That being said…it’s kind of odd to me how swiftly Mozilla of all companies/orgs is to embrace a code forge hosted by Microsoft for their main software. Surreal, even.
Probably yes. As long as it’s 64 bit, it will run without issue, hardware dependant. For 32 bit machines, you have to be more careful. The 32 bit core duo and pentium m CPUs don’t support pae.
Edit: First Gen Pentium M don’t show pae support as a flag but they do.support it. You have to set forcepae for some distros. I read the page incorrectly. Pentium M laptops that have 5 in their model number, like the 735 are second gen Pentium M
They don’t show pae support so some OSes have issues. This is specifically for the first generation. I have a Pentium M 735 laptop which shouldn’t have this issue but for whatever reason PAE enabled OSes such as 32 bit Ubuntu won’t boot. I probably screwed something up. It currently runs bunsenlabs helium as it doesn’t require PAE. I’ll amend my previous comment
If Fedora runs fine, I see no reason why openSUSE wouldn’t. Friends of mine use regular Manjaro with the same Framework. Just keep using openSUSE if that’s what you feel most comfortable with.
I used Silverblue for a bit but got very annoyed by its rpm-ostree command. I think it’s too complicated for a simple single user setup.
Why did you find the need to use the rpm-ostree command¿? Isn’t the purpose of immutability to use flatpaks and containers to get all your apps/software
Well for me it auto updates and stages in the background. There is config file /etc/rpm-ostreed.conf in which you can set the AutomaticUpdatePolicy to stage. Then it will automatically check for updates once a day(I think) and will download and stage it. The update is then applied when you shutdown or reboot
K-9 is being used as the base for Thunderbird for Android but it isn’t there yet. FairEmail is a lot closer in functionality at the moment.
I use Thunderbird for Gmail (among other accounts) and it has to regularly compress my Gmail box, which none of the Android clients do - in my experience, Aqua Mail, K-9 and FairEmail all struggle with a decent sized Gmail mailbox after a while.
Lenovo/Thinkpad will certify certain models for use with Linux, other brands sell Linux laptops. Those are obviously good indicators that those models should be safe to choose. More generally, the more popular a model is, and the longer it’s been on the market the more likely they are to be compatible, just because they are in people’s hands and people tinker with them and add stuff to the Linux Kernel. So stay away from the latest model that is uncertified, and don’t choose the flashy, overpriced model that will see poor sales.
I second this. I got a Lenovo Thinkpad Carbon X1 for work after the Dell I had originally got straight up refused to sleep. I would put it to sleep manually, close the screen and when fully closed the screen would turn back on. Also, it refused to charge properly so I just left it plugged in 24/7. One day it became unplugged and then refused to turn on at all.
I’ve been running Fedora for about 2 years on it and the only issue I’ve had that I can’t fix is the fingerprint reader doesn’t work in SDDM/KDE for unlocking stuff. Fprintd recognizes it and I can enroll fingerprints, it just doesn’t work with KDE for some reason.
The fingerprint reader on mine doesn’t work either. I’ve read up on solutions for that regards Debian but I haven’t tried any yet. I have a yubikey and that works fine as an extra layer of login security.
I wanted the fingerprint reader to work just because it’s easier than typing a password, using something like a YubiKey is the complete opposite unless you keep it plugged into the device 24/7, and then it really no longer serves its original purpose.
Yeah, unfortunately it looks like the reader on the X1 is a special case. Thankfully, this isn’t an issue with my Z13 - the reader itself worked out-of-the-box, just had to enroll my fingerprint from the Settings menu and then added fprintd to my pam.d rules.
Wonderful to know! thanks alot. I have heard alot of good about linux and thinkpads but only up to a certain generation I think? What about HP? my computer repair guy swears by HP but I honestly know nothing about HP and never hear people talk about HP either.
HP consumer products are literal garbage. The only good thing that comes out of HP is their commercial server equipment.
Lenovo won’t let you down for Linux. I’ve run Linux on thinkpads for years, multiple generations. I used to work at IBM, so I had em for work. Rock solid machines, I still run with them today (just the newer generations).
What about HP business grade stuff? thats what ive heard good about. Also any idea on other IBM equipment than their old thinkpads? I have no clue about nowaday IBM but am curious.
