Thinkpads Forum

Hi everyone,

I have years of experience with freebsd, but from what I've gathered there seems to be a higher level of thinkpad hardware compatibility with linux. I don't have any experience with linux at all so I'm looking for some advice. What I'm wondering about is if anyone else with a t42p has determined which linux distribution works best out of the box or with the least amount of tweaking. The most important functions I'd like to have are suspend to ram/resume, trackpoint with scrolling, volume buttons, usb, and wifi.

I tried a search but didn't find any suitable answers - any help would be much appreciated! thanks in advance.

I would say Opensuse 10.2 KDE. But again it depends on one's personal preference.

I would say give Ubuntu or Kubuntu a try. Everything works out of the box.

I'm using Kubuntu 7.10 on my T42p--everything I need works great (keyboard buttons, suspend/resume, wireless, etc).

Another good choice is PCLinuxOS. http://www.pclinuxos.com/

Last week I tried PCLinuxOS 2007 after watching it stepping up on distro watch, it was my ignorance for not looking into the Monolithic kernel before installing it as I'm never a fan of it. However it's a good distro and surely worth a shot.

I run Ubuntu Feisty Fawn, and the drivers packaged by Ubuntu take care of almost everything in the laptop including USB, wifi (wpa) and trackpoint.
Although that doesn't mean other distros are bad. But given the huge community that comes along with Ubuntu, there's a greater chance that your questions and doubts would be answered.

I am interested in trying out FreeBSD though, just for the heck of it.

p0ser, how was your FreeBSD install experience? Are all the hardware components supported? I have absolutely no experience with FreeBSD, and that's the reason why I want to try it.