I want to buy a fairly powerful laptop. Looking at Inspiron 9100 and HP zx5000, but Thinkpads are *REAL NICE*. I think the best model for me is the R51, because I don't care about weight, and I'm willing to give up some processing power (over the Dell and the HP) for a nice screen and built-like-an-SUV tough.

I haven't found any info on the R51 and Linux though. All of the recent Thinkpads seem to be very compatible (except maybe for suspend mode, but that's a big problem with Linux on most laptops), and for the most part they all use the same level of components, and Centrino is fully supported now.

I have very high hopes, but would love to hear from someone who has done it. BTW, I expect to use a distro with 2.6 kernel, like SuSE 9.1 or Fedora Core 2 (if I start hearing better things about dual booting with Windows)

Thanks in advance.

I don't have one of the *new* thinkpads, but my T-21 works pretty good with linux. IBM is spending so much money supporting linux such as the commercials and many other ventures. From what I have seen there new lines since they have really started backing linux are very compatible and working great with linux. As for the distros it might be good to wait until fedora has the whole windows dual-boot thing sorted out but it is really up to what you want in a distro (mandrake-easy, gentoo-optimization) and if it doesn't have 2.6 you could compile one. If you want to try slack, go for it.

Hi,

I've got an old thinkpad 600e and run Slackware very successfully on it.

However, I think your best bet is to grab a copy of Knoppix, Mapis or any other live CD and see how well it'll run on one of those. The current Mapis Cd give you the option of running the 2.4.- kernel or the 2.6.-. I doubt you'll have any problems.

Good luck.

I am running one now, as a dual-boot system, and I have had three distirbutions on it (Mandrake, SuSE, and Fedora) with no problems. IBM seems to be pretty Linux friendly.

If I were making the decision, I would call them and ask them. They will be able to tell you if linux has been tested and what distros will work. Call 1-888-SHOP-IBM.

You specifically have an R51?

Have you tried a kernel 2.6 distribution?

I ordered a 1836BBU with 512MB RAM yesterday.

Your welcome. Yes I have an R51. I now have SuSE 9.1 on it as well as Windows XP for a dual boot system. I have to tell yo though that I don't think anything of putting a new distribution on (of Linux not windows), so I am not afraid to experiment. My experience has been that some distributions will work better than others but the only one that has been a complete flop lately has been Mandrake 10 Community edition, and I do not say that lightly because I am a Mandrake fan.

Mike

That's my ideal install. Was going to do FC2, but with its partitioning issues, I don't want to take a chance of blowing away the restore partition. I suppose I could prepartion in qtparted or something.

Then again, if I get the restore CD's I don't really need the restore partition, right?

Did you order the CD's? How long did they take to get there?

Thanks again.

Did any of you guys with ThinkPad R51 + Suse have problems with setting up the modem and connecting to the Internet? If yes, how did you solve them? Please take a look at http www linuxquestions.org/questions/showthread.php?p=2024792&posted=1#post2024792 where my problem has been described.

Hi, I am currently running Fedora 4 on my Thinkpad R50e. I have had absolutely no issues whatsoever with this setup. Fedora automaticly detected everything from the sound card to the LAN settings. The Thinkpad R, and T Series notebooks are IMO the best notebooks on the market currently. My specs are below

Intel Celeron 1.4ghz
512MB PC2700
40GB HD ~ soon to be 7200rpm KT60
15" 1024x768 TFT
CDRW

I know, its pretty basic, but my dual boot XP/Linux setup works perfectly.
Hope this helps
Zach