Thinkpad T60 gets strained by Cinnamon on Mint 17.0, what should I try next?
 

Sorry for asking what surely must be a Frequently Asked Question.

Should I search for another distro, another desktop environment, or both?

The laptop gets both slow and hot. Even the corner of the computer where the hard drive is located gets hot. I don't know if the heat comes from RAM, from CPU, from the video card or from some other source.

How can the cause be assessed?

Thanks in advance!

Manganus,

First, have a look at this link and find out the CPU and HDD temps:

http://www.blackmoreops.com/2013/10/...ne-and-visual/

You may need to open up the laptop, because if it looks anything like the picture on this page then you need to give it a good clean:

http://superuser.com/questions/58810...ing-linux-mint

Hi...

I would second beachboy2's advice, the temperature you're describing sounds a bit "unhealthy." ;)

Aside from that, there are other distributions that probably would run lighter, Zorin OS 9 Lite, Lubuntu and AntiX to name a few. :)

Regards...

With sticking to Linux Mint and not doing a reinstall, you could also switch to MATE (which might not be light enough) or Xfce, which seems like it would be an appropriate fat-free Mint environment for your desktop (although Lubuntu and some other distros are even lighter).

Manganus,

Once you have found out your CPU and HDD temperatures and eliminated any fluff blockages, you could do a lot worse than install the lightweight but very effective MX-14.4:

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...-a-4175537617/

Firstly, do you know this site?
http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Category:T60

I'd second the advice to clean it, and you may need even this step
http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Overheating

You shouldn't need to go to a lightweight Linux with that CPU, although it depends on how much memory you have. If you only have 512 MB, then you'd be better with AntiX MX, but if you've got 1 GB Mint should be fine: try the Mate version.

work in progress
 

Thanks!

Update:

• The case is opened, key board removed, and a look taken. It was actually less dusty than I had imagined it might be.
• I had no thermal paste, so for now I haven't yet removed the fan and its two heatsinks. They do get hot, and the fan spinns.
• Psensor installed.

To be continued...

Manganus,

If you have not seen it already, have a look at this thread which features a similar problem:

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...at-4175548186/

Long time ago... ;)

Anyway, thank you!

End result: (I wouldn't really call the issue solved...)

Pressured air in the vents did help. Psensor reported some 20'C lower temperatures thereafter. Then new cooling paste did not improve the condition - at least not much.

I've used the Mate desktop on that computer this last half year (well... these five months, to be precise). Yesterday I installed the newest version of Mint with Cinnamon. And in hindsight, I realized that was an error, and returned to Mate as a (slightly?) less demanding desktop environment.

- There may be other reasons, too: My eyes, slightly above the age of 50, became markedly strained by the font size or some other visual aspect. ...something that I didn't discover until I already had made the installation...


Edit:
Of course I realize that there are many relevant meassures, and time for upstart is not necessarily being the most important of them, but it counts that too. MATE and Xfce were in this respect undistinguisable. Restart (from usb stick) took 75 seconds for each of them.

On the other hand:
restart of installed MATE, Mint 17.3: 100 seconds
restart of installed Cinnamon (17.3): 123 seconds


After all, it's a notebook that soon has had a ten years long life - and one can not expect that much from the elderly.