietary drivers by default.)

Lazarus wrote: Also, I'm a total newbie to partitioning Linux on a Laptop.
I know I need a swap and a boot partition.
Are there any benefits to setting up extra partitions and if yes, which ones?

I only bother to setup / and swap now-a-days. In my opinion a /boot is not required with newer Linux OS's or hardware any more.

You can find some information here: http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Installation

As distro's go Linux is a personal choice.
Personally I prefer Xandros http://www.xandros.com/ there is a 30 day trial version but you have to pay for the full versions. I don't mind paying because out of the box it is setup close to what I want and after a half an hour of tweaking backgrounds, screensavers, fonts, etc I am ready to get to work. No driver installations or other hassles. The hardware just works on my T42.
Some people prefer to do all the work by hand and for those people Ubuntu or PCLinuxOS is better.
Personally I dislike many things about Suse and I find it confusing so I don't even try it anymore. To each his own. YMMV

iMav wrote:Are you purchasing a new laptop or looking to install on one of your current systems?

The reason I ask this is...if you NEED support for this setup, there are some good vendors that sell linux pre-installed and will provide support.

One such company is EmperorLinux.

Thanks for your info folks, but I plan to stick with SLED.
Not just is it supported by Novell, but they specifically support the T60p, offer automatic driver updates and have a full 64bit version with armored process core to defend against mailicous software.
And all that for a measily $50.
And they also include 3 dimensional Desktop technology in it.

Compare that one with $450 for a blown up version of Windoze XP!

Lazarus wrote:So far I found only dead links for Linux-Thinkpads forums.
And this nice URL: http://zeniv.linux.org.uk/~telsa/boom/
I'd like to take this topic somewhere where I can get answeres.
So if anyone knows of a working Thinkpad/Linux forum, please give me the URL.

This is what I found as the first entry in a Google search for "linux on laptops" ( no quotes).
http://www.linux-on-laptops.com/ibm.html
They also have discussion forums w/ pretty recent entries.
I usually hit "The Linux Documentation Project" to start research on something like this. I found this under guides:
http://tldp.org/LDP/Mobile-Guide/html/index.html

linuxquestion.org is a great place for this sort of stuff.
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions ... y.php?f=25
You may have to dig a little.

You almost sound as if you'd made up your mind before asking. If I'm drawing the right conclusions, technical support is a must, so SuSE, RedHat, Ubuntu, etc. are the way to go for you. It ain't easy getting all the pieces to work, sometimes!
I hope that something in this mess helps. Be sure to let us know what works.

Personally, I use Slackware, just personal preference is all. It offered the easiest way to keep my ancient hardware running ... until the HD on my 701cs died!

Hey Gray Beard

I *did* my own Googling as you could have read earlier on in this thread.
So I don't like you telling me that I just >made up my mind before asking<.

Fact is that I'm not a hacker.
I know how to hack a system for sure, but I'm usually charged with preventing such attacks.
I'm also not a geek, I might be considered a nerd by some, but the difference is that I get a paycheck for my nerdness.
A paycheck which I have to earn with my system.

I got no doubt that if you spend enough time hunting down drivers and checking out BBS' for configuration tips that you could get even your slackware to run on a T60p with (almost) all options enabled.

But I'm not getting paid for scavenger hunting for drivers and configuration tips for my own system.
I'm getting paid for keeping other people's systems alive and if I fail there because I spend most of the day trying to keep my laptop running, then I'll be joining the unemployment line.

I know scavenger hunting, done that for the past 8+ years with my old OpSys and a mighty operating system that was.
But its time had come and gone and by now I had to admit that I just spend to much effort trying to get my box to run, while I should be spending that time keeping the client's systems running.

And Novell's SLED is *the only* Linux distro that is not just officially supported on T60p's, but that also comes with the latest GUI technology, a fully MS compatible Office Suite (not just the standard OpenOffice) and both direct driver updates as well as tech support servi ce.

Heck, I can actually call tech support and demand that they help me get their software running on my system and they have a guarenteed turnaround time for such tickets.

Now which other Linux distro offers such dedicated Thinkpad support + latest technology for only $50.-- ?!?!
Ah, and did I mention it all comes in 64bit as well?

You see, I did my research - but thanks for the link anyway..

I'm not sure which office suite you are referring to, as far as I know the default on SLED is OpenOffice 2.x.

Apart from that, please no more "my distro is longer^H^H^H^H^H^H better than yours" flames

I'm getting ready to try both suse, fedoracore and RH, waiting on the new dvd burner as the factory DVD ROM/CD RW that came with the this T30 won't read dvd +r's which I made the images on also a set of recovery discs that I hope to see sometime next week[end] or so.

