Your favorite Linux distro on a Thinkpad? Why?

[skx]

With China and Intel being the most to contribute to Kernel development is interesting for me in this current political environment.

I don't know who is less trustworthy, Intel or Huawei? LOL

I see Columbia will probably install Huawei 5G.

Completely non relevant as we speak about the linux kernel which is fully opensource. Any additional lines of codes can and will be reviewed. Your comment only makes sense for proprietary products of intel and huawei which do not allow any review or auditing. The main reason why companies like Huawei are jumping on the linux bandwagon is because it is saving them billions of dollars software development costs. instead of doing their own mayonaise, they solely add their own needed hardware support in the existing linux kernel tree. i would be happy if all hardware vendors would contribute... instead of fingerpointing intel and huawei, fingerpoint Apple refusing to add 1 line of code!

[shawross]

Yes I don't see Intel or Huawei injecting malicious code but they would have an agenda to adapt the kernel to their products and steer development.

I see linux as the future and obviously so do the major shakers and movers in the world. I find that interesting.

[Glitchy]

I love Arch Linux a lot as it's my first love! but a few days ago got Gen1 X1 Yoga to run FreeBSD but I don't compile packages just using pkg install.
What is working? Touch screen - Yes with Pen as well.
Sim card? have not checked yet but I will as I have a spare sim card just to use on a ThinkPad.
FingerPrint - not checked but im sure it won't work.
Autorotation once in a tablet mode - still looking at how to activate it.
I would use FreeBSD on my P71 but no Cuda for FreeBSD so no P71 with FreeBSD... but running Arch Linux on it.
T61 - Arch. T440p- Arch.X220 - Arch. but all these are used when im bored and I want to try a new OS as sometimes I do distro-hopping lol.

[karotlopj]

Nice to see someone else using FreeBSD. I use hardly anything else. It's just a great well thought operating system and I've had no problems installing it on any of my ThinkPads. Although I have to admit there is something in the BIOS of a ThinkCentre M92 which prevents FreeBSD booting from a GPT disk

https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page= ... px=MTIyOTg

Apart from that I've had no problems.

[manafort]

Interesting thread. I've been using unix-based operating systems since 1983 and linux since 1998 for both professional and personal use - I only use Windoz about 1% of the time - usually for administrivia related to my employer. Although I've used thinkpads in the past (mostly from the T6x line) at the moment my personal laptop is a Dell Latitude E6420 with a core i7 CPU + an SSD for storage. Originally I installed 'standard' Ubuntu 14.04 on the computer. Boot time to the login prompt was ~ 8 sec. Then about a month ago I installed Xubuntu 14.04 on a friend's Thinkpad T60. I liked the look and feel of the XFCE GUI and decided to try Xubuntu on my latitude E6420. WOW - boot time to login prompt decreased to ~ 4 sec !! So obviously Xubuntu is what its claimed to be - much more lightweight. I stick with ubuntu because its easy to install and also is more or less required for some of my work-related projects. I didn't like the Unity desktop and the Ununtu software center approach to software package management. These just seem to be an approach to dumbing things down to the Windows level. I preferred the gnome desktop and the synaptic package manager.

Nice to see someone else using Ununtu. I use hardly anything else. It's just a great well thought operating system and I've had no problems installing it on any of my ThinkPads.

[skx]

Hello all, while all windows users are cursing and complaining about the upcoming W11 release, lets all be happy to have the Debian 11 new stable release coming soon yes, we linux users, are happy when new releases are coming our direction

[Omineca]

yes, we linux users, are happy when new releases are coming our direction

Henry V, Act IV, Scene iii: "We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;"

The best part is that if I want to be obstinate and keep using the unchanging desktop of LXDE, I can.

[axur-delmeria]

The best part is that if I want to be obstinate and keep using the unchanging desktop of LXDE, I can.

Been using XFCE for more than a decade already.
Tried MATE on a backup machine, it was back to XFCE after a few months.

[Omineca]

Been using XFCE for more than a decade already.
Tried MATE on a backup machine, it was back to XFCE after a few months.

Yeah, I've tried this n' that over the years, but I like a good combination of functionality and simplicity. XFCE's the next-best-thing!

[MisterB]

At the moment, I've got Ubuntu 14.04 LTS on my W510 and Mint 17.2 on my X201T. I like both. Mint is an easier adjustment from Windows. Ubuntu seems a bit slicker. I haven't used either enough to form any deep opinions. I recently worked on a laptop that was running Mint and it made a favorable impression on me because I was tweaking an OS I had no experience with whatsoever and the whole process went very smoothly so I decided to install it on one of my Thinkpads.

