ThinkPad X301
After years of using laptops that I never actually owned
(like my company issued T42,
or the aging NEC La Vie
that my landlady permanently loaned me), I finally have
one that is really mine.
This is a ThinkPad X301 (see this ThinkWiki entry for non-biased specs). Probably not the sort of laptop you buy on a grad-student budget, but it was available for a discount at the University computer store.
Debian 'Lenny' is now happily running on it, no major problems in installation or configuration except:
- Wifi is non-free. I overlooked the fact that Intel wifi drivers need proprietary firmware blobs. It works but to depend on the non-free firmware is a shame. Customizing the laptop from Levovo directly may have yielded some free (albeit costlier) options. I wonder what other non-free devices I may encounter. I'm happy with whatever is working out-of-the-box, though.
- There is a stupid glitch that prevents me from using the TrackPad (unless I choose to sacrifice the wonderful TrackPoint scrolling feature famously associated with ThinkPads). This is a problem only for distributions that use fully HAL-automated hardware configuration; it is too late, however, to revert to hand-customized configuration files (xorg.conf, etc).
- Minor suspend/resume issues which I am sure will smoothen out soon.
comments: 0