Hey Everyone:

I'm a big fan of the idea of repurposing older equipment in order to save cost and avoid contributing to e-waste. I have in my closet an old Lenovo x61t--a convertible "tablet." In some ways it's on its last legs: battery no longer holds a charge, keyboard is shot (although that could be easily replaced). However, it does still run (a slightly older version of Ubuntu at present), and does still have it's excellent Wacom digitizer built into the screen. It seems to me I should be able to put this to good use.

One thing that comes to mind would be to find a way to use it as a graphics tablet for my current desktop computer. Its digitizer is as competent as many modern dedicated graphics tablets.

So here's the question: can anyone thing of a (linux-driven) way to use an old tablet PC such as the x61t as a dedicated graphics tablet for a modern desktop PC (also running linux)? This is just a brainstorm, but one that could be really useful if there's a way to make it work.

Off-topic reply:

Using an X61t as a carry to work laptop. Could not use my now favourite MX linux because both running as live disk from usb or installed it took about five minutes to load. I think it had to do with a mismatch between the hardware and the fact MX linux does not use systemd (it has it only for those programs that need it.) So it's using Linux Mint Xfce very happily, also with no battery and a dead left crtl key, 4G ram and an ssd.

DanceMan:

Maybe a little off-topic, but still interesting! I think it's amazing how useful older equipment can be with the right software--and how much the culture of "planned obsolesence" and the way manufacturers are always promoting the next big thing both lead people to spend way more money than they need to and--more importantly--create ungodly amounts of unecessary e-waste, which is a huge environmental problem.

The x61t I have, as is, would still be a viable laptop were I to find a new oem battery and keyboard.

If you haven't yet, consider trying out TinyCore linux on it: I've got that running on an original Asus Eee PC 701 (the original netbook), with less than 2g ram and only 4g of internal storage. But Libreoffice starts up on that thing faster than Word does on my wife's up-to-date Windows 10 machine!