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.
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.
I dunno, I run Debian and my GRUB looks like this:
INSTALL GENTOO
Congrats on the Thinkpad. I look forward to your next post on /c/unixsocks.
I love how even modern Linux distros run so damn well on what’s considered today ‘outdated’ hardware.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!
And by outdated, like 2015.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.
More like 2005
Pentium m laptops are almost useable. The biggest issue is the lack of 32 bit software.
Cool! What model did you get? Despite the high prices right now, I’m also considering a new one right now, because my old one, which I love, does start to show its age a bit.
T480 but I’m wondering 7th or 8th gen Intel. Both options were offered.
Hell yea! Welcome to the Thinkpad Owners Club.
I have a L440, I was not able to find a T440 on a decent status. Solid laptop, enjoy!
just recently i’ve installed cachyos (after a few months of mint) on my t420 and it works really well
for instance the partial battery charging works (on mint you need to install extra stuff and configure via file, on cachy it’s just part of the power settings)
but also generally i feel it’s a bit quicker and prettierI have cachy aswell not on my thinkpad im still running endevour there do you use plasma as destop eviorment
yeah, i wasn’t a fan of plasma, but i’ve used it on my desktop and my deck and i got quite fond of it
HELL yeah! I have an E16 and it plays Factorio and other simple games (plus emulators) so it’s perfect! And of course it’s running Mint. :D
(simple graphically. Factorio is not simple. lol.)
My Thinkpad (X201) can’t even play Terraria well but I love it. :)
T480, a gentelman and a scholar
Be careful of USB C ports. They are unreliable but absolutely required to charge.
It’s not a real ThinkPad if it doesn’t have a keyboard frontlight.
If it has a red clit, it’s a ThinkPad, that’s the only rule.
No matter how niche the topic, there will always be at least one person willing to gatekeep it.
Right on! I’ve been using a refurbished t14s for years. Which one did you catch?
Edit: nvm, I see it’s a T480. Solid choice!
Yep. Personally my first choice is the t490. Theres so many in great condition.
I like to imagine the IT debt in some office building buying and hording t490s just to be sure they don’t lose their budget next year.
Welcome to the cult :)
“Excuse me, are y’all with the cult?”
“We’re not a cult. We’re an organization that promotes open source”
“Yeah, this is it”
I am home, brother. :)
Thinkpads are awesome. They aren’t as good as they used to be, but they still work great for linux.
Why mint?
I use mint as my “TV room” OS. It’s worked pretty well so far.
Mostly for compatibility and ease of use. I don’t wanna fiddle with things if I don’t have to. Wanted it to be stable. Ive also been thinking about switching to mint on my main machine so this is also kind of a test run. I tried mint years ago but it didn’t work well for me back then.
Can you give an example of a Linux distro that isn’t stable, that you have to “fiddle” with?
Gentoo is great. I can configure it exactly the way I want. I switched to it after redhat went enterprise and never looked back. Stage 1 install.
However, sometimes packages get out of sync an I have build problems that need to be diagnosed.
Sometimes some packages get deprecated & I have to redo my configuration.
Deprecating python 2.7 was especially fun.
Back in the day, manual config of x11 was needed and that was fun. Back in the redhat days, the x11 configuration was in multiple places which was confusing.
Sound still is erratic after the laptop goes to sleep.
I did a manual transition from X to Wayland and that took a bit of learning.
Stop it.
Stop it.
Get some help.
— Michael Jordan
Arch
my brother uses arch…by the way.
he tells me to install it. I say “fuck no, thank you”
You should try it, to get a taste of what is possible, then learn what to do, and maybe even stay. But it’s not for beginners, the terminal-phobic, or people that rarely use their PC.
It won’t bite you. I’ve been using it professionally and privately for over a decade without issues. If it sounds interesting to you, try it out. It’s very mature. 👍
I’ve ranted at length many times on Lemmy about how Arch is very stable and doesn’t need fiddling. You can check my comment history, I’m not feeling like repeating myself right now. 💀 Arch not being “stable” is a myth.
There seems to be a misunderstanding in the definition of “stable” for distros. Arch is solid, it’ll rarely break, when it breaks it’ll be mostly due to the users own interest in fiddling with the system in the first place. But Arch follows the rolling-release model, with incremental updates which may require manual intervention — again, happens on very rare occasions — it differs from the stable release model, where distros like Debian have small changes, more guided towards security rather than having the newest software.
