[ltp] Preferred distro for Thinkpads?

[Joel Ebel]

Linux distributions really are mostly a matter of preference, and all of 
them can be customized to do what you need, but some require more work 
than others.  I'm curious though, which distribution or distributions 
work with the most thinkpad features (frequency scaling, suspend that 
works right, buttons, fan control, other acpi features, etc) out of the 
box or with the least amount of effort.  I still use windows a lot on 
battery because I know the power management always works the best that 
the laptop can.  If I had a distribution that did it all on my thinkpad 
out of the box, rather than wasting my time tinkering with making it 
work how I want, I'd be more inclined to use it on battery.  Working out 
of the box limits this to a distribution that does that in general, such 
as ubuntu, mandriva, fedora, or suse.  Which of those four has the most 
thinkpad features and capabilities built right in?  I'm not really 
asking for just answers like "I use ubuntu and its great!"  I'd like to 
hear from someone who has used each of the latest versions of those and 
actually knows which supports the most.  In particular for my T40, but 
I'm curious about all of the recent thinkpad lines.

Thanks,
Joel

Tom Adelstein wrote:
> On Sun, 2005-08-14 at 16:46 +0200, Jaime Iniesta wrote:
> 
>>Hi, I'm currently a Fedora Core 4 user on my PC. I'm thinking about
>>trying a different distro on my new Thinkpad R52.
>>
>>I would like to know what distros are you using, and if there is a
>>"best distro" for Thinkpads. I'm thinking about installing Debian
>>Sarge, maybe Ubuntu.
> 
> 
> Hi,
> 
> I doubt you will find a consensus on Linux distributions for laptops and
> especially Thinkpads. IBM/Lenovo targeted in the hardware for the R
> series to Microsoft XP. 
> 
> Depending on your memory and processor, you will have to do some
> engineering to get Linux to work with your Thinkpad as well as it does
> with XP. Linux will run better on the Thinkpad, but it won't have all
> the features of XP. That's unfortunate, because XP requires significant
> maintenance to operate optimally. Personally, it's a PIA to run XP but
> it you wind up in a foreign 5 star hotel in a foreign country with
> Internet access you might discover the hotel using Dynamic DNS and
> Active Directory and you won't be able to long on wirelessly. So, XP
> would be handy if you need to work.
> 
> The lower the resources on your Thinkpad the better you will be with
> Debian distributions such as Ubuntu. But you have to make a lot of
> modifications. Still, it runs snappy on low resource R series.
> 
> If you have enough RAM and processor power, then you can use SUSE or the
> Novell Linux Desktop. You can also use Fedora Core4 and kill many
> unnecessary processes.
> 
> Experienced Linux people will find Gentoo a good choice again if you
> have the resources.
> 
> I dual boot mine since I travel and wind up in some places where just
> getting on-line is a blessing.
> 
> We'll get their in the near future, but for now, you might want to keep
> a partition for each.
> 
> I've published some articles on the subject of optimizing Linux and then
> on optimizing the Thinkpad.
> 
> http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/8308
> http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/8317
> http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/8462
> http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/8322
> 
> You might find them useful in getting the most out of your Linux
> distribution. The focus primarily on Ubuntu and Fedora.
>