And of course I’m installing Linux on it. Install went well, even the fingerprint sensor built in to the laptop works.
Mostly this will be a school and DND machine but always nice to have a functional laptop for whatever else I may need it for.
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- 18 hours
Congrats!
Personally rocking Dell Latitude 7490, it is much similar to ThinkPads in scope and layout, down to the iconic knob. An absolute beast for the $200 I paid for it (used). Endless battery, USB-C charging, zero lag and throttling, complete Linux support, famous robustness, and a premium feel in everything, from the materials (the best soft touch plastic I’ve ever experienced) to the build quality.
It’s the kind of laptop you just want to have in your hands. Hope your ThinkPad will give you the same experience :)
- 19 hours
Awesome, welcome to the club!
I just upgraded from a T420 (bought new) to an X13 Gen 3. I like the much better screen and the much lower weight, but I miss the old style keyboard…
- 20 hours
I got an old HP ProBook from my parents because they got a new one. I also installed Linux Mint on it :D Everything works, the keyboard lights, the wifi, the preset buttons work the same.
it’s really fun trying out Linux on older hardware. Don’t know when was the last time I had fun with playing around tech stuff. Linux really made it fun again for me
- 20 hours
there’s currently a retired T420 in my home and a stalwart E15 assisting me with my everyday computing needs.
make sure you say ‘thank you for your service’ every morning.
20 hoursWhere and what price? wanna buy one for myself too, what models do you recommend?
- 20 hours
Mint is great, LMDE is even better; same newbie friendliness, away from Ubuntu specifics
- 20 hours
As a newb, could you please help me understand why you prefer Debian to Ubuntu?
- 19 hours
In this context,it’s to make newcomers get used to a more open ended version of Linux that has derivatives, to get more mainstream versions of packages so that if they eventually want something more specific, they are learning slight tweaks.
Ubuntu is Debian with a layer of idiosyncratic things applied to it, the new user will need to unlearn those idiosyncrasies and apply new ones.
Also Ubuntu has some controversies associated with it, so the new user should stick to something more … Whatever the antonym of controversial is
I love how even modern Linux distros run so damn well on what’s considered today ‘outdated’ hardware.
I love Linux Mint btw! I think you did a great choice! Even though it’s known as the beginner friendly distro, I think it’s just a damn great distro for pretty much anyone, experienced or newbies. Fantastic choice!
- 2 days
And by outdated, like 2015. Old E7440s or even older work great with added memory. New battery and you have a nice laptop out of the e waste pile. The only weak spot are drives, SSDs are expensive so to stay cheap you might have to use old spinny in there.
- 2 days
More like 2005
Pentium m laptops are almost useable. The biggest issue is the lack of 32 bit software.
- 18 hours
Also true. It’s currently my media ripping machine. If I find a cheap 2 GHz pentium m I might put it in.
- 2 days
I’ve got a Acer Aspire One with an Atom in it that I still use. The form factor is awesome, I wish it was 64 bit and 4 gig though. Just use it for emergency firewall management as I don’t think it is getting updates.
- 2 days
Some of those atoms use weird powervr graphics that aren’t supported by anything. Mine has an ati gpu which is helpful.
- 2 days
Yea i wanted to give it a shot since ive been thinking of switching to mint on my desktop. Right now I run kubuntu on my main machine and for the past few years its been great, and the only thing thats really kept me has been KDE plasma. I may just bite the bullet and install plasma in mint cause so far, I’m still not a fan of cinnamon.
- 2 days
I really want to know why we are staring at basically the same screen from decades ago. Why isn’t GRUB menu a fancy little thing by now?
When I was a kiddo, dabbling in duel boot, I remember this screen. It was slightly more basic, but pretty much the same. I always figured it would eventually get upgraded to something more… I don’t know, fun to look at? Something minimal, but also customizable… background image, background music, maybe a menu for doing customizations right there… like what options are to be shown.
No… it’s pretty much the same. Why?
Edit: I realize that I am stupid. It’s because GRUB needs to survive when everything else is broken. GRUB is the first and last standing soldier. Its simplicity is a feature enabling that capacity. But also, you can customize GRUB if you want… so I am just dumb. Have a good day.
Because there is very little overlap between “programmers who design the systems to be as efficient and reliable as possible” and “UX designers who consider elegance and ease of use, even if it means the install is a few extra MB in size”.
Tons of FOSS UIs tend to fall into one of three categories:
- CLI. Maybe a third-party GUI exists.
- Laughably horrendous monstrosities that make early 90’s websites look good
- A direct ripoff of a paid software that has actual UX designers.
It’s because the people designing the FOSS aren’t UX designers, so they either make their best guess at it (the laughably horrendous choice) or they just copy whatever paid software they’re trying to replace.
- 20 hours
I wish it didn’t but I don’t want to risk breaking it and I don’t want to risk breaking it just for it to be white on black, and I don’t know what I’d have instead
yeah you already said it in your edit, but just to respond anyways:
grub’s simplicity is a feature. it does one thing and does it well.
- 2 days
Why isn’t GRUB menu a fancy little thing by now?
Because you can’t improve on perfection
If you wanted, you could make a clean and capable boot picker like Apple does with their macs and frankly every hackintosh does. But we don’t. Because nerdcore is a thing.
There is no software that does theming for GRUB that doesn’t break it badly and was stopped mid development and GRUB 2.0 takes deep knowledge of how it works to theme it without breaking it.
Hell the little bit of theming they added to Ventoy has them slowing GRUB updates to make sure that it is tested and tested again before they roll it out and break everyone’s install without knowing it.
I plan on doing it but I really don’t have time for it right now or any time in the future.
It’s because GRUB needs to survive when everything else is broken. GRUB is the first and last standing soldier.
And there you are, right on the raggedty edge. Well done, Sir or Madam.
- 2 days
You can absolutely rice your GRUB install. I haven’t used it in a hot minute, but I definitely had ones in the past that were themed.
Congrats on the Thinkpad. I look forward to your next post on /c/unixsocks.
I have 2 ThinkPads - a Yoga 370 and a Yoga X13, both running different Linux flavours and they’re honestly the best laptops I’ve ever had. Very capable, sturdy, great keyboards, working touchscreens, pens and fingerprint scanners, passwordless encryption with TPM+LUKS.
The 370 struggles a bit with heavy browser usage sometimes but otherwise they’re both rock solid
- 1 day
I miss my Yoga 730. Best laptop I’ve ever had. The 2-in-1 and pen support carried me through uni. All my lecture notes could be typed and diagramed as needed in the moment.
- 2 days
I got 5 T420s (nice) from my boss last year. Now they’re all running Linux and loaded up with late 90s, early 2000s games to play over LAN
- 2 days
All the best! My SO runs a T480s, the elegant one, for years now, switched to Debian after U went super-slow on her.
I went all fancy-schmancy with a Yoga x390, debian too.
Both cheap secondhand, both issue-free (and both with touchscreen!). Whish the official batteries where still available tho.
This one does. I think certain IPS models got the feature. Tbh, not really much of a touchscreen guy for laptops but I wont say no
- 2 days
Not all of them, we were lucky I think. Yoga’s have it by their very 2-in-1 nature, nice little things, classy matte black like any Thinkpad should be.
- 2 days
Thinkpads are great. But how did you get the fingerprint scanner to work? Mine does not work.
I followed this guide, worked right out of the box:
https://github.com/SeniorMatt/How-to-enable-fingerprint-in-Linux-Mint-for-T480
Wow I literally just installed mint cinnamon on a T590 like an hour ago. Small world!
Great minds think alike haha. Good for you brother. Hope it works well for you.
