Not sure. Only run 1 machine with Jessie, so don't use it as often. I know there's multiple versions of Nvidia proprietary available in Jessie though. I WANT to say I remember the "default" being newer than 340, but I'm not as young as I once was, and my memory most definitely isn't as good as it once was. :D

Wow, good news!
I'm currently running 3.16 on Wheezy and removed all nouveau components AND all nvidia components. AND IT WORKS!
No more crashes. And crazy enough, nouveau was so crappy in that old version that performance wise, I hardly see a difference at all. Resolution is also as much as it needs to be. The only problem is that you can't play videos. I wonder what this is using, if this is VESA or what.
But like this, I will be able to upgrade to Jessie without having crashes. I won't be able to use any GPU accelleration, but this GPU is so old, that is not much anymore.
It also does not seem to tax the CPU so badly.

Well, that's good news anyway!

Congrats! This thread may prove very helpful as I am considering buying a used T-60 (for security and cost reasons) so I've been following the progress here. I'm a bit baffled as to why the proprietary nVidia Legacy driver didn't do well as I have owned some oddball TNT2s. One was from Elsa and very non-standard having double the vram of reference chipset. It was so non-standard it had grave problems in Windows (about which I no longer care) but works fine to this day in an old Linux box. Haven't booted it in a year or so but IIRC it is a SuperMicro socket 370 with a 1.7GHz (overclocked) Celeron with 3GB RAM running Slackware 13.37 on a 2.6 kernel.

All I really want the T-60 for is to be an ersatz kindle box.

The nvidia driver is terrible on the T61, even on Wheezy (Debian 7): it is damn slow, locks up your CPU and burns through your battery. The performance, crazy enough, is WORSE than with no driver at all, i.e. VESA (I assume)
Also, when you resume, (from hibernate) it let's you wait an insane amount of time (about 2 minutes) after the desktop would come back from hibernate: it beeps 4 times, each beep is after around 30 seconds, like it is not liking something.
Then the 3D acceleration is abysmally bad, if you have many windows open, it can lock up where it lets you wait 10 seconds after a click (to change windows), it becomes as slow as molasses. Also, the CPU always runs up, the X server tends to consume almost 100% of CPU most of the time (that is what burns though the battery). You can almost feel the error messages piling up somewhere behind the scenes (like they do in nouveau). I don't know what very strange GPU that is, but at this point it has become a huge liability (the negatives overweight heavily, because otherwise it is totally useless for pretty much anything except desktop compositing)
I have noticed that when the 3D acceleration is working, with nouveau in Jessie or newer, (for the short time before the kernel panic kills it reliably, every time) the desktop compositing is amazing, you finally see that IT DOES have a GPU, not a P.O.S. slow ass graphics thing that stutters and hangs all the time, battery life is better due to this, BUT then of course it will crash.
There is a regression bug in nouveau for this GPU (in the kernel part of nouveau) that got introduced with 3.16. It is not there in 3.2

T61:
-----
This laptop is a real jewel, the screen is huge, the resolution is amazing (almost full HD and that in 2006: 1680 x 1080 (if I'm not mistaken)). I often find other laptops, even newer ones have a way too small screen or totally shitty resolution. And it is dirt cheap at this point. The hinges and built of it is unkillable and it doubles as a fitness device (strengthens your arms and hands as you use it, whenever you are lugging it somewhere else ;-)
So far it has no deteriorated one bit hardware wise, no problems with the screen or hinges. I use it with a SSD and it feels like it is running 10 times as fast. I also use a mechanical HD in the ultra bay, as DVD / CD drives are not really needed anymore in these times.

Thanks for your response. It looks like I am in for some serious time and effort because more and more I'm liking what I see about T-60 (perhaps T-61 qualifies as well?). It is exceedingly rare that I need anything that is both portable and more powerful than a good smartphone so I tend to use a full Desktop discrete system. With the Kindle reader browser addon I see no compelling reason to buy a Kindle device but I'd like to be able to read elsewhere than just my desk. Smartphone screen is too small for comfort with my eyes, so... laptop.

