Thinkpads Forum

Posted: **Tue Nov 27, 2007 5:39 pm**

This thread is just a quick info. gathering about the Unix community here at thinkpads.com forum. I appreciate your voting response.

Posted: **Tue Nov 27, 2007 9:42 pm**

kubuntu i386 on 600x and x31; kubuntu x86_64 on x61t. good stuff, I tell you what.

from my past experience: gentoo is nice for a time. if'n you're feeling a mite masochistic. optimism. and such.

got nothin' against fedora... redhat were tryin' to preserve sanity 'way back in the day, when the only alternative was slackware (or ~ nothing at all + bare metal) ... and I thank them for that.

yum is good stuff. rpm need not apply. if you can have yum or apt, then you are stylin' and good to go. either way.

some days I think of chucking it all for freebsd7+zfs, or opensolaris. but then I reconsider. sysVinit (and more recently upstart) has been good to us...
(magnum promised to let me drive the ferrari...)

Posted: **Tue Nov 27, 2007 11:01 pm**

check with lenovoblogs poll.

Gentoo is quite good for me

Posted: **Tue Nov 27, 2007 11:11 pm**

yum manages rpm packages

on x22: Debian
plan on x61s: slimmed down Debian to USB to RAM. Would like to run with no harddisk.

desktop: 64bit Gentoo, but will likely go back to Debian. I find Gentoo serves as a distraction and time sink.

servers @ work: CentOS
routers and firewalls @ work: OpenBSD
wireless router @ work: DD-WRT

router/firewall @ home: FreeBSD
wireless routers @ home: OpenWRT w/ wds (3)

Posted: **Wed Nov 28, 2007 1:30 pm**

On T60: Fedora 8
On 600X: Fedora 8
On my desktop: Fedora 8
On my server: Fedora 6 hopefully en route to CentOS 5

On my 750P: Debian Woody hopefully en route to Xubuntu 7.10
Fedora requires a Pentium CPU. Ubuntu and friends requires a 486.

Posted: **Thu Nov 29, 2007 7:32 am**

Hmmm...yes, I know this will sound a bit schizophrenic...at best...

Linux Mint (Daryna) on my T43 14" SXGA+
Open SUSE 10.3 on my T43 15" SXGA+
Freespire 2.0 on my "main" A31p and my daughter's T23 (dual boot on both)
Kubuntu 7.10 on my "backup" A31p and my wife's T42p (dual boot)
Fedora 7 on my X24

In the intent of full disclosure: I'm a newbie within the penguin world, and am still in search for the "right" distro...

What I can say for now is that Freespire stays for sure, and Fedora goes-at least from X24. Other distros will require a lot more playing with (I've only installed SUSE last night) for me to say anything...

It's a ton of fun, though...

Posted: **Thu Nov 29, 2007 9:06 am**

ubuntu gusty, it works, but from feisty to gusty lost to hibernate and suspend is more flakier than before, but dont feel like downgrading. And it works well on my thinkpad r31, runs virtualbox to use xp/2000 programs. Had [censored] linux when i had my 20gig hard drive from the ultrabay running on vmware from xp. but erased that hd for storing photos, may get another hd to play around with fedora again, had 5 on my desktop and never got it to work, which was my fault on the pc end with no internet

Posted: **Fri Nov 30, 2007 2:57 am**

I've had thinkpads for years but currently but don't have one at the moment. However, for the last year or two I've been using Gentoo and up until very recently had very reliable results. However, lately I've been running into many big issues (mainly to do with xorg 7.3 and even 7.2). It's really frustrating and even though I really like Gentoo for it's transparency (best word I can think of at the moment for the low-level interaction with software compiling and config) it's getting me down.
I can now really see the advantage of the Debian based system of basically having a snapshot and compiling to that stable (or relatively stable snapshot).
That said, I really think they are stuffing up Xorg a bit lately (especially with the open source drivers I am using at the moment) as I've really had to jump through hoops to get my current installation working properly (no errors in /var/log/X.org.log)...

Posted: **Mon Dec 10, 2007 9:56 am**

Lessee:

Code: Select all

doppelfish@sputnix:~ > uname -a 
FreeBSD sputnix.magic.de 6.1-RELEASE FreeBSD 6.1-RELEASE #7: Sun Aug 26 00:03:12 CEST 2007     root@sputnix.magic.de:/usr/src/sys/i386/compile/SPUTNIX  i386
doppelfish@sputnix:~ > _

There.

Posted: **Mon Dec 10, 2007 10:51 am**

Mandriva is the current top of the heap. My boss was impressed with my new laptop and was considering buying a new laptop for himself because his current one, a Toshiba Satellite M35-S456 is running too slow. It is running XP of course. So, I talked him into trying Linux first to see if he gets better performance with his existing one.

I ran the Mandriva Live CD and everything worked right of the bat. It even loaded the nvidia driver automatically. Wireless (WPA2) worked with no problem. The polish of Mandriva is amazing!

PS: Oh, and you can see what distros I have on my ThinkPad here:

http://temporaryland.wordpress.com/2007 ... t61-part1/

Posted: **Mon Dec 10, 2007 2:42 pm**

ThinkPad T30 - Red Hat 8.0
ThinkPad 770 - FC 4

I voted other. Should I have gone with FC and consider that covering RH?

