Will an IBM T40 run RedHat or Libranet (and XP?) smoothly and other newbie questions
 

Hi,

I'm a Linux newbie -- and just ordered a T40 (which from my Windows experience seems to be the best). IBM only sells it with XP Pro or Home (I chose Pro because Home is worse) and some of the notes on Linux-on-laptops.com seem pretty technical for a person without programming experience.

Many thanks in advance for the help!!

I'd like to run RedHat 9 or Libranet with OpenOffice and am wondering the following:

1. Will either Linux distro work well on the T40 without major work/tweaking on my part (I am not a programmer)? Is there another bundle I should consider? What about Mad Hatter?

2. I rely on my computer for completing my daily workload. Will Linux be as stable as OEM-installed XP Pro on the laptop (obviously this is not that high of a bar, particularly given virus vulnerability)?

3. Will the T40's power management system work properly with a Linux OS?

4. Will I be able to check mail on an exchange server using OpenOffice or Ximian? I consult, and have an email account on one of my client's mail servers. What about networked calendar?

5. A related question to 3 -- can I log into my client's microsoft networking and share files from my client's public (windows) server while running Linux?

6. Are there any issues with partitioning my T40's hard drive and installing Linux, while leaving XP Pro on it? Is this what I should do? If not, is there any reason I might want to remove XP entirely from the T40?

7. Are there major issues with using StarOffice or OpenOffice with my clients who are using word, powerpoint and excel -- or will they not even know I'm doing something different?

8. Any other questions I should have asked?!!

Thanks again for answering some or all of these.

- Mike

Would be great to get a little help on this!

Many thanks,

Mike

No replies?
 

Hi,

I received my IBM T40p yesterday and I'd also be interested in information about the questions you asked. Have you found out anything yet???

Thanks,
Zzorrkk

still no replies!
 

No one has followed up on my questions -- if anyone is reading this forum, it would be great to get your thoughts!

Many thanks,

MP

Tough one as it seems...
 

Hi mike,

seems like we're lost here. I found some articles on using Mandrake and Suse8.2 on the T40p. Unfortunately they are in german.

I'm afraid I can't translate them here for you as they are quite long, but the bottom line is:

Mandrake 9.1: No real Power Management, shorter Battery Life, no Hard Disk DMA mode, AGP not recognized (bad graphics performance), PCMCIA not working properly

SuSE 8.2: Power Managment even worse, no DMA Mode, internal Lan not working.

The guy who wrote this had quite some Linux-knowledge if you ask me and tested quite a few things.

If you accidently speak german, here are the links:
http://www.pl-berichte.de/berichte/mandrake-t40p.html
http://www.pl-forum.de/berichte/suse82-t40p.html

I've given up for now :cry:

Greetings from Hamburg (Germany),
Zzorrkk

IBM T40P Information
 

The place I would start would be to go to this site and read the reveiws about the IBM T40p running Linux, there are 4 reviews I believe, Linux Laptops.

no clue what a T40 has for specs but I use SuSE 8.2 (personal) and performance is good on a 380XD except for sound, 4 gig HD/96 megs ram and Im sure yours has a lot more ram which would make it fly!

Thank you for your replies. It would be great to get some more info if you're willing.

Before making my original post, I checked out the Linux Laptop site and just now spent some additional time on it. It has great info for installing a working version of linux, and fixing a lot of known issues. However, what I am looking for is a description of the quality of user experience -- not a how-to -- and particularly of quality of user experience for the applications I use on a daily working basis.

Right now, I am running Windows XP Pro, and have had no problems. I would love to adopt Linux for economic, philosophic and virus-prohylactic reasons. However, I am not willing to lose productivity, compatibility or computer/battery performance to do so - and from what I know of Linux, this should be anything but the case (all though all the descriptions of work arounds on Linux Laptops scared me a bit).

It would be great if any of you would take a look at the list of questions I first posted -- and consider them from the user experience perspective. Many thanks!!

As background, my IBM t40 is a 1.4 ghz centrino with 512 megs of ram, 1 MB - L2 cache, cd-rw/dvd-r drive, 40 gb garddrive, ATI MOBILITY RADEON 9000 - 32 MB, Ethernet, Fast Ethernet, Gigabit Ethernet, IEEE 802.11b, 24-bit 14.1" tft screen and trackpoint+trackpad "ultranav".

Mike

One more additional detail -- I'm now using office xp (as do virtually all of my clients, except those who use office 2000/windows98).

Thanks again!!

1. Will either Linux distro work well on the T40 without major work/tweaking on my part (I am not a programmer)? Is there another bundle I should consider? What about Mad Hatter?

