It’s probably been 15 years since I’ve used Linux and Mint seems to be the recommended distro for people who aren’t all that familiar with Linux like me, but I didn’t know if there was anything I should know with this ThinkPad model that anyone is familiar with. My searching around shows people saying everything from it was painless to install to they had tons of issues and I have no idea how common either one is.
So any advice would be appreciated. Thanks!
Mint is lovely, as are all other Linux distros. However, if you want the latest stuff without going off piste and compiling it yourself, then a rolling, bleeding edge distro might appeal to you. You do mention that you have prior Linux experience.
I own a UK based IT company (as you do) with two other partners (I’m MD and not a doctor) and a slack handful of (lovely - obvs) employees. I personally like Arch on my gear. I used to sport Gentoo but my nadgers complained about being overheated too often. I still have a fair few Gentoo VMs lying around the place.
You might like to try a https://manjaro.org/ effort - I prefer the Plasma desktop spin (KDE). That’s Arch with a few more GUIs. Their Konsole is quite something with zsh and a very stylish prompt.
So far I have managed to get Linux to work on everything I have access to which is rather a lot of hardware. Back in the day wifi was a bit wanky and there was ndiswrapper but nowadays I generally find that laptops from HPE and Dell are just as well supported with Linux as Windows, often better.
I finally ditched Windows on my stuff at Windows 7 - that was my wife’s laptop - a GPU update screwed up and that was the final straw. She has been an Arch user for a good seven years and could not give a shit about what is running on her laptop, provided it works and does stuff.
Thanks, but I think Mint will be fine for my purposes. This isn’t going to be a workhorse machine or anything. And I’m not really a gamer either.
Don’t be afraid to distro hop. If Mint doesn’t feel right for you, then try another distro. Also try different desktop environments if you can. Mint uses Cinnamon, but there are also kde plasma, gnome, xfce and many others to try. Who knows, maybe you like one of them more.
I ended up on mint myself, and am happy enough with it but definitely want to get into Wayland so I can use waydroid. I haven’t started digging too deeply yet so apologies if I could find this out in a moment of searching. But kde plasma can install on mint? Anyone know how well it works?
You should be able to install multiple desktop environments and select which one to use on the login screen. It’s pretty straightforward and there are many tutorial on how to do that such as this one: https://www.linuxcapable.com/how-to-install-kde-plasma-on-linux-mint/
Thinkpads are great for running Linux, but one thing I’ve noticed is
thinkfanis not installed by any distro I’ve tried. You definitely want that, or your laptop’s fan isn’t going to work - that will lead to performance issues or potentially damage your laptopMy T470 worked just fine without
thinkfaninstalled. Is that just something model-specific?
congrats on your foray into linuxland. its possibly one of the better decisions you can make for yourself and mint is a great way to start because its reasoably well polished and the UI is familiar. issues usually arise from extremely old (and likely broken) hardware or from bleeding edge hardware that does not yet have support.
as others have said, things are likely to work pretty well right from the get-go, but, in the event of an issue, you have support! :-)
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Yeah. Plex will do exactly what it sounds like you are wanting to do.
I know plex and I have used it for an year. But I access files on my computer using my mobile without any app. Is that possible with linux?
Yes you can access Windows shares directly and play the media from there with no issues. I do it all the time.
Thanks!
There are a bunch of probes in the linux hardware database. You can check what they are like for your exact model.
Thanks!
I took a quick look at the specs and the T460 has 2 cores and uses DDR3 ram, so even though Linux is much lighter on resources than Windows, this laptop might not last you too long, considering how heavy even basic web browsing is these days. This computer will choke if you have a lot of tabs open, especially if you have things other than the browser open. I also noticed it has TPM, so just double check that you can replace the OS on this particular machine.
An alternative would be the T480, which would give you more mileage but can’t usually be had for under $100 like the T460.
Glhf!
It’s what I could afford.
I run mint on a T460s and it works like a charm.
Great, thanks!
Does it have dual batteries? My t470s does a hard shutdown instead of switching battery source when the first battery is empty sometimes. It’s an old bug and I think the consensus is that no one is really sure why.
Yes, it does have two batteries. That kind of sucks. But I don’t need all-day battery life, so hopefully that won’t be a huge issue.
Hopefully you won’t get bitten by this bug. It seems like a combination of Lenovo firmware, upower, and the DE.
I hope not, but if it is an issue, it doesn’t sound like it will be a huge one most of the time at least.
