X40/Lubuntu/XP General Questions

[wjbmd48]

Hi:

I've got several X40s running for various purposes: travel, home use, ""stereo system," family and friend loaners, etc., running the original Hitachi spinning drives as well as Kingspec SSDs. My level of expertise in all of this is beginner-moderate. I *love* the combination of 4x3 screen aspect and weight of these things, and want to keep them running as long as possible; I've not seen a newer system that I like better.

I have 2 questions:

1) The fully patched/updated XP systems are running slower and slower (especially with whole disk encryption), even newly reimaged and updated, presumably because XP is getting fatter and fatter. I don't mind running the much faster unpatched systems for non-secure use--I even run a separate network for these things--but I need updated systems for secure use. Does anyone have any ideas or thoughts about what to do about this, especially now that XP will supposedly be nonsupported after April 2014?

2) I'm running Lubuntu 12.04 on the others and loving it, *but* it's not long-term supported. 13.04 won't load because the X-40 is non-PAE. 14.04 will be LTS, but I'm guessing it won't load either. Does anyone have an general thoughts on this?

Thanks!

Bill

[Neil]

Hi Bill, welcome to thinkpads.com!

I'm right there with you about the X40...I have two of them, and while I have newer systems, I still love the X40 form factor. As to your questions:

1) Not much point in trying to use XP for a secure system after next spring. You can probably find some speed tweaks online to use in the mean time. I don't use Windows on my X40 machines any longer, since I boot from CF cards in both of them.

2) Linux is a fine choice for these machines. If you don't want to have to re-install with every new release, go with a rolling, or semi-rolling release model. I have AntiX on one of mine, and for me, it's about the perfect distro for the X40. My other one is running Debian Sid with a stripped down XFCE desktop provided by linuxbbq. Both AntiX and LinuxBBQ are built on non-PAE Debian kernels, and so will be ideal for the X40.

[wjbmd48]

Neil:

I cannot thank you enough, really!

I shall play around with AntiX--does it support whole-disk encryption?

Bill

[Neil]

I don't use encrypted disks, but yes Debian does support disk encryption. Here is one how to on the subject:
http://madduck.net/docs/cryptdisk/

[wjbmd48]

Again, many thanks; have a happy T-day.

Bill