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ive been running my T23 dual boot windows xp and debian linux for about 2 years. it works great. though i dont think the laptop is that out of date

Agreed, I have a 900MHz ThinkPad T22 that's running just fine with XP Pro SP2

"The T23 is known as perhaps the best succeeded Thinkpad model and it does feel great...."

It even has a usable build in keyboard. Where are these useless "Windows" keys? Glad I can't find them on the picture published in the article. :-)

Furthermore, like his predecessors, the T23 has a trackpoint (this is how IBM calls the "touch stick" in the article) instead of these blurry touchpads with their habit of getting dirty and being imprecise.

It's a nice little machine that is worth keeping it alive for a while. For programming, diagnostics, for watching CDs and DVDs and even for gaming it's quite good. And it's nice to see it works fine with Linux.

>It even has a usable build in keyboard. Where are these useless "Windows" keys?

Why do you call the Windows keys useless?
I use them quite often:
Win+D to show the desktop (iconifying all the windows)
Win+L to lock your PC
And more rarely:
Win+R to run a command

Too bad, Linux distribs, by default, doesn't use the same shortcut keys..

On a desktop the windows keys are fine, however on a laptop they just get in the way.

"Why do you call the Windows keys useless?"

Because they are, at least to the average user.

"I use them quite often:
Win+D to show the desktop (iconifying all the windows)
Win+L to lock your PC
And more rarely:
Win+R to run a command "

You're marking yourself as a quite professional "Windows" user because you know this. The L and D combination weren't even known to me. Tje average user uses the mouse more than the keyboard, and he usually avoids these keys.

"Too bad, Linux distribs, by default, doesn't use the same shortcut keys.."

Just have a look at the configuration dialog of your favourite desktop environment (KDE or Gnome) or the window manager of your choice, you can surely configure it this way. This should not be very hard to do. But I don't think KDE's or Gnome's developers will implement these functions by default.

At work, I use an Apple USB keyboard and have set some useful functions (using xmodmap and the XFCE configuration), at home I use a Sun USB keyboard where the many extra keys (just have a look at its layout in xkeycaps: Sun Microsystems Type 5), along with Compose and Meta. "Windows" users surely don't know what these are used for, so they usually call them useless. In my opinion, the "Windows" keys are useless because they don't to something by default or in general, they just consume the rare space on the keyboard (space bar), which is often a problem on small laptop keyboards if you feel more comfortable with a real keyboard. :-)

There are a couple Windows button shortcuts you missed:

Win+E to open a Windows Explorer window
and
Win+Break to open the System properties page.

I don't know about the Win+L myself though.

I agree with someone else though that most users won't know about this.

win+m minimize all, win+u utility man, not that i'd use them much

but i can't really live without ctrl+shift+esc and win+l

It's not that I missed them, it's that I don't use them: I have the explorer opened at startup, so I don't need Win+E.

I don't use 'System properties' often enough to remember Win+Break.

OTOH, I use 'Win+D' quite often.

I wish that more companies would focus on lower spec laptops. Something with a 1gig processor and enhanced battery life and reliability as a result.

I was thinking older as well. However, you might want to look into either older releases of current distro's, which won't have problems, or some of the particularly small flavours. I've got a PIII-700 or so with 128mb RAM in the bathroom, the CD drive barely works, hard drives no longer function. I boot DSL - 'Damn Small Linux' - the whole thing is 50mb, and it works admirably. Check it out.

I've got a PIII-700 or so with 128mb RAM in the bathroom

Why ?

missing rolleyes in your message?

try gettin' out of that chair and google "masturb*"

Surprisingly common question. Tunes in the b-room for showers and parties, as well both my room mates are girls... they take baths' and facebook.... Once most of the rooms in your house have an old and broken computer, you get used to the utility.

Do you have a sealed shower or something? I always thought that steam/condensation would kill a computer pretty quickly in that sort of environment.

Appearantly not. There's not even a vent fan, and I've numerous times popped out of the water stream to change tracks, dripping water all over the place. Most laptops do have a metal plate behind the keyboard, so that's not much of a concern, but condensation... not hurt anything yet.


Laptops: Tougher than you'd think! (??!)

"old for me means: 300MHz P2, for which is not free and good operating system available."

I may disagree and explain:

First, you can always use a Linux which was new when the hardware was new. THis combination will work without any problem.

Second, you cannot assume a P2/300 to do everything a 5GHz quadrillioncore new Intel can do. Or, to be more precise, it almost can do everything, but not at the same speed.