I have a lenovo thinkbook (cheapy thinkpad) for work with AMD chip and gpu. It wasn’t one of their models certified for linux but everything runs flawlessly for a lean debian build for me. I’ve had linux on several laptops and this is my second machine with AMD chips, and I’ll say that what you hear is true; There are way more, and better, drivers available for AMD if you go with linux.
we could have more merging of projects, like xfce and mate, both trying the same thing, both started with the same goal(keep the old gnome style) but both need help, why don’t work together?
edit: xfce is old than gnome 3 so i was wrong sorry, but more collaboration on apps that both need is interesting
What? Please no. XFCE is its own thing. It is not old GNOME. They are both GTK based so a little collaboration on apps they both need would be interesting. Beyond that, they are different projects—like GNOME and KDE. BTW, there is also an “old” KDE called Trinity.
yeah, even KDE dev said about it on their blog, that they gonna stick with their own library but it’s possible to port KDE to work on wlroots in the future, so theur don’t spend so much time in something that only them work(btw kde work very closely to wlroots anyway)
XFCE and LXDE are nice in their own right. I used to run xfce and lxde on my laptops and netbooks. Those bottom of the barrel, underpowered, bargain bin machines hummed. At the time though HiDPI support was weak still (at least for xfce) so they never made it to my desktop. Didn’t like many multi-sized monitors. I assume this is a problem of the past now.
Old laptops can often be a pain if they don’t have mainstream hardware.
I have a laptop with a touchpad made by Elan. I couldn’t even find a website for them, but the laptop’s support page has a Windows driver that works well.
I put Linux on there maybe 5 years ago, and there just is no driver for this touchpad on Linux, so it works in PS2 mouse modus and nothing else. No multitouch, no gestures, no way to change any slightly more advanced settings like sensitivity.
Ha I had this issue once upon a time too! And the one above with the wifi driver b43-fwcutter. Apparently not great laptop choices. The touchpad situation was awful, because the sensitivity was always insane. IIRC I had a way to slow it down, but then it was so so slow that I had to go over it like 30 times to get across the diagonal. Good times.
I vividly remember that time when I tried to get Linux running on my old laptop in the mid-2000s. There was no wifi driver for that card in the repo, but the manufacturer provided a driver to download. But it was in C++ source code that failed to compile because it was so outdated.
So there I was as a teenager who barely knew a little C at that time, porting the driver from outdated C++ to the then-modern version. It wasn’t easy but I managed to.
I am so happy it’s not 2005 anymore, when it comes to Linux.
Yeah kind of a similar story but on my iBook G4 I had trouble getting wireless internet working with modern distros because b43-fwcutter (I think) was unavailable. I ended up installing Yellow Dog Linux to get around it
So I really only care about the RAM for speed. dont care about ssd size, dont care about fingerprint readers, I just want a solid machine that makes it easy to run linux and also easy to fix; something sturdy. there’s nothing “special” i should be noting while shopping? is it just all personal preference with the specs and such?
For the most part, yeah. If you’re looking for a laptop the older you go, the more “boring” you’ll want.
Plain form factors and the like.
Sometimes, very rarely, weird laptop keyboards need special drivers that don’t always get baked into Linux, so it can be a pain. Same for older “premium” sound stuff in an older laptop.
Doesn’t mean that it will have problems, just that you’re more likely to.
Old midrange Lenovo or Dell laptops tend to be a staple for Linux. They also contribute to Linux, so their stuff tends to just work. Contrast with apple, where getting it to work with Linux is a hard-mode hobby for some people.
Base hardware stuff is essentially all compatible.
That’s basically an example of a standard laptop you might try to put Linux on and expect effortless success. (It’s newer because that’s what came up, but it’s an example of the trend).
Note the lack of anything that makes you go “ah, a marketable feature to highlight or differentiate”.
This one probably works fine, but I’d have some concerns about that touch screen and things not playing well with any sensors that make the folding action turn off the screen.
It might work fine, but it’s the type of thing that can take a bit of fiddling to get working, or just doesn’t because people don’t care to port the functionality over.
As a former RedHat advocate it sucks honestly, I have to find companies like Rancher and Suse that off truly FOSS products now. Like I want opensource devs to get paid if they are being depended on, but the RedHat paywall makes avoiding the vendor lock or trying to be cost flexible a legal land mine. They also offer more and more proprietary rebrands of FOSS projects that I fear will get EEEd as well.
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