[ltp] Getting T30. 3 questions

[geoff]

On Wed, 19 Oct 2005 7:52 pm, Jan Girlich wrote:
> >  Gentoo installer "Kororaa"?
>
> Well, this might be a bit OT, but I don't like this idea which I didn't
> know until now.
>
> It's a binary stage3-install.
>
> So all the main-advantages of gentoo are lost.
>
> You don't get chipset-optimization for your Laptop which might result in
> a pretty big _subjective_ performance-loss.
>
> It's installing a range of preselected packages which loads a lot of
> stuff on your system you won't use ever.
>
> It installs KDE, which might be a bad choice if you want an smaller
> desktop. Actually there is just a minor difference in power-consumption
> between KDE and a lightweight-desktop, but KDE might be slow and
> sluggish on older models.
>
> USE-Variables are already set, so you are installing support for a lot
> of things you probably won't need, thus resulting in larger binarys
> consuming more space in your RAM, using more swap, reducing battery-life
> because of disk-writes and -reads. I'm not sure about this, but that's
> what I think because of what I learned.
>
> I don't know where you are from: Australia? English-speaking community?
> Than it's no problem for you that all the packages are installed with
> localization for US-, AU- and GB-english. This might be very annoying if
> you'd like to have another locale.
>
> On the other hand it's a quick and easy installation. If you have a
> CD-ROM and don't need any advantages which gentoo offers. But then you
> might also want to try Fedora, Debian or any other binary-distribution
> with preinstalled selected packets etc. They might have a much better
> installer and better built-in-support for laptops.
>
> Bye
> Jan
Thanks Jan for your comments. I just picked up my Thinkpad T30 (2366) this 
morning. Got it off ebay and it's just like new :-) Do you or anyone know 
where I can get a manual for it. I read somewhere that the Thinkpad button is 
supposed to bring up an onscreen manual but it doesn't on mine. If it did 
work would it work in Linux as well? Is it built into the laptop and not the 
OS?
Now off to play with my new toy
Regards