I say this because we use a P2/333 at work with FreeBSD 5 and XFCE 3, usually running Opera, X-Chat, OpenOffice 1 and LaTeX. No real speed problems, can you imagine? Hey, it even runs a playable lsdldoom! :-)

This leads me to this statement: Your claim is wrong as long as you can't be more precise. For example, if you want to play up to date games, you won't find a free and good OS for a P2/300. But for other realistic purposes, you surely will.

So "old" depends on what you're planning to do. I would not consider the T23 to be an old computer, even though it may not be the newest one. A P2/300 is quite old, but an 8088 is really old, and here you'll encounter the problem of not getting a usable OS, but not on the T23 or a P2/300.

And finally, remember: Old does not mean bad. Fine difference. And good depends on what you're planning to do.

I disagree. I have an old Toshiba Satellite Pro 4270 with a PIII-400, 6GB Harddisk and 256MB Ram. I run Xubuntu 7.04 on it and it runs great. Even when using OpenOffice it is still responsive.

I had Win XP on it before and it also works well.

Edited 2007-04-05 09:29

Try <a href="www.puppylinux.com">Puppy Linux or a similar lightweight distribution. It runs rather nicely on my PPro/200 boxes at home. Needs 128MB, tho.

My work got T23 Thinkpads that have 1 GHz PIIIs and 256MB of RAM. I loaded them all with Kanotix (Debian based derivative of Knoppix.) They work like a champ, no noticable lag in any app, and boot up as fast as my HP/Compaq 2.4 GHz Hyperthreaded PIV with 512 MB of RAM workstation running Fedora Core 3 (updated.)

I wouldn't really consider T23s old though. I have a Powerbook 3400 (180MHz PPC603e, 80MB RAM) running Yellow Dog 4.0. THAT is old and slow, let me tell ya.

I won't fall into your Linux trap, because each time I try another linux distro and find bugs, there will be ANOTHER user will say that I should have used HIS favorite distro. So, I decided to only use the most popular distro, and that's Ubuntu at this point in time.

I am not a fan of Ubuntu but -damn it - you tested a BETA RELEASE (!) on the laptop!! No wonder you ran into grave bugs. Doh! If you want to write a fair article, then test the same lappy with the Windows XP Beta release and other OS's that are still developmental versions.

Two thumbs down from me.

The final version of Ubuntu comes out in 10 days, they are in freeze mode. If you expect miracles and fixing of all these 6 major bugs in 10 days (especially because there is no living soul who maintains the savage driver), then you are living in your own world. When Ubuntu ships, these bugs I mentioned will STILL be there. Except myself and another guy who also owns a T23 laptop and was able to reproduce the bugs, no one else have responded in my T23-related bug reports at Ubuntu.

I beg you to email me after the release of Ubuntu Feisty and to ask me if the bugs were fixed (or simply check at the bugzilla's url yourself and check my T23 bugs out to see if they will be fixed or not).

The final version of Ubuntu comes out in 10 days, they are in freeze mode.

The release is planned for 15 days from now.

I completely understand your decision to stick to one distribution, but you have to admit picking a beta (and recognizing some of the bugs you found are specific to it) is not the best way to make an evaluation. I beg you to try a stable release, maybe even 6.06 LTS instead of 6.10.

I keep updating Feisty daily. When Feisty is out in 15 days, send me an email and ask me if the bugs are still there. I mentioned this above. I bet that all bugs will still be there. That's what matters to me, because for me, the laptop is unusable with these suspend and graphics bugs. The savage bugs is sure to happen on all distros for example.

To be honest, if the requirement was for sleep/hibernate to fully work, and for video (esp. 3D) to work as well as windows, I probably wouldn't run Linux on any of my laptops. These are the kinds of issues I always assumed you had to live with if you wanted to walk on the Linux side.

To be honest, if the requirement was for sleep/hibernate to fully work, and for video (esp. 3D) to work as well as windows, I probably wouldn't run Linux on any of my laptops.

I agree. Especially with the sleep/hibernate part. One other thing that Linux often fails behind of Windows is WiFi, as we all know. OTOH, 3D works very well in Linux with Intel chipsets, which are popular in laptops.

I would even say that, although Linux IS ready for the desktop (IMO), it's not ready for laptops as long as these problems remain unresolved.

I must add though, that none of these problems are usually directly Linux's fault but the fault of manufacturers who refuse to publish specs or provide Linux drivers for their hardware.

Edited 2007-04-05 09:49

I keep updating Feisty daily. When Feisty is out in 15 days, send me an email and ask me if the bugs are still there. I mentioned this above. I bet that all bugs will still be there.