A: I have little to no programming skills and found RH9 to be challenging
the first few months, but as with anything new , you learn your way round
( KDE ) is very 'windowy' )

2. I rely on my computer for completing my daily workload. Will Linux be as stable as OEM-installed XP Pro on the laptop (obviously this is not that high of a bar, particularly given virus vulnerability)?

A: As stated above, at first it may seem flakey, but just because you don't understand why you goofed. Linux allows you to get inside the programs and correct flakes, and make some. ( as I said 'learning curve' , expect to )

3. Will the T40's power management system work properly with a Linux OS?

A: Once again my Experience is with Redhat on a desktop, but I have seen several power management tools for laptops ( battery power icons and such , as to how well they work I haven't a clue )

4. Will I be able to check mail on an exchange server using OpenOffice or Ximian? I consult, and have an email account on one of my client's mail servers. What about networked calendar?

A: Evolution mail client works well , it is not designed to read hotmail like Outlook but can be ported with hotwayd , another program available on the net . adding these programs aren't 'point-n-click' as on MS but with a bit of patience, they install nicely, ( read 75% of the time 15% of them are a bit trying till you get the hang of the dependancy dance )

5. A related question to 3 -- can I log into my client's microsoft networking and share files from my client's public (windows) server while running Linux?

A: not sure

6. Are there any issues with partitioning my T40's hard drive and installing Linux, while leaving XP Pro on it? Is this what I should do? If not, is there any reason I might want to remove XP entirely from the T40?

A:others may give better advice on this subject , but at some point you'll wonder why you still have that virus magnet hanging round

7. Are there major issues with using StarOffice or OpenOffice with my clients who are using word, powerpoint and excel -- or will they not even know I'm doing something different?

A: Openoffice , judging from their website, ( and the group will correct me if I'm wrong ) is the free version of Staroffice both are very similar with Star having more bells and whistles and some nifty features

and they have programs to convert any document to the MS equivalent
as MS won't convert their native formats
I built my resume and converted it to MS word for a potential employer and all I noticed was a missing bullet in the Header
Star probably does a much better job at this than the free OpenOffice version I have.

Kde even has Kivio which to me feels alot like MS' Visio which I am well aquainted with

If I were you I would check this website out
http://www.math.rutgers.edu/~amurphy/linux/IBM-T40.html
I got to that site from simpy searching www.google.com/linux for IBM T40. I run Libranet and love it, I have also ran Redhat and found out that it just ran slow on my compaq 715us laptop. Everyone must find the distro of their choice, you must find yours too, everyone can tell you what they think is the best but unless you try a bunch out you will never really know which ones you like and dislike. As for openoffice, I havent really used it a whole lot but I have opened and edited files from Office2000 and found no problems with them at all. You can get into shares across microsoft networks using tools like linneighborhood and my favorite xfsamba. Hope that gets you a little closer

To throw one more opinion out there. I've got an HP; never used linux on an IBM. I run Mandrake 9.2RC2 (the retail version of Mandrake is due after the 15th of october, which will likely run better than this Release Canidate) and I finally got everything running. I'm a computer geek, but I've never done a kernel compile, and programming for me is a hobby, and (as of 5 weeks ago) something I do for college credit; not something I'm really good at. Near as I can tell, Mandrake is the first distro that I can do everything from the GUI, which is a big plus. Sure, I use a terminal, only because I grew up on DOS, but my mother can use Mandrake 9.2; she is the kind of person who you say her mouse is dead, and she gets a plastic bag, and tells me to wear gloves. "Oh, you meant the pointer thingy! I thought that was called a curse, or something..."

So, investigate 9.2. My laptop seemed to be just as hard to get linux on as what I've seen on u'res, yet 9.2 only had a few hitches, which I tweaked. Now, I love it, and I've deleted windows... due to the improved performance in Linux, there as no point.

Mike - I don't have a T40 so I can't speak from direct personal experience, but I definitely agree with riddlebox that making use of Google will likely provide you with a wealth of information, such as can be found here http://tuxmobil.org/ibm.html and more specifically here http://bellet.info/~bellet/laptop/t40.html I am looking into getting a laptop myself and found those sites to be of interest.

On a different topic, while it can be frustrating to post a question and not get any responses, I think it's helpful to keep in mind that: a.) maybe the people who have read your post thus far simply don't know the answer to your question or don't have any useful info to share; and b.) it's a little unrealistic to expect that posting a question automatically should entitle you to an immediate and fully complete solution to whatever situation you are describing. I think that you will find (as I have) that the LQ community will go out of its way to try to assist *all* posters with their questions, however, when reading your first few posts I get the impression you seem to feel that people may be deliberately withholding info from you or that you are somehow being shortchanged here because the responses that have been posted aren't exactly what you're looking for. At least in my experience, that could not be farther from reality, and there have been numerous cases where people have gone out of their way to assist me. Sorry for rambling.

