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!

  • qprimed@lemmy.mlEnglish
    2·
    7 months ago

    congrats on your foray into linuxland. its possibly one of the better decisions you can make for yourself. mint is a great way to start because its reasonably 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! :-)

  • Diplomjodler@feddit.de
    1·
    7 months ago

    I have a T480 with Mint and everything worked with zero hassle. Just installed it and started working.

  • intelisense@lemm.ee
    1·
    7 months ago

    Thinkpads are great for running Linux, but one thing I’ve noticed is thinkfan is 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 laptop

  • pmk@lemmy.sdf.org
    0·
    7 months ago

    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.

    • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldOP
      0·
      7 months ago

      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.

      • GlenTheFrog@lemmy.ml
        2·
        7 months ago

        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

        • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldOP
          2·
          7 months ago

          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.

      • pmk@lemmy.sdf.org
        0·
        7 months ago

        Hopefully you won’t get bitten by this bug. It seems like a combination of Lenovo firmware, upower, and the DE.

  • seathru@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
    0·
    7 months ago

    IIRC Mint 21.3 had a touchpad driver keyboard issue on some Thinkpads. It looked like a simple fix if you are effected tho.

    Installing Mint on my Thinkpad Yoga was easier than installing Windows. Everything worked right out of the box.

    Edit: keyboard not touchpad.

    • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldOP
      0·
      7 months ago

      Thanks. You don’t happen to know if there’s a list of the models that have that issue and/or a page on how to fix it, do you?

          • Shareni@programming.dev
            0·
            7 months ago

            From what I’ve seen, hardware issues usually come from the hardware manufacturer and not the distro. For example on my t480 the CPU is perma throttled because intel didn’t release a patch.

            • lilith267@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
              0·
              7 months ago

              Did you change your bios settings to performance? I had the same problem but changing both bios and power management to performance finnaly let my CPU boost to advertised speeds

                • lilith267@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
                  1·
                  7 months ago

                  Also t480 - i5-8350u CPU.

                  My process was to update firmware with fwupd -> change TLP to performance(depending on desktop environment you may have a battery life settings panel) -> reboot into bios and change power settings to performance.

                  Ran a benchmark and my CPU was running at full power when it was limiting itself to 2Ghz before.

  • rufus@discuss.tchncs.de
    0·
    7 months ago

    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.

    • Corroded@leminal.spaceEnglish
      0·
      7 months ago

      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.

      • rufus@discuss.tchncs.de
        1·
        7 months ago

        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.