Linux OoO Thread (problems, distros, etc)

Ha LINUX

What distro u try?

Tried
Gentoo - had prob with xorg cuz of the video card (fixed)
Mandriva - umm to eas y
Ubuntu - umm prety easy had to install wifi-radar
Fedora C4 - it worked nicely had to istall wireless stuff
Suse - worked but I dont like Suse

What u try?

I also tried IPCOP... Used a PCMCIA ethernet card and built in ethernet and created a thinkpad firewall...

 

I have only done Unbuntu. It works pretty well right out of the box.

 

I'm actually just trying to decide right now whether it would even be worthwhile for me to install some version of Linux, because all of the spiffy ThinkPad software won't do me any good then. For that matter, how would one install another OS without breaking the recovery partition (which I would like to keep, I think).

However, it probably would be a good idea to have a backup OS in case I screw up Windows again, and Gentoo does have that graphical installer now...

 

Which spiffy ThinkPad software do you mean, specifically? IBM/Lenovo are actually better than most at Linux support - that's a big reason why I'm looking at a X60 instead of a Sony sz series - the sz has theoretically better specs (though I'm concerned about reliability and support) but the Lenovo has a far better chance of running Linux with all the bells and whistles.

I strongly suggest you look at http://thinkwiki.org - look for the model you have, and check each of the components for support. For example, for the X60 there are drivers for:
- the intel graphics chipset
- the wifi chipset (sadly through a closed-source driver)
- the fingerprint reader (again closed-source)
- the SD card slot
- the pcmcia slot

drivers are in some stage of development for:
- the Active Protection System
- the "trusted" computing chips

Note the only area of linux problems with ThinkPads is those with an ATI X1000+ graphics card - because ATI have not yet released a driver for them at all (it's "in development") so you have to use VESA drivers, which are (a)2d only, and (b)have problems with non-standard resolutions.

Most modern distributions should have no problems at all ignoring the recovery partition - they just resize your Windows partition (it helps to defrag it first) and then create a new partition for themselves in the newly free space. They will only remove the recovery partition if you tell them to.

- Korny

 

Access IBM, the Thinkvantage suite, Access IBM, the fingerprint software., the active protection system... all of that. I don't use all of it, but I do use some of it and it's very nice to have.

That's good to know. My big concern is that I've heard that Ubuntu, at least, may cause the recovery partition to stop functioning. To be sure, I haven't really looked into it, so I don't know if that's accurate.

Anyways, thanks for the info. I'll have to spend some more time on Thinkwiki and figure everything out.

 

It's no concern at all. After you have Ubuntu up and running you don't need that recovery partition anymore

Seriously, ubuntu won't mess the recovery partition, only you could (same way you could mess the windows partition).

I have debian in my work notebook (T40) and I just got X31 and was bit of a hurry to have it in use so I did put Ubuntu to it. Everything works out of the box from wireless lan to speedstepping. Excellent!