[ltp] Re: [Re: Best Linux distro for ThinkPad T61...]

[Petar Milin]

Thanks to you all, who tried to give me an advice on best distribution 
for my T61.

It seem that few of them are good candidates, like Ubuntu, Debian, 
Gentoo, SuSE. However, according to messages here, and this link 
(http://temporaryland.wordpress.com/2007/11/23/finding-the-right-distro-for-my-thinkpad-t61-part1/), 
Mandriva is the best.

I want to tell that I am not new to Linux. Back in the late 90s, I tried 
some ancient SuSE. That was my firs experience with Linux. I use it on 
some desktop machine. Much later, with my first laptop (ThinkPad R31), 
there were some professional requirements, and I installed Ubuntu 5.10. 
Later, I was long happy with 6.06. Then, I changed machine, and moved to 
HP nx6220. Although laptop was fine and solid, I never made it happy 
with Linux. Thus, I decided to sell it, bought T61 and installed Ubuntu 
7.10, for a short, and then moved to Debian testing, as it was 
recommended by several friends. This was very good, until Lenny went 
stable and some serious move started with Gnome. Now, I am running the 
same Debian, but it is very shaky and more and more "unstable" like 
(sound brakes every while, fan is working much more, Evolution is buggy 
etc. etc. See: http://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=38743 and 
even better: http://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=39015).

To make long story short, after all experience with laptops, I am really 
happy with ThinkPads. However, I started to believe that when Linux runs 
in, it starts to become a marriage -- you need them both, machine and 
distribution to be happy with each other. Otherwise, sooner or later, 
after few upgrades, something will star to annoy.

For me, Linux is something that I need to lean on for my professional 
needs, not fun. And as much as I am ready to put efforts to make it 
work, later, I need not to worry. That is something I would leave for 
Win-world.

The only question that remains for me is how to get Mandriva with KDE 
3.5, i.e. Mandriva2008? I can download Mandriva2009 and it has KDE 4 by 
default. Although I read about possibility to downgrade to 3.5 with 
"urpmi task-kde3", I would prefer to have everything as clean as 
possible. Hence, where to find last Mandriva with KDE 3.5?

Thank you guys again for all the help.
Best,
PM

PS: Sorry for long confession... :-)