Hello, I'm a Mac person and am interested in learning Linux and the command line. I'm getting a Thinkpad 760xd from a friend. I did a search on this forum and found a post from someone who had installed Redhat on a 760xd and found that the GUI was very slow.

I'm mainly interested in learning the commands and don't care about a graphic interface. What would be good to install on this computer? Having no experience in either Windows or Linux, it's all a little intimidating to me. Do I boot up from a CD and get a graphic install or must I know what commands to type to make it install?

Please forgive me if the questions are stupid. I've spent some time looking at Linux sites and I'm a little lost.

I'm not sure what the machine's actual specs are.
How much RAM have you got, and what's the CPU?
If I recall properly the 760's were Pentium CPUs. Range
from 133 to 200MHz?

Either way, you should be looking at a small,
streamlined distro. And if you have over 64MB
you should be able to run X with a lean window-
manager like IceWM or Fluxbox.

As a reasonable distro I'd suggest Vector
Linux or one of the distro's that are running of
Mini-CD's (100 MB or so).

Cheers,
Tink

Thanks, Tink. I don't know the specifics of the thinkpad because I don't have it in hand yet, but I will check out Vector Linux. This is the first I've heard of it.

Thanks again,
Dany

Well I got it and it is a mess! When my friend bought the laptop 6 months ago, it was running Windows 95. But then a drinking buddy of his told him he would "fix it up" and installed Windows ME. Now it won't even boot up. It displays a splash screen then an error message "Msgsrv32 has caused an error in MSGSRV32.EXE. Msgsrv32 will now close."

When I put the Recovery CD in it, it goes through a little diagnostic thing and then to a blue screen. I'm sure I won't be able to install Linux on it in this condition!

I realize this is getting off topic but if anyone has any ideas, please email me at dany_10009 (at) yahoo.com.

Cheers,
Dany

Dany - before anyone can give you recommendations, I think one major factor is whether or not you want this laptop to be running Linux exclusively, or to dual boot with Windows and Linux. If you just plan on running Linux, and are comfortable with blowing away everything that's on the machine right now, then you can just boot to the DOS prompt, run fdisk, and delete the existing partitions. I've faced this same situation myself, just like just about everybody else here at LQ, and definitely have a few opinions about how to proceed. This of course is one of those questions where if you ask 10 people, you will get 10 different answers.

For my 2 cent opinion, I really like a partitioning tool called Boot IT NG, from http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/bootitng.html It will allow you to pretty much do whatever you want with your partitions, and I consider it very easy to use.

In any event, welcome to the most awesome world of Linux -- J.W.

Hey J.W. thanks for your answer. I have no attachment to Windows and was planning to wipe the whole thing and only install Linux. I ordered the Vector Linux CD yesterday. That way if there are any problems I can at least rule out burning errors.

I will check out Boot IT NG. Trashing Windows is the first thing I'd like to do. I can't wait to get started with Linux.

Dany

I'm currently running SuSE 8.2 on a TP 600 (P2 300, 300mb ram)

I'm pleased with the performance - a faster harddrive would help. TP sound is a pain to get running in linux (for me). I'm not familiar with your model tho. You can go to the IBM site and enter the model# and get specs.

Thanks, Franklin. I think yours is a newer model but maybe sound is problem with these in general. The sound on mine doesn't work now. But I guess that's not saying much. Every time I start it, it does some new, bizarre random thing. But just this minute it actually booted up so I'm feeling more confident about being able to get Linux on it and dump Windows.

I also put linux on a TP 380XD. Got the sound to work here but only with RH and only after reconfiguring the kernel to load sound as a module. This was a regular pentium 233 with 96 megs ram. It was a little pokey. It's now my only windows box (98SE)