Having watched Joanna Rutkowska on x86 Laptop Security and especially the area around 8 -12 minutes in, I became very interested in T-60. Because it is portable and has WiFi, security is of even greater concern for me than with a hard-wired, fully firewalled Desktop system. It does make me wonder why laptops haven't been made more flexible by opening up a whole new market with some manner of graphics expansion slot especially now that we are all in serial mode. It would seem a lucrative market to be able to upgrade graphics just by virtue of a new card. Oh well, my interest exceeds my hesitation at taking on a driver battle so it is likely I will buy a T-60 within a month or so.

Thanks for all your much appreciated information.

About T61
 

Hi,
I have been using Thinkpad T series laptops running Slackware for at least 10 years now.
Maybe I have been lucky in that the models that I have used have all had Intel Graphics or ATI Graphics.

The T61 and T61p series are particularly good value. I have a T61p with 1900x1200 screen and 4GB of memory which I got from ebay for $150.
For another $130 or so you can install 8GB of memory so you then have a nice laptop with plenty of power and screen space.
I suppose I should confess here that I do not do computer games of any sort so I don't need tons of video power.
Of course the T61 series does not have the latest gizmos and whizz-bang features and that may not be bad :-)

Until the motherboard died I used a T40 as my in-house server (web server, mail server, dns server, dhcp server, backup server). I then simply removed the hard-drive from the T40, put in my (spare) T60 and off we went!

When I get home tonight I will post the model numbers of my T61 and T61p so you have a reference jic you want to go out and get one.

FWIW, I currently use a Thinkpad W530 running Slackware 14.1 which DOES have an NVIDIA GPU and I use the nouveau driver without any problems .. but as I said above, I dont do games so I am not aware of any limitations it may have.

cheers
pete

pete hilton
saruman@ruvolo-hilton.org

whoops
 

Hi,
My previous post claimed that my t61's did not have an NVIDIA GPU .... I was mistaken.

My current two T61's are :-

T61 type 6465-CTO with Intel Graphics running Centos7
T61p type 6485-CTO with NVIDIA GPU running Slackware 14.1

The T61p uses the nouveau driver at kernel level 3.10.17. No problems thus far!

cheers
pete

Hello
I m currently following an eBay auction on a LENOVO THINKPAD T61P 6457-AU7 which has an nVidia Quadro FX-570M PCI Express x 16 graphics system. I looked up the recommended 32 bit driver (I see no compelling reason for 64bit just yet) from nVidia and it shows the version 340.96 which is a quite current driver. i'm wondering ig anyone here has this same graphics chip and has tried this driver? Incidentally the version number is identical to the 64bit recommended.

As I am primarily interested in using this laptop for reading Kindle books and for electronics schematics and layout work, it probably isn't a huge issue since with whichever driver it should suit my needs. However since a few here seem to be using a "legacy" driver version, I am curious as to how the manufacturer's driver works as it has been my experience that it generally outperforms nouveau.

Any responses appreciated. Thanks in advance.

The 340.96 is recent because it's specifically the "legacy support" driver. It is designed to support most of the not ancient hardware that the mainline driver has dropped support for. I can also say nouveau claims this card is supported. I do not, however, have that card to test. And obviously the OP found that even trying to use 340.96 on Debian failed to support the card.

I missed that it was a Quadro 570M so I'll have to check back. Thanks. I'm not sure what you meant by, in effect, "even on Debian" since IIRC they use the KMS method with nVidia which means the driver is not as nVidia made it. I vastly prefer dropping to runlevel 3 in Slackware and using the unadulterated install script.

Edit: Just checked and OPs card is a TNT2 which afaik is nowhere near the 570M in performance. The TNT2 had, at best, half the vram and the AGP x4 bus had nowhre near the throughput of 16x PCIE.

