Looking to move up from my ThinkPad T61p (Fedora 19) to something more current. Looks like the T530 might be an option, as might be the Dell Latitude E6350. Both are priced in the same ballpark. Comments welcome, as well as other suggestions. Thanks.
On Fri, Oct 04, 2013 at 04:14:19PM -0400, Tim Evans wrote:
Looking to move up from my ThinkPad T61p (Fedora 19) to something more current. Looks like the T530 might be an option, as might be the Dell Latitude E6350. Both are priced in the same ballpark. Comments welcome, as well as other suggestions. Thanks.
I've got a W530 and it works very well with Fedora, although I haven't gotten the "optimus" video card switching technology working. The Intel video works great, and the Noveau driver works with the Nvidia card giving better performance but _does_ seem to run hot. One catch is that the external video ports (including on the docking station if you have it) *only* work with the Nvidia card.
On 4 October 2013 17:14, Tim Evans tkevans@tkevans.com wrote:
Looking to move up from my ThinkPad T61p (Fedora 19) to something more current. Looks like the T530 might be an option, as might be the Dell Latitude E6350. Both are priced in the same ballpark. Comments welcome, as well as other suggestions. Thanks.
Hi: I currently own a T530 (I replaced the internal disk for an SSD, then put the removed sata/rotational/magnetical one in the DVD slot, so now I've 2 disk :), SSD for OS and some random stuffs, rotational/magnetical one for home, works like a charm) It has the Intel and NVidia cards, currently using the Intel one. So far, running Fedora 19, everything works just fine.
On Fri, 4 Oct 2013, Tim Evans wrote:
Looking to move up from my ThinkPad T61p (Fedora 19) to something more current. Looks like the T530 might be an option, as might be the Dell Latitude E6350. Both are priced in the same ballpark. Comments welcome, as well as other suggestions. Thanks.
I have a Dell Latitude D630, an upgrade to my Dell Inspiron 600m. I bought it off-lease with a clean hard drive (no OS installed) from this outfit: http://www.systime.com/
Generally, very pleased.
Max Pyziur pyz@brama.com
On 10/05/13 09:14, Tim Evans wrote:
Looking to move up from my ThinkPad T61p (Fedora 19) to something more current. Looks like the T530 might be an option, as might be the Dell Latitude E6350. Both are priced in the same ballpark. Comments welcome, as well as other suggestions. Thanks.
You might like to have a look at www.thinkpenguin.com. They are heavily Linux oriented (and as such deserve to be supported IMHO). I haven't bought a computer from them (yet) but I bought a USB WiFi device from them --- which solved an infuriating problem that I was having in getting WiFi to work on my new-ish Toshiba Satellite L850. Service was prompt, friendly and helpful, and their communications were lucid and basically bullshit-free.
cheers,
Rolf Turner
P. S. Based on my experience, ***don't*** buy a Toshiba!
R. T.
On Sat, Oct 05, 2013 at 12:05:14PM +1300, Rolf Turner wrote:
.......snip.......
P. S. Based on my experience, ***don't*** buy a Toshiba!
Want to expand on that? My stepdaughter has a satellite that I'm thinking of taking over and installing one of the linux distros.
On Fri, Oct 04, 2013 at 04:19:50PM -0400, Matthew Miller wrote:
I've got a W530 and it works very well with Fedora, although I haven't gotten the "optimus" video card switching technology working. The Intel video works great, and the Noveau driver works with the Nvidia card giving better performance but _does_ seem to run hot. One catch is that the external video ports (including on the docking station if you have it) *only* work with the Nvidia card.
Oh! I forgot to note that I needed to boot with nox2apic to get the Nvidia card to work.
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Common_F19_bugs#Boot_hangs_when_using_NVIDIA_...
On 10/06/13 06:58, Robert Holtzman wrote:
On Sat, Oct 05, 2013 at 12:05:14PM +1300, Rolf Turner wrote:
.......snip.......P. S. Based on my experience, ***don't*** buy a Toshiba!
Want to expand on that? My stepdaughter has a satellite that I'm thinking of taking over and installing one of the linux distros.
Well, I just had endless frustration in respect of the WiFi interface which was vital to me. After a bit of struggle I found an email address that purported to be for Linux support for Toshiba machines. I got all excited and sent email to that address, and after a couple of days got a reply saying no, we don't support Linux. Which I thought was pretty crappy.
Anyhow, apparently Toshiba keep things so secret that it's essentially impossible for the free software community to build drivers which will work with Toshiba's WiFi interface. I had more endless frustration, but eventually found out that there exist USB WiFi devices that will dodge around the problem. (Some such devices will work with Linux systems and some won't.) I first tried an ASUS device which purported to have Linux support, but turned out to be essentially useless. Then I was lent an Engenius EUB 9801 device which *did* work. (This particular item has been discontinued by Engenius, but has been replaced by something else. Can't remember the designation, and have no idea if this "replacement" actually works with Linux.) Then I bought a device from thinkpenguin.com, and they guaranteed by email that it would work, and indeed it did.
