[ltp] Thinkpad fanboy ramble Re: What T for Fedora?

[Keith Lofstrom]

On Sat, Jan 12, 2019 at 05:47:50PM -0500, D. Hugh Redelmeier wrote:
> At least in the past, Lenovo seems to treat failure to run Linux as a
> bug.  Officially the probably only support a few distros (RHEL, Suse,
> and maybe Ubuntu).  And probably on a few select hardware builds.

Long blovation follows:

My first laptop was a Dell; it had a power supply fault
so I sent it in for warranty repair.  It spent a /month/
waiting in a storage warehouse in Austin.  Paid for by
Airborne Express; Dell was swamped and refused delivery,
then blamed the delay on Airborne.

So, I ditched Dell and bought a Thinkpad T30, installing
Redhat.  That worked well for a year, then the T30 also
developed a power supply fault.  PEBKAC?

I sent it to IBM (from Portland to Nashville by Airborne
Express) for repair on a Monday afternoon; Tuesday morning
an IBM service tech called.  "Your laptop is fixed, but
before we ship it back, we would like permission to upgrade
your BIOS.  We see that you are running Linux.   We tested
this new BIOS with all the common distros.  If you agree,
we'll flash the BIOS and deliver your laptop tomorrow
morning."  It was.  I was THRILLED. and have been a
Thinkpad Fanboy ever since. 

Lenovo, not so much, but still way ahead of most vendors.

I haven't upgraded since the T60 and X61.  I demand 4x3 
screens, and I stockpile spares.  I write papers, book
chapters, and wiki pages.  I do not watch movies, I do
not tweet or SMS or "like", and I do NOT like runt
("wide") screens; they remind me of the Tandy TRS-80
model 100 portable with the 8 line text display. 

And I love trackpoints.  Touchpads aren't useful when you
get old and shaky; elderly friends with Parkinsons can't
use touchpads.

Perhaps someday, an obscenely wealthy Thinkpad zealot will
pay for the re-development of a custom 4x3 screen Thinkpad
with a trackpoint; I'll buy one too.  Until then, I hope
that my stockpile lasts, and Kahlon keeps making batteries
for T60 and X61.

Keith

-- 
Keith Lofstrom          keithl at keithl.com