Thinkpads Forum

I have dual-booted my R32 between XPP and FreeBSD for years. However, my wife has never found this to be a very good way to go, as the support for flash in FreeBSD cannot be described in words that are allowed in this forum.

I just purchased a new hard drive for my R32, and I am planning to go Linux this time for my non-microsoft OS (dual-booting again). I am looking at Kubuntu in particular as I am a big fan of KDE over GNOME.

Has anyone else run linux on an R32? Any observations with recent releases? I was planning to go with Kubuntu 8.10 so I can get KDE 4.

You could download it and run the live CD. And see how it matches up to your hardware.

Also I think PCLOS 2007 might be a good candidate for that laptop. It's simple and just works. But is only KDE 3.59
And it is a live CD also.

Mandriva 2009 might be worth a try. It has KDE4. I'm running it on my R61e. With no problems.
But KDE4 is somewhat slower than KDE3 in my opinion.
Have scratched my head a few times trying to figure how to do things. But I guess that is called learning.

Mandriva KDE 2009.0 has mixed reports on a fresh install, but after the updates it is reported to be somewhat more polished. Mandriva Gnome 2009.0 is reported to be quite good (not a Gnome fan myself). Some previous KDE users have switched to Gnome in this release and have been pleased with the results.

Mandriva KDE 2009.1 Spring is expected to be a somewhat better release than 2009.0 when it comes out (~ April I think).

I am still on Mandriva KDE 2008.1 Powerpack and like it a lot. My only quibble is with my AT&T AirCard in certain areas. I don't know what the problem is, but in some areas I keep getting disconnected when using 3G mode (doesn't happen in Windows). I am in California right now and its working great on 3G!