[NCLUG] Trying to check ThinkPad support for Linux

[Chad Perrin]

On Thu, Apr 22, 2010 at 12:55:05PM -0600, Ryan J Nicholson wrote:
> I am shopping for a laptop to run Debian. I was putting this purchase
> off for official built-in wireless-N support, and had hoped to
> purchase a ThinkPad. However, I also want a 4:3 (non-widescreen)
> display, ruling out any new offerings. My reading seems to point to
> the ThinkPad T60 series, which is still for sale through
> third-parties. One of my problems, though, is that my old laptop, a
> Dell, has high-frequency noises from the power supply and the disk
> drive (and it drives me crazy in a quiet room). I always told myself I
> would pay very, very close attention to acoustics in my next laptop
> purchase. Does anyone in this group have a ThinkPad that runs Linux
> well? Or maybe, a T60? If so I'd love to be able to see and demo your
> machine before I make an online, nonreturnable purchase. I will also
> be calling around to the Lenovo resellers in our area to see if anyone
> might have one of these in use or for sale.

ThinkPads in general are very quiet laptops.  For 32b systems, they tend
to run Centrino chipsets with the Pentium M, which tends to run hot (it's
okay, they're designed that way), but my T60 is running a Centrino Duo
which is not exactly the same thing despite the similar name and doesn't
run particularly hot.

I'm running FreeBSD on the thing, and everything's pretty well supported
so far, though I haven't bothered tackling ACPI support for suspending to
RAM or disk yet.  Most ThinkPads use either ATI or Intel graphics; the
former is necessary for stuff like playing World of Warcraft, but the
latter should be fine for pretty much anything short of that (and it's
what I'm using, since ATI has been slow to support FreeBSD as well as
Linux).

I hope that helps.

-- 
Chad Perrin [ original content licensed OWL: http://owl.apotheon.org ]
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