I had also bought a Logitech cordless mouse along with my Toshiba --- and *that* wouldn't work initially (under Linux). It would work if I booted <expletive deleted> Windoze, but. However with my latest re-install of Fedora (17) the Logitech mouse works fine. Don't know if the problem was really down to Toshiba or if it was just down to Logitech, but whatever it was, Fedora seems to have solved the problem.
cheers,
Rolf Turner
On 10/05/2013 06:53 PM, Rolf Turner wrote:
Well, I just had endless frustration in respect of the WiFi interface which was vital to me. After a bit of struggle I found an email address that purported to be for Linux support for Toshiba machines. I got all excited and sent email to that address, and after a couple of days got a reply saying no, we don't support Linux. Which I thought was pretty crappy.
I'm sorry to read about your issues. I've had a Toshiba laptop for several years now, running Fedora and the WiFi Just Works. (The only problem I've had with it is that when I first got the laptop, I didn't know that the WiFi card has its own on/off switch. Once I turned it on, all went well.) Toshiba does have a mailing list for Linux users, at http://linux.toshiba-dme.co.jp/mailman/listinfo/tlinux-users but be warned: most of the members use one flavor or another of Ubuntu, so you may have to translate any advice they give into something more appropriate for Fedora.
Quoting Rolf Turner r.turner@auckland.ac.nz:
On 10/06/13 06:58, Robert Holtzman wrote:
On Sat, Oct 05, 2013 at 12:05:14PM +1300, Rolf Turner wrote:
.......snip.......P. S. Based on my experience, ***don't*** buy a Toshiba!
Want to expand on that? My stepdaughter has a satellite that I'm thinking of taking over and installing one of the linux distros.
certainly test it with a live cd or bootable usb first. I bought a Samsung and had to wait a year and a half for a reliable driver, very frustrating.
Dave
Well, I just had endless frustration in respect of the WiFi interface which was vital to me. After a bit of struggle I found an email address that purported to be for Linux support for Toshiba machines. I got all excited and sent email to that address, and after a couple of days got a reply saying no, we don't support Linux. Which I thought was pretty crappy.
Anyhow, apparently Toshiba keep things so secret that it's essentially impossible for the free software community to build drivers which will work with Toshiba's WiFi interface. I had more endless frustration, but eventually found out that there exist USB WiFi devices that will dodge around the problem. (Some such devices will work with Linux systems and some won't.) I first tried an ASUS device which purported to have Linux support, but turned out to be essentially useless. Then I was lent an Engenius EUB 9801 device which *did* work. (This particular item has been discontinued by Engenius, but has been replaced by something else. Can't remember the designation, and have no idea if this "replacement" actually works with Linux.) Then I bought a device from thinkpenguin.com, and they guaranteed by email that it would work, and indeed it did.
I had also bought a Logitech cordless mouse along with my Toshiba --- and *that* wouldn't work initially (under Linux). It would work if I booted <expletive deleted> Windoze, but. However with my latest re-install of Fedora (17) the Logitech mouse works fine. Don't know if the problem was really down to Toshiba or if it was just down to Logitech, but whatever it was, Fedora seems to have solved the problem.
cheers, Rolf Turner
On Sat, 2013-10-05 at 15:35 -0400, Matthew Miller wrote:
On Fri, Oct 04, 2013 at 04:19:50PM -0400, Matthew Miller wrote:
I've got a W530 and it works very well with Fedora, although I haven't gotten the "optimus" video card switching technology working. The Intel video works great, and the Noveau driver works with the Nvidia card giving better performance but _does_ seem to run hot. One catch is that the external video ports (including on the docking station if you have it) *only* work with the Nvidia card.
Oh! I forgot to note that I needed to boot with nox2apic to get the Nvidia card to work.
Ha, I have a W520 with Arch Linux installed and Optimus works really well with bumblebee and Nvidia driver, even with dual and three monitors with dock. You can simply use /xrandr/ and /optirun/ to make that happen. I think this technique will work on Fedora as well, maybe simpler.
By the way, I am really looking forward to W540 :) Love Thinkpads! I have another Thinkpad X230 with Arch and everything is working great too.
On 10/04/2013 04:14 PM, Tim Evans wrote:
Looking to move up from my ThinkPad T61p (Fedora 19) to something more current. Looks like the T530 might be an option, as might be the Dell Latitude E6350. Both are priced in the same ballpark. Comments welcome, as well as other suggestions. Thanks.
Just to close this loop, I bought the Lenovo T530. Runs F19 with no issues so far. (It even booted from a very old OpenSolaris disk.)
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Bob Holtzman -
Carlos "casep" Sepulveda -
Dave Stevens -
Joe Zeff -
Matthew Miller -
Max Pyziur -
Rolf Turner -
Tim Evans -
Xinyun Zhou