Thinkpads Forum

Right now I'm actually searching for "my distro", the linux distro that is most suitable for me. I'm not a complete nOOb to linux, but also I'm not the very best.

So I just wan't to know what you've found out with different distros on T60. Because I've tried Ubuntu, and it was just a pain in the a** with it's built in ati drivers for my X1400.
So I'm just looking for a distro that works out of the box, on my T60. Or atleast almost out of the box.. I don't care if I have to configure some things a bit.. But messing with drivers for 3 weeks and re-installing ubuntu 7 times... That's just too much.

Just a nice distro where I can mess around with some shell commands without having to get [censored] off by its incompatibility with my T60.
Ofcourse, Compiz Fuzion would be a big plus

I have a T61, which is really quite a different animal, especially since you have a yucky (from a Linux compatibility perspective) video card.

Having said that, I recommend that you try PCLinuxOS MiniMe 2008 or Mandriva 2008.

http://temporaryland.wordpress.com/2008 ... nkpad-t61/

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

I have a T60, and because I've been a long-time Red Hat user, I use Fedora on it. It's working well now but not perfectly: sound, network, WiFi, 3D, suspend/resume all work.

I'm having trouble getting IrDA, desktop effects and Bluetooth going, but those are not very high priorities for me.

I use Ubuntu on older ThinkPads because it only requires a 486 CPU and 32MB RAM to install but Fedora requires a Pentium (or is it PII now?) and 128MB.

Try debian etch, it is really good. I have it on my T23 and 600X and after customizing the installation, it runs very smoothly on both machines.

I put Fedora 7 on my T60p, Fedora 8 on my T61. Fedora 7 worked fine out of the box. 8 has an annoying problem with tcsh not saving history, or running .login & .tcsh scripts when logging in as root.

Other than that, it seems to work fine. It's missing some packages that I consider fundamental, like the fvwm window manager, and I needed to tweak xorg.conf to get a good dual-monitor setup, but those are easy to fix.

That said, I don't use some of the stuff, like sound or suspend, that others might, so I can't comment on how well they work.

I started with RedHat, defected to SuSE (did not like it all), and finally defected to Ubuntu. I find Ubuntu to be one of the easiest to implement and run, although I remain fond of RedHat 7.3 because it does everything I need from Linux, and has a very small footprint (less than 4Gb in total size). Ubuntu's file sharing is easier that RedHat (manual Samba implementation) but I had already learned how to use Samba, so that was not an issue for me. Ubuntu is also more modern. I use bland hardware drivers (virtual machine implementation) so hardware platform was no issue for me, but it is with others. ... JDH

By starting with well configured distros from the start like Ubuntu is a good idea. When you are reinstalling distros it means you are looking for a pill to solve your problems. You need to learn how to configure your computer. Embrace it

Sometimes, even the best distros will come up short and then you will have to learn to modify or alter settings to work with your setup. I don't know what the status is with the ati x1400 from a brief mention I saw on the net (albeit some time ago) it was not yet working well. There may be a fix on the actual ati website that hasn't found it's way into Ubuntu repositories (if that is indeed your problem). In that case you will need to install it manually (maybe even having to deinstall the drivers installed by default).

Narrowing down what's not working, researching a fix and doing it one problem at a time is the recommended solution. Sometimes, other distros will have helpful advice (in the past Gentoo had all the answers in the forums). You might want to save important info on a flash disk while mucking around (this period may last years ) Remember it's meant to be fun and don't worry about breaking something.

I don't want to sound like an ******* but as always with GNU/Linux, it's best to work out hardware compatibity before buying; that is the power we have as consumers. I always play safe when buying computer hardware by waiting a generation before jumping in.

Distro hopping doesn't work and only delays learning about configuring your computer.

While I agree about having compatible hardware. You are somewhat limited with choices when configuring a Laptop computer. It is usually best ot stay a model behind to ensure compatibility. If you stay on the leading edge you may have problems with newer video, wireless, etc chipset drivers.
For example, When I got this R61 I could not find any distros that supported the Intel 4965AGN card in it. When Gutsy came out it worked well enough but until then I was distro surfing and trying to make the intellinuxwireless.org drivers work. They were not production drivers at the time and it was not easy.
Different distros have different personalities. It is nice to find one that fits your personality. The other consideration is the distro's forums and the amount/quality of support they provide.

When I buy knowing I'm going to be using linux I make sure I use Intel/Nvidia hardware. I bought this laptop knowing some of the features might not work, but lo and behold everything like sleep, fn keys minus a couple, suspend, and bluetooth just work.

ATI's proprietary drivers are coming along nicely, and AMD is showing much more support of the open source drivers too. I expect the open drivers to catch up with and surpass the closed drivers.

I have a co-worker that has a T60 (so nice I bought a T61) that had no problems installing Mandriva on it. I'm pretty sure he said everything (including Comp/Beryl) worked from the basic install. His biggest complaint was Vista not playing nice...

Hope this helps.
-Hue

To the OP, you will find a dozen (and most likely more) different 'best' Distros. My suggestion is to burn about 10 different LiveCDs and see which ones work best (keep in mind that not all have FULL functionality when running from CD, but pretty close).

With that said, I have yet to find any hardware that didn't work "OOB" in PCLinuxOS. I wish I would have found it before I spent 2 months tweaking the hell out of my Ubuntu install. It is just so easy to use, and so far in my experience I've yet to need to use the command line for anything in PCLOS. If a sound driver isn't working you can just go through their Control Center menu and change it from a pull down menu. Screen Resolution is a bit off, same thing, a couple of click reconfigures the desktop to correct the issue. So this will make your command line exploration a little less frustrating if you're not forced to use it, just to get something to work. I'm also impressed with Sabayon Linux. Its visually beautiful (lots of eye candy), and functions great. I HIGHLY recommend test driving both of these during your trials.

Good luck and let us know what you choose.

Linux Mint was working for me (Daryna 4.0 Gnome) out of the box (by my standards at least) on T60, T60p and R60. The first two had ATi GPUs.

Burn yourself a CD and test it out...I believe it's worth it.