6 ms·

OA uses a Thinkpad X40 as the target machine. A 1.8 inch Hitachi drive with PATA interface and with 256 or 512Mb of RAM soldered to board with a socket for one

OA uses a Thinkpad X40 as the target machine. A 1.8 inch Hitachi drive with PATA interface and with 256 or 512Mb of RAM soldered to board with a socket for one further RAM stick. This is a 12 year old design. Probably best used with what it has rather than spending any money upgrading. A good test target for a 'light' OS. A Thinkpad X60 or later (dual core) with 2Gb RAM can run a 'full fat' Linux (e.g. Ubuntu or CentOS/Fedora) OK if not slick in my experience (and yes I did once compile a kernel from source on an X61s - took a few hours). An SSD makes a difference in that kind of machine.

AstroJetson 10y ago
X60 and X61 owner here. SSD drive brought new life to the machines. The new pixel desktop makes them fun linux boxes.
- keithpeter 10y ago
  Excellent! An SSD and stock Gnome 3 Debian in my X61s (2Gb RAM) with its Atheros wifi card goes very well, so I'm hardly surprised that your machines work well with a less demanding desktop environment and it is good that you find them of use. Care to share the output of pstree -l -A from a fresh session? That would tell us what processes are running by default (cups&c).
IgorPartola 10y ago
Your comment about the kenrel taking a few hours to compile made me chuckle. I went through a Gentoo phase. Nothing like compiling your compiler to compile your compiler to compile your system. Took days. And before that I had a machine with 24 MB RAM and a terrible habit of recompiling the kernel or running BSD with ports.
- digler999 10y ago
  > Took days. at least yours finished. Mine would run just long enough to waste most of my day, only to error out because one lib wanted python-3.2.785.2.r58 but could only find python-3.2.1435.214.r3
- khedoros1 10y ago
  I was using Slackware around the time that distros were switching from xfree86 to x.org. Not knowing any better, I was trying to run it as a bleeding edge system. I think I took a week or two manually upgrading each library one at a time to make the jump to the new X server. Apparently I didn't learn my lesson; the next distro I used was Gentoo.

AstroJetson 10y ago

X60 and X61 owner here. SSD drive brought new life to the machines. The new pixel desktop makes them fun linux boxes.

keithpeter 10y ago
Excellent! An SSD and stock Gnome 3 Debian in my X61s (2Gb RAM) with its Atheros wifi card goes very well, so I'm hardly surprised that your machines work well with a less demanding desktop environment and it is good that you find them of use. Care to share the output of pstree -l -A from a fresh session? That would tell us what processes are running by default (cups&c).

IgorPartola 10y ago

Your comment about the kenrel taking a few hours to compile made me chuckle. I went through a Gentoo phase. Nothing like compiling your compiler to compile your compiler to compile your system. Took days. And before that I had a machine with 24 MB RAM and a terrible habit of recompiling the kernel or running BSD with ports.

digler999 10y ago
> Took days. at least yours finished. Mine would run just long enough to waste most of my day, only to error out because one lib wanted python-3.2.785.2.r58 but could only find python-3.2.1435.214.r3
khedoros1 10y ago
I was using Slackware around the time that distros were switching from xfree86 to x.org. Not knowing any better, I was trying to run it as a bleeding edge system. I think I took a week or two manually upgrading each library one at a time to make the jump to the new X server. Apparently I didn't learn my lesson; the next distro I used was Gentoo.