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.
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.
I love how even modern Linux distros run so damn well on what’s considered today ‘outdated’ hardware.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!
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 charge 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 prettierHell 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!
Welcome aboard! L15 Gen2A(MD) here. :)
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
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. :)
Nice choice, Thinkpads are amazing!
In general, business class laptops out of date are great value.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).
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?
Stop it.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
TempleOS?
Not Linux, and of course the perfect OS.
Which model? If you mind sharing.
T480
On thinkpads it is in the corner of the screen.
I feel like an old ThinkPad is like a right of passage on Linux. Just about everyone I know who uses Linux has had one at some point or another.
I used to use an old consumer Yoga, and now a new ThinkPad. Some say it’s the wrong way around, I say I want more than 2 cores and 8GiB of RAM. (Un-)Fortunately, I got hooked on the Nix and Tiling-WM drugs quite soon, and so there wasn’t a lot of distrohopping.
Still got an X201 somewhere. That thing learned me Linux, got me through school and found me a good job at a time when all I had was a backpack and that computer.
Some day I shall switch it on and update it.
Rocking an X260 myself. Picked it up for something like $100 on eBay a few years ago and it just keeps on ticking.
A T440p running Antergos got me through college. I regret selling it since that thing served me well 🫡
I love selling things that have served me well - it feels better knowing that they’re helping someone instead of sitting in a drawer, untouched.