Posted: **Mon Dec 10, 2007 11:03 pm**

Ubuntu 7.10

Everything works pretty much out of the box - especially wireless, which is a pleasant surprise for me.

However, CompizFusion doesn't work, even after I installed flgrx...

Posted: **Tue Dec 11, 2007 6:51 pm**

I installed Slackware 12 on my T60. Had to istall the drivers to get wirless working with the 3945 card, and I installed the fglrx ati drivers, but other wise everything pretty much worked out of the box. I really like Slackware because I can so easily control exactly how my setup is, which is the reason I sought out an alternative to windows in the first place. Slackware is exactly what I have always wanted in an OS.

Posted: **Wed Dec 12, 2007 8:41 am**

I run Sidux, Debian Sid. Info: www.sidux.com
Excellent installable Live-CD with KDE-desktop as default and new releases every 3-4 month. But once installed and regularly dist-upgraded no need to fresh install a new CD version because of this rolling release through this update cycle.

cheers Micha

Posted: **Wed Dec 12, 2007 4:05 pm**

kevinjieu wrote:Ubuntu 7.10

Everything works pretty much out of the box - especially wireless, which is a pleasant surprise for me.

However, CompizFusion doesn't work, even after I installed flgrx...

hmm my roommate has the same problem, glad i used F8 which it works. Still want to figure this out though.

Posted: **Wed Dec 19, 2007 8:02 pm**

Dual boot Windows XP and Fedora 8, although I do not remember the last time I booted into Windows for anything, always run it out of VMware Workstation now

Posted: **Fri Dec 21, 2007 5:01 pm**

I use wolvix 1.1.0 (slackware 11 based) which I installed on a 1GB USB Stick.

wolvix is LIVE, but it has a unique "persistent" capability, so you can save changes on the USB flash stick from session to session. And since it's easily bootable on my ThinkPad, I didn't have to mess around with the MBR or create new partitions on the HDD.

Posted: **Fri Dec 21, 2007 9:04 pm**

OpenSUSE 10.3 on my T61P. Everything works. Wolvix sounds very cool, I might have to try that. Do you have a link on how to install it on a USB flash drive?

Posted: **Fri Dec 21, 2007 9:35 pm**

Debian 4.0r1 "etch on Z60t.

Posted: **Fri Dec 21, 2007 10:01 pm**

Harryc

Wolvix sounds very cool, I might have to try that. Do you have a link on how to install it on a USB flash drive?

I like it a lot .. and it's quite ThinkPad compatible, including WPA encrypted Wireless with my ibm mini-pci card - which was a pleasant surprise.

Download the .iso at http://www.wolvix.org and burn it onto a CD. Once you boot it live from the CD, look for the wolvix Control Panel - where there are various install options, including install to USB. From the Control Panel, you can also install an app. called wolvixsave - which goes into the root directory of the usb key, and is where your sessions are automatically saved.

Posted: **Fri Dec 21, 2007 10:30 pm**

Thanks!

Posted: **Sat Dec 22, 2007 8:37 am**

iminj, I don't want to hijack this thread, so maybe you can PM me?. I'd appreciate some tips on getting the USB key to boot in my T61. I did the install on it and ran the wolvixsave, but it will not boot (just get a fast flashing cursor) despite being in boot order or via F12 boot menu selection. I am using a Kingston Data Traveler - 1GB. I burned the latest Wolvix-Hunter edition. 1.0.5.

Posted: **Tue Dec 25, 2007 6:25 am**

Fedora Core 8 on my T42 and X31.

Posted: **Tue Dec 25, 2007 7:04 pm**

Xubuntu Gutsy on X61t. Sleek, fast, eye candy, functional. ln particular I like the Iconbox and the transparent terminals.

Posted: **Fri Dec 28, 2007 6:38 am**

PCLinuxOS 2007 on T41p, everything works straight off the live CD including WPA and 3D gl (although it suddenly stopped working the other day, I'm back to 2D desktop, have to investigate).
I have a minimal installation in the (once) hidden partition.

PCLinuxOS just got a glowing multi page review in the latest LinuxFormat

Posted: **Thu Jan 10, 2008 1:55 pm**

Day to day, I dual boot XP with SLED 10.1 on T43p, mainly used because of it's excellent integration with my NetWare 6.5 servers.

I have used Slackware 12 which requires manual installation of wifi and ATI drivers but is to my mind the fastest and best distro on the planet. OpenSuSE 10.3 is also excellent.

Finally may I suggest BLAG at http://www.blagblagblag.org/which is an excellent Fedora based distro. Excellent for multimedia and all on one CD.

Posted: **Thu Jan 10, 2008 5:24 pm**

I like Slackware based distros. At the moment, I'm running Zenwalk 5.0beta plus Vector 5.9 Standard. Both work well on my T40.

paul.

Posted: **Sat Jan 19, 2008 12:37 am**

Slackware 12 -runs about the best and is the most complete,stable and generally awesome OS around.

Posted: **Sun Jan 27, 2008 4:16 am**

I'm using Arch Linux on my A22.

I think it's interesting to see some stats on usage like this.

Posted: **Mon Jan 28, 2008 6:45 am**

I'm xp and gentoo linux dual-boot on my T42, can't complain much

Gotta do a few tweaks but all in all it's a fine distro, easily costumizable.

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