Is your internal battery dead? I’ve never seen such problems with dual battery Thinkpads.
No, both work, it’s the switching over that often does a hard shutdown.
https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/upower/upower/-/issues/62
I’m using the latest Lenovo firmware and have the same issue in any Linux version I’ve tried. Bad luck I guess, but I’m out of ideas.
Fwiw I never had a problem hotswapping batteries out
I can’t speak for the T460, but I have a T480 with dual batteries and battery swapping works just fine. With a bit of tinkering I was even able to get the fingerprint sensor to work as well
Much like my searching, it seems like it’s all over the map in terms of experiences, although in general, it seems like the issues people have encountered are minor.
You’ll probably fine
Go ahead and be happy
Thanks. I hope so, but since there were people who seemed to have some issues when I was searching around (someone was claiming there was a brightness issue they couldn’t solve, for example), I just want to make sure there isn’t anything specific for the T460- or that line in general- that I need to make sure is configured in some unusual way.
I’d say it probably works out of the box.
I usually have a look at thinkwiki and the arch wiki. Since they don’t have dedicated guides for this model, it usually means it’s not supported at all and no one even tried, or it’s a smooth ride and there just are no issues. Since it’s not a niche product, I’d say it’s the latter. And it’s an older model without extravagant hardware… it should work fine.
Great to hear, thanks!
I read the other good advice with the firmware (UEFI) update. If there’s still Windows on it, maybe run Lenovo Vantage and let it update the firmware.
Windows 10 is on it. I’ll do that first, thanks!
lenovo is also one of the companies that provides packaged firmware updates to the linux fwupd project, so you should be able to maintain firmware updatesfrom linux in the future.
That is great to hear.
Oh that’s a nice project for them to participate in!
Since they don’t have dedicated guides for this model, it usually means it’s not supported at all and no one even tried, or it’s a smooth ride and there just are no issues.
I feel like if someone went through hell trying to install Linux on some obscure hardware there would be something online. I think the safe bet a majority of the time that it just hasn’t been documented yet.
Hmm, I mean there is also publication bias. You’re more likely to edit a Wiki page if you found a solution… But you’re also likely to rant and ask for questions if it’s really bad… There is a bit in the middle where it doesn’t work that well. What I find super annoying if I find my question already posted 2 years ago and there isn’t a solution posted underneath. That means someone either got it working and didn’t update their post… or they moved on and it’s impossible. But you’re right, this really mostly happens to obscure and niche problems. Not if it’s a ThinkPad or Dell laptop midel that has already sold millions of times. But somewhat likely if it’s a newer high-end gaming mainboard or niche server that isn’t common amongst the Linux-folks.
IMHO there’s no other way to know that something works that trying it by yourself. I honestly don’t believe that there’s some kind of specific problem with that model that will not let you use Linux on it, maybe some kind of BIOS/UEFI lock but that’s usually easy to unlock.
Maybe if you really want to be sure that it works, you can try using Mint from Live Mode (Booting directly from the pendrive without installing the OS) before purchasing it.
It’s less a ‘won’t run Linux’ and more ‘configure it this way or you’ll have problems’ worry, but it sounds like it should be okay from what others have said.
You may need to update the UEFI firmware.
Thanks, that was the sort of advice I was wanting to make sure I got before I installed Mint. I assume you mean update it via Lenovo and not from a third party… or if from a third party, if you can tell me where, that would be great!
It would be from Lenovo.
Awesome, thanks!
I have a T450, I’m dual booting Windows 10 and Ubuntu (…I know, I know, I’m just too lazy to swap) on it and it works great, I get better performance on Ubuntu than I do on Windows. The fans worked oob.
I’m with you.
I sort of petered out distro-hoping 10-ish years ago, I’ve just used boring old Ubuntu LTS ever since. All the Unity/Gnome/KDE, Snap/Flatpak and systemd stuff I’ve successfully ignored.
I have no doubt that there are “better” distros out there, but Ubuntu works.
Thanks. Good to hear! I’m glad the other person mentioned the fans just in case though.
@FlyingSquid
Hi,
congratulations
I am a linux user on thinkpad since decades: T40 (2004), T42, T420, T450, T480 and now as I am retired, I bought a T470… still happy
About firmware, the T470 runs with ubuntu and firmware is updated when needed. I don’t know with Mint.
be happy with the 🐧
@linuxI have a T480 with Mint and everything worked with zero hassle. Just installed it and started working.
Awesome, just what I wanted to hear. Thank you!