I've tried solaris 10x86 and while it installs nicely their support for networking drivers is horrible as well as PCMICA. Though I may try it again now that it's been about 4 months.

I use Open SuSe 10.2 & Windows XP . Dual boot.

Open SuSe 10.2 is amazing. I am a newbie too. You can try Open SuSe 10.2 . Good 1.

Open SuSe 10.2 detected all hardware of my ThinkPad. Which are they >>


Intel Extreme 2 graphic adapter
Sound MAX audio
ACPI ( Including battery acpid )
100 mbps Intel Pro ethernet
Intel 2200 wireless lan
Integarted IBM 56 kbps modem
TrackPoint
Externally connected USB mouse


What else ? Installation went smooth. Just the thing, it failed to mount Windows partitions. I mounted those partitions manually.
Open SuSe 10.2 just have similar feature VISTA have. I dont use XP that much for now.

Some common problem you'll get in Open SuSe 10.2 are >

No video can play
Reason : Plug-ins need to be installed.

How to install plug-in's >

Open "Yast2"
Select update source as "packman's http"
And select all audio updates from the updates list.

After updating, you can play AVI,MPEG files from Totem. I still got no success in installing "mplayer" for my Open SuSe 10.2 .

Networking :

To access Windows based machines, open "Yast2" & configure "Windows domain membership". Open SuSe 10.2 don't have "Samba client". Samba server is to access SuSe machine from Windows PC.


Regards,
Amey Abhyankar.

One resource that I think no-one has mentioned yet is the linux thinkpad mailing list

http://mailman.linux-thinkpad.org/mailm ... x-thinkpad

along with http://www.thinkwiki.org that should answer most of your questions.

My understanding is that the changes that Novell makes to open office will be open source, and hence available on other platforms. Again, the convenience factor may be the main one for you.

It is probably true that root+swap is fine for most desktop machines. I usually do something fancier, but that is 20 years of Unix snobbery talking (I am almost over my Multics snobbery though, so there is hope). I would suggest either the simplest possible setup, or having a smallish root+swap+everything-else (/usr, with symlinks from e.g. /home to /usr/home). Then a bad block (yes, they still happen, even with remapping) is less likely to make your system unbootable. On the other hand, if you have good backups, maybe you don't care if you can boot to single user mode. /boot is probably not so important now, as another poster writes. On the other hand, on a large disk, a 500M /boot partition is not such a big space loss. On debian based systems (including Ubuntu) I usually have a 4G or so /var partition, because the package manager caches everything there.

At the risk of inflaming the conversation, I should mention that many open-source developers are pretty irate at novell these days because of the PR fallout from their deal with Microsoft. Developer good will is not one of the factors your mentioned, so feel free to ignore. Time will tell whether Novell's move has doomed their linux business, or put them in a very strong position.

I have run only Debian on thinkpads for the last 6 or 7 years. But Debian (Official distribution of ideological purists ) is probably not for you if commercial tech support is a priority.

$50 for having things just work sounds like a good deal to me. I would be interested in a report on how it goes, especially if the tech support is actually useful.

Lazarus wrote:Hey Gray Beard

I *did* my own Googling as you could have read earlier on in this thread.
So I don't like you telling me that I just >made up my mind before asking<.

Now which other Linux distro offers such dedicated Thinkpad support + latest technology for only $50.-- ?!?!
Ah, and did I mention it all comes in 64bit as well?

You see, I did my research - but thanks for the link anyway..

Sorry, Lazarus. I did not mean to imply you hadn't done your research. It was obvious to me that you had. But, I can't tell you how many times Google's sent me to dead ends because of the terms I[i/]> used. Just thought I could give you a couple more places to look, if you needed them.

I meant "almost", which I drew from the comments you made about SLED. I should have said, "I don't know of any distro that sounds that good, but here are some places you might check."

Finally, I'm sorry I didn't phrase my Slackware comment better. I didn't think it would be a good fit for you at all. I use Slackware because it's the best fit for my old 701cs, and I've used it on various desktops and small serves since 1994. After all that time, I like to drop a line about personal preferences.

SLED, especially with the guaranteed support, looks like a wonderful choice. A Microsoft Office compatible office suite? That's SWEET! I'll have to find out more about that. Thanks for that!

Again, sorry. Last thing I wanted was to insult you.

Oh, my 2-cents on partitioning:
A separate /home partition enables you to totally change Linux distributions w/o losing your personal documents and files. I usually put the swap partition as the 2nd or 3rd partition, towards the middle of the drive platter. Supposedly, this makes it faster because the head doesn't have to move as far. I can't really verify it, but it does seem logical.