As a final comment, perhaps the best thing to do would just be to install your preferred Linux distro on your T40 and see how it performs (while keeping a dual boot configuration with XP to avoid losing any current functionality). If your experience with Linux leads you to conclude that Linux is inadequate or insufficient for your needs, you can remove it, but if the contrary is true you can dump XP. (Personally I'd put my money on the latter.) Good luck with whatever your decision is. -- J.W.

I'm in pretty much the same situation as "mpmvy". Purchasing a T40 w/ MSXP and would like to install a Linux OS (possibly SUSE 9 Pro). I have looked at most of previously mentioned websites, but many of them don't clearly describe, in terms for a computer-idiot, how to partion the HD without damaging the "hidden partion" that the T40 has for MSXP disastor recovery. Most just mention, "don't erase the hidden partion", but fail to describe how. Does anyone know a resource to explain this in very simple terms (both linux terms and general computer terms)? Or has anyone done this and is willing to explain it?

Many thanks from a newbie.

Hi Mike

I took delivery a new T40 a couple of days and have installed XP and RedHat 9.

The RedHat installation went fine, but I have not had time to continue.

This week-end I'll be giving it a bash and will let you know

To "try" to answer some of your question for now... here goes

1. Will either Linux distro work well on the T40 without major work/tweaking on my part (I am not a programmer)? Is there another bundle I should consider? What about Mad Hatter?

G>> Like I said, RedHat seems to have installed fine and starts up ok... the touchpad
works as well.... Further than that I am yet to play around

2. I rely on my computer for completing my daily workload. Will Linux be as stable as OEM-installed XP Pro on the laptop (obviously this is not that high of a bar, particularly given virus vulnerability)?

G>> Linux stable?... you bet! I have RH8 on my main desktop with an Oracle database running, with several development tools. I have not re-booted it for
the last 4 months. In fact I'm replying to you from this desktop.

3. Will the T40's power management system work properly with a Linux OS?

G>> Have no idea yet. Will let you know what I found by next week

4. Will I be able to check mail on an exchange server using OpenOffice or Ximian? I consult, and have an email account on one of my client's mail servers. What about networked calendar?

G>> Actually at this stage I'm not using Linux to read e-mail, but I intend on doing so.
Will let you know. I'm using Outlook on my Win 2000 prof desktop

5. A related question to 3 -- can I log into my client's microsoft networking and share files from my client's public (windows) server while running Linux?

G>> Absolutely you can, using SAMBA. When you get to this stage I can help you out

6. Are there any issues with partitioning my T40's hard drive and installing Linux, while leaving XP Pro on it? Is this what I should do? If not, is there any reason I might want to remove XP entirely from the T40?

G>> Funny thing is that the T40 comes a partition that seems to be hidden from an OS. I have no investigated how they do this, but it's there. You can re-install XP
by pressing the Blue IBM button on startup, which will take you into a setup tool.
The T40 did not come with a XP CD, which I inquired about... and unfortunately
that's the way it is according to them. I was a bit miffed by this as my 30GB HDD was
actually 25GB. Unfortunately the XP installer that they use does not request information as to how you would like to slice up your drive. I therefore used a copy
of XP that a friend had did an install and left about 15GB for Linux. Thereafter I installed Linux on the remaining space and thereafter pressed the Blue button on restart and told it to re-install XP (The version of XP that I installed from did not
have many of the required drivers). Luckily the XP installer that they are using seemed to ignore the ext3 partitions and only used the exiting XP partition that I had originally created. Only problem is that it destroyed the MBR and I could not boot Linux (Unfortunately the T40 does not come with a stiffy... so no boot stiffy). Thereafter I re-installed Linux and everything seems to be fine.
I suppose this was just luck... you could probably use some like partition magic to
re-size the XP partition (I just did not have it handy)... this would save you a lot
of hassle

7. Are there major issues with using StarOffice or OpenOffice with my clients who are using word, powerpoint and excel -- or will they not even know I'm doing something different?

G>> I'm using OpenOffice which can save to various MSWord formats... although I still find myself hacking out a lot of my document in word on my Win 2000 desktop. When you save to word format, they save fine.... but you are always going to have features in the one that are no available in the other. When saving to word format... OpenOffice always complains that you could loose certain information.
I mostly use OpenOffice when hacking out some simple text.

8. Any other questions I should have asked?!!

G>> Will let you know, once I have my T40 finely tuned.

Good luck... will be in touch after the coming week-end

BR

G