Thinkpads Forum

Has anyone tried Arch Linux on their thinkpad? I just want to know how fast it is. I don't like the long boot that is found in Ubuntu and many other distro.

I use Arch Linux on my T60p and, yes, it's fast. My boot time into KDE is about 25s (according to bootchart). If you're thinking about switching to Arch simply for a faster boot time, I'd caution against that. Arch is not is a hard distro to use, but there's a learning curve, especially if you're coming from Ubuntu and only Ubuntu. The KISS approach of Arch means that there aren't many GUIs for dealing with network/wireless connections, hardware, or updates. The plus side is that once you know how to handle those things in Arch, you'll understand almost every detail of your system. For example, the Thinkpad butons and hibernate/suspend have always been tricky to get working in others distros. With Arch a little time and research allowed me get these working and to understand why.

I'd be curious more about your Linux experience and if there are other reasons for switching. Like I said, it's not hard (especially with their wiki and forums), but the simplistic approach can come off as hard to new users.

25 second does seem long.

I will time my Ubuntu boot time and see if it is any different.

I have used Ubuntu for many years. I am an advance user. I just don't have the patient to do a lot of text file configuration.

I guess great part of the Linux distros out there come with lots of additional stuff and preconfigured to be supposedly most user-friendly (not sure if this really happens though...), to the highest possible extent, because of the competition amongst them and between Linux and Windows (and recently OS X). So, if one wants to make Ubuntu or OpenSuse or Mandriva really fast, what every Linux should be actually capable of, one should perform sort of back/down-configuring (incl. tweaking) of his system (or, alternatively, to use alternate CD, which still has lots of limitations from what is really being desired here). By its simplicity, Arch Linux doesn´t seem to suffer from this.

Actually, by recommendation of superego, I always wanted to try out Arch on my ThinkPad, but never had the necessary time and HD space to accomplish this... unfortunately. I really don´t like the new Linux trend to overstuff the distro to make it look more windows-like, I guess our time is just like this...

Cheers

Marin

Arch Linux is like installing Linux from it's very start to a full working desktop. You end up having an installation with everything specific to your Hardware configured correctly "if supported", and everything else that you really need. Other distros tend to install the general configuration which could be messy when you try to reconfigure. The whole process is not hard but not easy, because there are plenty of guides available but everything has to be done at first by typing.

I`m no linux expert but managed to get Arch linux running great on my T41. I liked the fact that i did it myself rather than the installer itself.




**excuse my english for spelling and grammar

I just started using Arch, because a friend of mine recommended it, and xubuntu stopped being able to boot up.
It's a very light and configurable distro, but it still has a package manager, which is nice.
I have mine running windowmaker. still trying to get pypanel's system tray to work, though (if anyone can help me with this, i'd be much obliged).

also while I'm in a relevent thread, can someone give me info on how to install 'thinkpad_acpi' I untarred it, but all it yielded was a single file, and I haven't been able to find anywhere what to do with said file. furthermore, does anybody know how I can configure linux to use thinkpad-related things such as volume keys, access ibm button, trackpoint scrolling, and backward/forward keys. It would also be nice if someone could tell me how to patch the kernal with Linux PHC

For the scrolling in Linux check this thread. Just a hint: ThinkWiki is an excellent source for information of the kind you are looking for

TheRedFox

You don't need to install anything for thinkpad_acpi, it's been included in kernels since 2.6.22 (you probably downloaded a patch)....this is all assuming you're using latest or a recent kernel. You'll need to:

1) install the acpi daemon, acpid, with pacman or yaourt
2) Add acpid to the daemons list in /etc/rc.conf
3) Load the thinkpad-acpi module by adding it to the modules list in /etc/rc.conf
4) You may want to blacklist asus_acpi/toshiba_acpi.

I would recommend poking around thinkwiki.org for some help on configuring acpi. Here are two wiki entries that might help as well:
http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/ACPI_hotkeys
http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/ACPI_modules

Regarding the extra keys, you may want to look at xbindkeys.

the daemons for wicd and acpid is already in my rc.conf, but it just won't show up on any panels or docker tray (I've tried perlpanel and pypanel)
thank you for your help
trackpoint scrolling would be useful though, if anyone could help me with that