On Tue, 8 Feb 2011 15:09:23 -0700 Bob Proulx <b...@proulx.com> wrote:
> Celejar wrote: > > I'm curious - everyone has always seemed to love ThinkPads, but I've > > never understood what exactly makes them so popular. I'm not > > disagreeing or challenging - I've never used one, and I just want to > > understand why everyone swears by them. > > The IBM ThinkPads were always solid equipment and all of the hardware > was supported very well. They did what you expected a laptop to do in > that all of the peripherals worked with Linux drivers. Networking > worked with native drivers. Graphics display worked with native > drivers. Suspend to ram works. Suspend to disk works. The volume > buttons work. The keyboard light can be toggled on and off. The > special function keys work. Battery life is reasonable. The keyboard > is the best of any of the laptops I have used. In my experience > everything "just works". Good to know, thanks - I've heard that before. The keyboard is the one thing about which I'm really dissatisfied with my Acer Aspire, although that's not Linux specific. > Contrast that experience to other brands of laptops I have used where > only 80% of the peripherals had working Linux drivers. With one I had > endless trouble with the graphics chip and eventually traded the > machine out. With one I could only get suspend to work by using the > kernel patches for suspend2 (now known as tux-on-ice). Excellent as > those were it meant I always required a custom patched kernel. But I > also required a custom kernel for the wifi driver on that machine. So > I couldn't just install security upgrades for kernels but always had > to spend the time to build patched new ones. Another machine I could > never get all of the special function keys running. There seems to > alway be pieces that never function with Linux. Vendors put on > proprietary (often very cheap) hardware that causes endless problems > for users. > > For a long time it was very useful for people who installed GNU/Linux > on a new laptop to put up a page on the web documenting what was > needed to make it work so that we could share progress in the > struggle. And it was always a struggle. I have done that and it was > useful. But I stopped doing it when I started using ThinkPads. The > reason is that I stopped needing to do anything special to install a > working system on a ThinkPad. Everything just worked. Having used > other brands it was always like being beaten with a stick. Moving to > the ThinkPad was like having the pain stop. > > The ThinkPads traditionally have been just very normal and standard > hardware. Being mainstream this meant the Linux kernel drivers were > sufficient and well supported. This is what made them so nice. But > as unsupported wifi chips and graphics drivers get added to newer > machines this means that now you have to be careful not to get one of > those. Now you have to watch out and make sure the components are > supportable. I don't think future ThinkPads will be as uniformly > supportable as the older models. Yes - the very message I was responding to stated: > I have problems with the Realtek 8191SE wireless network > device. The Realtek driver built but didn't appear to > support scanning for wireless networks. > (I didn't manage to get ndiswrapper working.) > On various ThinkPads of mine and others I have replaced fans (three), > keyboards (once), individual keys (once), display (backlight died), > busted plastic case parts (once). You can repair them. And taking > them apart and putting them together with the new parts is usually > pretty straight-forward. My 2004 T42 is still running great. Thanks for the detailed explanation. > Bob Celejar -- foffl.sourceforge.net - Feeds OFFLine, an offline RSS/Atom aggregator mailmin.sourceforge.net - remote access via secure (OpenPGP) email ssuds.sourceforge.net - A Simple Sudoku Solver and Generator -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20110209161011.e0264f03.cele...@gmail.com