So by definition I wouldn’t say Arch is stable, even if it’s not the common usage, it’s best to describe that it requires system management and maintenance, but it’s not brittle, unlike Windows.
it’s best to describe that it requires system management and maintenance
This is also a myth, on both counts. This is assuming you always install every single update to all packages as soon as it’s released, and have to do so just because there’s a new version. That’s not how Arch operates. You are in charge of initiating an upgrade. It’s a manual command that you run, right.
If you upgrade often, you’re more likely to run into buggy releases. Just upgrade less often and reduce your likelihood of installing buggy latest releases. Just like Debian and other such distros do. You’re in charge on Arch.
This is only one way of mitigating risk that you can do, but I do concede that Arch does not take every precaution that other distros do to ensure that broken packages are not released. They do however follow up with news posts if there’s an issue, with info about what to do. This is an awesome thing.
But still, I haven’t had an issue in over a decade, upgrading packages probably once a week or so.
There’s no “maintenance” other than what you create for yourself. This Arch = “maintenance” (whatever that entails in everyone’s mind) nonsense has got to be put to bed.
The whole point of a bleeding-edge and rolling-release distro is that you get the lastest packages available. If you wait longer for the buggy updates to get fixed, then it doesn’t make it any different from Mint and other stable distros. It might even be worse because even if you wait, every update would still include a package that may be buggy because of the nature of rolling releases.
If you update once or twice a week, chances are there are literally hundreds of packages to upgrade every time. There’s no chance someone will look into every single one of these packages to verify what could potentially ‘break’ their system or not. They just upgrade the whole thing and THEN, if something breaks, they work around it.
As someone who uses CachyOS daily as my main distro, I wouldn’t install it on a device for someone that doesn’t want to do some maintenance from time to time. Maybe I wouldn’t go as far to say that it is UNSTABLE, but point release distros such as Mint or Debian are definitely more stable and require much less maintenance. Rolling release distros are, naturally, much riskier.
this is total bullshit. you need to update for security reasons. and every time you update, you get the latest version with allpossible incompatibilities. even if you are updating only a few times per month, you don’t update to a “known working state”, you update to the latest package version with all problems that might come with it.
also long times between updates can cause various other problems.
If you upgrade often, you’re more likely to run into buggy releases. Just upgrade less often and reduce your likelihood of installing buggy latest releases. Just like Debian and other such distros do. You’re in charge on Arch.
While it’s true you can do that, then why choose Arch in the first place? One of the key elements in the philosophy for Arch is: Modernity, i.e. to always have the latest version to be the stable version, aka the rolling release model. You can choose not to upgrade, but it can be a immense footgun. There’s a reason it’s harder to upgrade between release versions in distros like Debian.
Besides being a stable release doesn’t guarantee no bugs either, only that they don’t change. Meaning as long as the bugs are minor or can be bypassed, it’s still considered stable.
This is only one way of mitigating risk that you can do, but I do concede that Arch does not take every precaution that other distros do to ensure that broken packages are not released. They do however follow up with news posts if there’s an issue, with info about what to do. This is an awesome thing.
No doubt, but you do have to keep track of this. People non familiar with it may find their systems temporarily borked if they don’t. One good mention for those of interest is their incredible documentation, it can also be used as a reference for other distros too.
But still, I haven’t had an issue in over a decade, upgrading packages probably once a week or so.
There’s no “maintenance” other than what you create for yourself. This Arch = “maintenance” (whatever that entails in everyone’s mind) nonsense has got to be put to bed.
In over a decade using Arch, I have encountered bugs or changes when upgrading packages, following a similar upgrade cadence. I also used packages that have been deprecated from the official repository, and then maintaned by users in the AUR. These are things that break the users experience and require maintenance. Regardless if it’s a bug or not, or if it happens once or twice a year, the user has to pay close attention.
It doesn’t need fiddling, but it invites you to do so. And the default setup is hardly a best practice: swap on a partition, no FDE, no zram… missing FDE in particular will require you to reinstall, and you better have found out how to do proper backups including metadata.
TempleOS?
Not Linux, and of course the perfect OS.
Welcome aboard! L15 Gen2A(MD) here. :)
In general, business class laptops out of date are great value. Love my bathtub T440p (replace clunkpad and TN screen, 3 drives baby) and T580 (get the dock if you can).