I don't doubt that the bug will still be there in 15 days; it may not be until after it's released that they find a fix for it. (on an unrelated note, I'm very happy with 2.6.20-14. That version isn't being pulled yet, maybe you'll want to try to install it manually).

But keep in mind in 15 days you'll be comparing a freshly released version of Ubuntu with a 5 year-old version of Windows on a 4 year-old laptop.

If you have the time, maybe you should compare Feisty with Windows Vista on that laptop (it does meet the minimum requirements, doesn't it?). And if you can, try a more mature version of Ubuntu on it. From your comments, I get the impression that an older version of the kernel as well as Xorg 7.0 would be a better fit. You'll find all that on Ubuntu 6.06 LTS.

I have to agree with other users that your choice of Linux distribution could have been better. I recently tried Feisty. Since it was beta software, I wasn't terribly surprised that I had to abandon it after a few days.

I appreciate the additional perspective of Feisty provided by your review, and I can understand your desire to use a recent copy of what you consider to be the most popular distro at the moment. I also commend you for submitting bug reports, but I would have liked to read about your experience with another distro. By definition different distributions have different strengths and weaknesses. Ubuntu hardly covers all of Linux.

I understand that there are always those who whine about how their distribution should have been used because "it would have worked." Unfortunately, if you only try one distribution, readers have no way of knowing if a bug is specific to Ubuntu or if there might be a bug that would cause a problem with Linux in general. Anything that aims to be a good fit for the desktop would be good, but obviously it would help to try at least two distributions that don't share repositories. The use of just one more distribution (I don't care which one) would have made this review much better in my opinion.

Eugenia, could you do me a favour and try using the Scitech SNAP driver for Linux on the T23 and see if it fares any better?

My 3yr old Athlon64 laptop has broken and I was considering buying a second hand T23 as a stopgap measure until i can afford another decent laptop.

If it causes so many problems runing Linux then I will have look for another el-cheapo alternative.

Thanks, Nik.

Give me URL of the SNAP driver and I will try it for you.

ok, I tried the SNAP drivers. It does not work because the Scitech driver only supports xorg 7.0, not 7.2. It bails out when it comes modifying xorg.conf, and after I did it manually, it fails loading the actual driver saying that there was a mismatch.

You are better off with an Intel gfx laptop IMO.

Edited 2007-04-04 22:35

@nicholas

Thanks for your request on this board. To ask for help instead of uselessy ranting how *nix y or z is better on x or y hardware.

And kudos to eugenia for helping him out with the request.

About the same I would say.

That's interesting. I was always under the impression that Ubuntu ran faster than XP on older hardware. I guess you only really get the performance boost with Linux on older hardware by using a lighter WM than Gnome or KDE.

I guess we are all going to have to wait for those new, spiffy Dell Linux laptops to come out.

I have to say that suspend/resume is not a real deal breaker for me. It doesn't take that long to boot!! I have an older Compaq Duron laptop with a Savage video chip. It has Ubuntu Edgy on it, and I would not put Windows back on it for anything.

Far more important to me that the machine run stable, reliable, virus free and secure.

Great, expect an email of mine then with the bug report links.

savage driver is maintained. I maintain it.
this probably won't mean much to you but... thanks!

folks like you help turn Linux from a kernel for academic study into a operating system people can use. again, thanks!

I have a Pentium 90 with 48MB of ram that works fine as an internet-enabled machine. It runs debian, and I use a light-weight window-manager - Blackbox. I fire up "Links2 -g" and I can surf the web graphically (it renders pictures and sites very quickly). I can check my email (Yahoo), make my fantasy moves and read all my news (like OSNews).

Obviously you need a network. Doesn't your laptop have a pcmcia slot? You should be able to put a network card in it.

I have a houseful of old laptops (P90, P233, Duron 1.1, etc) and I leave them all over the house, so the Net is always at my fingertips. My kids have desktops for gaming, but the each have wireless PII laptops for surfing the net, checking their gaming news, etc.

A realy lightweight choice for older machines is DSL linux. It has minimum requirements of a 486 with 16MB ram. I use it on some older laptops and it works great. Really, if you stay away from Gnome and KDE, most distro's can be made to run on older hardware.

Another good "distro" for older laptops is OpenBSD (if you know what you are doing). It has broad wireless support.

http://www.laptoplibre.com

:))

How many computers/laptops do you actually have??!

Counting my kids' computers, about 15!

Try several distros. Google the video card - that is usually the hardest thing to get working right. Sometimes you have to edit xorg.conf manually. If you hang in there, you can do it. Also, OpenBSD is a good choice for older laptops.