The X201T can boot from the SD card slot and I installed Mint on a 32gb SDHC card. I partitioned the card with a Linux system partition, a swap partition and a Fat32 data partition. The only difficulty I had was making the Fat32 partition visible in Windows. The trick was to make it the first partition and make sure the Linux installer saw it as SDA1 and the Linux Ext4 system partition as SDA2. It took me two installs to get that to work right but it is pretty nice now that it works. Windows only sees the Fat32 partition and grub is on the SD card so the main hard disk with Windows is untouched by the Linux install. The SD card feels a bit faster than a USB drive but I haven't done any benchmarking yet.

The last time I tried Linux was over 10 years ago. At the time, I found it a bit lacking for laptop use and gave up on it because I couldn't get ACPI fully working on the Compaq laptop I was using at the time. It has been a different experience with modern distros on a Thinkpad. I have also not been impressed with the latest versions of Windows and the direction Microsoft has been taking so Linux as a client OS has been much more of an attractive prospect to me these days. I am really impressed with how light both distros have been on system resources compared to Windows 7 64 bit. Mint 17.2 is using less than 5gbs of an 8gb system partition and when running with no apps loaded, under 500mb of ram. Just loading Windows 7 64 bit uses over 1gb of ram and the system partition is using around 28gb.

Kind of funny to read this after 9 years. These days I'm a very experienced Linux user who finds Windows to be the difficult OS, any version later than 8.1 is pretty much off the table. I did a couple of years running web, DNS and openvpn VPS servers all set up and administered by command line in SSH shells. I used Debian as my preferred server OS along with one instance of CentOS. That pretty much clinched it for me with Linux. It basically runs both the web and most Internet of things devices out there and the only place that Windows dominates is the desktop. These days I use Debian as my main distro for anything serious that requires security and stability and involves money. I use the Debian derived distros Mint and Ubuntu for media and entertainment with a preference for Mint. I use legacy windows in some of my older Thinkpads and Virutualbox VMs. I still use some Windows apps in Wine as well. And that hard to shake habit is the source of most of my Linux headaches. I rarely have issues with native Linux software but running Windows apps in Wine or Virtualbox creates a lot of configuration issues. I couldn't imagine going back to Windows. Linux is so much faster and simpler to keep up to date. I only have to reboot if I'm upgrading an OS version. Normal updates are done by command line without rebooting and just take a few minutes. And they're done at my convenience, not Microsoft's.

[unix_joe]

Just an update, I personally switched to Debian from OpenBSD a couple of years ago.
I moved the rest of the family over to Debian as well. I have a fleet of computers in the house now and it's just easier and simper to support a single operating system.
I just follow stable, enable backports, and add a few flatpaks.
Everything is great.
I transitioned from OpenBSD while bullseye was still in freeze, and just kept it going from there. Now on bookworm.
The kids have no problem with Gnome and use it daily for gaming and schoolwork.
My wife moved back from macOS and it's fine.

[muirrum]

I've bounced around between different distros since I started using Linux a while ago. I think my favorite so far for thinkpads has been Arch/Artix, mainly because of binary packages and excellent documentation.

I've been playing around with Gentoo and the BSDs recently, though my T430's older CPU can't really keep up with source-based distros with reasonable upgrade times. Beyond that (and occasionally waiting longer to install from the AUR), my thinkpads have basically only run Linux.

[Temetka]

I have been toying around with Arch on my Yoga 12 and T470.

To be honest, I am liking it quite a bit.

Ran Mint for a number of years while switching back and forth between it and BunsenLabs.

Tried PopOS for a hot minute. It's actually pretty nice.

[xaemhdvt]

If I use Linux then I use Exherbo or Gentoo, as I do a lot of operating systems development and being able to quickly recompile whichever package I am working on is a key benefit to me. I mostly use illumos and FreeBSD though.

[dleon1990]

For me my favorite distro is Linux mint mate. Mint Mate reminds me of windows 7 and its very user friendly that anyone new to linux could understand.

[rumbero]

Since none of the Linux distros out there fully cover my own needs, i roll my own based on Debian since about 2012.
It is called Window Maker Live and has always been developed on and for Thinkpads because that's what i use.

The average user rating on https://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=wmlive is 9 of 10 points.
The distrowatch description is rather outdated and inaccurate though, better trust the one on my own project page wmlive.sourceforge.net.