I loved that your version has even a higher resolution than mine (1680 x 1020 (last number is only approx.), BUT the CPU is slower, which makes no sense, but the specs say so (very strange) and mine is already slow (dual core 2.4 ghz) so that I did not want to go for something even slower.
I was always wondering about that. I currently have 2 x 2 gb. How do you get 8 GB? Which type of memory modules do you need?


You can by the way easily repair the motherboard, mine died too and I did a reflow in a gas stove/oven.
I even made a video about it, see here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OXOk_UIdbXI

Success!!!
 

OK, so I have good news:
After a seemingly endless odyssey to get this laptop working with anything newer than 3.16 (Debian Wheezy) and seeing that nouveau crashes on EVERY Linux that was newer, I have finally found a config that does work:
Debian Jessie 8.5 64 Bit with the 340.96 driver (64 Bit) from NVIDIA.
It does work, no crashes, no panics, nothing. The only bitter thing is that from time to time, the whole OS freezes up, you can still move the mouse, but not click on anything, after like 5 seconds or so, it unfreezes. The X server goes sky high, usually 100% CPU usage. Load avg up to 4, (2 should be full 100% CPU Usage on a 2 cpu system). It looks to me like the nvidia driver is a ROYAL PIECE OF SHIT, sorry the description, but nothing else would describe it so well. The X Server has to wait for it, locks up the whole system.
Resume from Hibernate is also impossible, the resume is lighting fast (on SSD), but then when the graphics driver gets initialized, beep....wait 30 seconds... another beep.... another 30 seconds piss you off, beeeeeeeeeep, and after 4 or 5 beeps like this, it resumes, claiming that the CPU was stuck. This is 100% the fault of the nvidia driver, as it does not do that on VGA driver or nouveau, where it resumes immediately.
The lockup are infrequent and somehow, you can still work with it.
Video works, although sometimes locks up too, but can be made to unfreeze (usually when full screen). I wish there was a workaround for this.
The alternative would be the VGA driver (no nouveau nor nvidia installed / enabled), but here is the strange thing:
On Debian Wheezy and 3.16 or 3.2, VGA gives you full resolution. It is pretty fast, surprisingly so, you would not think it is software accelerated, but no video, absolutely none, VLC for example locks up and has to be SIGKILLED.
Now on Debian Jessie, VGA gives you only 1024 x 768, without explanation.

So the nvidia driver 340.96 is the best bet. Maybe there is a way to remove this stutter, these lock ups. I have tried to go out of X and switch to virtual consoles with ctrl + alt + f1, and that sometimes seems to help and reset it.

You know, I have no idea what Jessie uses as proprietary driver, but 340.96 DOES WORK, both in Wheezy and Jessie.
This card is definitely not supported by nouveau, I have extensively tested it on my T61. It is "supported" that you can start the system up, but you will get a fun kernel panic in no time.
This is a clear regression bug, in Wheezy and the nouveau version it worked with this card, after that (Jessie, all newer Ubuntus) it did not anymore. Even in the newest kernel, the problem is still there. I guess they will never fix this as too few users have this problem. Maybe if we can band together, they might go ahead and fix it. I also know for a fact that it is the kernel component of the nouveau driver.

Hmm, OP, would that be me since I opened this thread? I just wanted to clarify what I have and what I'm talking about:
Lenovo Thinkpad T61
NVIDIA Corporation G86M [Quadro NVS 140M] (rev a1)
1680 x 1050 Display
4 GB of RAM
Now (successfully) running Debian Jessie 8.5 64bit with nvidia 340.96 proprietary driver, running kernel
3.16.0-4-amd64 #1 SMP Debian 3.16.7-ckt25-2+deb8u2 (2016-06-25) x86_64 GNU/Linux

This just to clear things up. I get that this a a pretty convoluted and complicated case and it is hard to dig through all the posts.