Linux installation guide for thinkpad?

Hey everyone,

I have a thinkpad x201, and I would like to install Linux on it, probably Ubuntu. Does anyone know where I could find a guide or reference material?

Thanks!

 

You can try ThinkWiki which is a good resource for general Linux installations on ThinkPad's.

 

I agree, thinkwiki sounds good.
Most likely you won't even really need that. Just pop in the installation CD and everything should work right out of the box.

 

Yeah, Thinkpads are usually well supported in Linux. When I installed Ubuntu 10.04 on my T400, everything worked out of the box. It was easier than installing Windows.

 

It helps if you stick with the nVidia/Intel parts as both of those have excellent Linux support.

 

if present OS is windows, then easiest way to install Ubuntu is using Wubi from Wubi - Ubuntu Installer for Windows. No need to download a CD, no need to partition, no need to choose 32bit or 64bit; very easy to delete if you want to later. I did it, and have been very very happy with my now dual boot system.

 

imho cheapest, safest and most realistic way to play with Linux is to have a secondary hdd.. you can mess with it as much you want, as long you have your main hdd aside.

once you're pretty confortable with it, you'll use it more and more, eventually you'll want to stay and main hdd won't be main anymore, you'll have another problem, how to move your stuff from older hdd

ps: if you're a total new to linux I would use virtualbox or something similar to see if I can handle it or not...

pps: just my 2c

 

it is very easy to dualboot ubuntu with windows as long as you partition your hdd, that way you still have a backup in case you need a program in windows not supported in ubuntu.

If your windows partition is NTFS, you can use it as a shared partition for media/document files(windows will not be able to use ext3 or ext4 formatted partitions that ubuntu is installed on). if not, you can just format a third partition as ntfs (in total windows/linux/shared) and use it for mutual storage.

 

@firstwave Apparently most thinkpads support linux well but having downloaded ubuntu 9.10 and 10.10 myself I can say that the installation process is not at all smooth (compared to my experiences with installing xp and ubunu 9.10 on a toshiba satellite).

Have you tried the typical installation yet? Most X201 users are having difficulty due to the arrandale chipset. The video card, although non-dedicated, is rather advanced with current ubuntu kernels available.

*edit: I only installed 9.10 and 10.04 for jaunty

 

Running Ubuntu 10.04 64 bit dual-boot with Win7 32 on a W500, using the dedicated ATI gpu in preference to the Intel integrated. Not a problem. Boots in a flash (though I do have an SSD).

 

Slackware64 13.1 installed with no problems and pretty much ran right out of the box without the need to do anything extra.