Window Maker Live still runs also on older 32bit machines. The oldest laptop i successfully tested it on is a Thinkpad T23 with 1GB RAM.
ISO images for good old 32bit ("i386") and 64bit ("amd64") machines can be downloaded via wmlive.sourceforge.net

[Fostel]

Pop!OS

It is Debian based (Ubuntu specifically)
has support for Nvidia dGPU
drive encryption
removed snap
installed flatpak
out of the box

[unix_joe]

Since none of the Linux distros out there fully cover my own needs, i roll my own based on Debian since about 2012.
It is called Window Maker Live and has always been developed on and for Thinkpads because that's what i use.

The average user rating on https://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=wmlive is 9 of 10 points.
The distrowatch description is rather outdated and inaccurate though, better trust the one on my own project page wmlive.sourceforge.net.

Window Maker Live still runs also on older 32bit machines. The oldest laptop i successfully tested it on is a Thinkpad T23 with 1GB RAM.
ISO images for good old 32bit ("i386") and 64bit ("amd64") machines can be downloaded via wmlive.sourceforge.net

Do you have a Mastodon account? I posted a screenshot of wmlive there and people are asking.

[rumbero]

Do you have a Mastodon account? I posted a screenshot of wmlive there and people are asking.

Sorry no, I don't do social media if it is not read-only accessible for unregistered users.
If this is not the case for Mastodon, please provide a link.

[unix_joe]

Do you have a Mastodon account? I posted a screenshot of wmlive there and people are asking.

Sorry no, I don't do social media if it is not read-only accessible for unregistered users.
If this is not the case for Mastodon, please provide a link.

Thanks. I've installed Window Maker Live on my X201 and also on my T43p. It works well.

Regarding the Mastodon thing, it's pretty inclusive, and you can set it up to be viewable without registering. I think the biggest thing is that images you post need to have ALT text for people who are visually impaired. There are lots of servers, all federated, but the biggest one is at https://mastodon.social/

Thanks!

[freeagent]

Early on, I installed and dual booted Ubuntu. Only because it existed and I wanted to learn about it. But I gave up on that back then, likely before Windows 7.

Now, I have space to add a Linux distro. May do that, but reading this thread reminds me of just why many of us average users will never go to Linux as our OS of choice.

How about installing Android on our Thinkpads? Many of us are already familiar with our Android phone and tablets, so no learning curve. And we could run the same apps without the memory/storage limitations of the portable devices.

This link describes Phoenix OS, which I thought had been discontinued, but it seems not: https://www.techspot.com/downloads/7016-phoenix-os.html Any others that should be looked at?

[755cdxd]

How about installing Android on our Thinkpads? Many of us are already familiar with our Android phone and tablets, so no learning curve. And we could run the same apps without the memory/storage limitations of the portable devices.

Android nowadays is just as bloated as windows, I think manufacturers put 8gb of ram into every smartphone. What is the point?
Most android devices are based on arm processors, most "app`s" (binary programs) will not work on x86 thinkpads without emulators.
Not to mention that Android is just yet another linux distributive with SELinux and [censored] of other complex things(spyware) no sane person would ever touch...
It seems you don't get what's going on... There always will be a learning curve as long as you don't just take everything "they" force down your throat. You HAVE to learn "computer" if you don't want to buy a new hardware "they" are trying to sell you, you HAVE to spend your time learning how computer systems should work if you don't want "them" to spy on you.
Git gud.

[freeagent]

It seems you don't get what's going on...

I suspect I have been around this stuff for a lot longer than you have. I see Windows and Androids as the best we have (not counting Apple) for personal use. Both work and have world wide acceptance. There are reasons why.

[755cdxd]

I suspect I have been around this stuff for a lot longer than you have. I see Windows and Androids as the best we have (not counting Apple) for personal use. Both work and have world wide acceptance. There are reasons why.

Around what stuff? You just said you are *avarge* user who gave up on Ubuntu. You clearly don't understand what are you talking about.

[freeagent]

Around what stuff?

Computers of all types since 1963.

Anyway, end of discussion for me. You need to learn some manners.

[755cdxd]

Around what stuff?

Computers of all types since 1963.

Anyway, end of discussion for me. You need to learn some manners.

I wonder why you don't run android on your pc. There must be a reason, thought.
Feel free to try and write a guide for us! I'm sure many guys would happily switch from windows to x86 android(linux) system with absolutely no support and binary compatibility.

Best regards,

[thinkpadt41p]

Right now it's Bazzite for anything remotely newish.
It just works and I avoid the "upgrade the entire distro" caveat which Ubuntu has.