Upgrading an Old ThinkPad With Linux

Liberating a T400 from the clutches of Windows with Linux. The first of many upgrades I'll be making to this laptop.

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[MyJoseph]

>This is a no windows household
>Records video right in front of a window
Ok

[provenancemachining]

I use to do this at my university when I worked on the Helpdesk. There were a lot of students who either couldn't afford an upgraded laptop or were outright financially struggling and typing out papers between the lab machines and their smart phone. We had a public recycle bin for old technology, with most of what was thrown in there was actually perfectly functional, just a little older and consumerism demanded buying the latest shit. I refurbished\repaired what I could and just gave it away for free to those I knew who needed them the most, ended up converting a lot of people to Linux that way, lol.

[trevorsmith]

Almost like hard drives become more bearable when the OS isn't trying to load three gigabytes of telemetry data into memory on startup.

[Finkelfunk]

"But Linux is so difficult!"
A friend of my mom (68 years old and a complete tech illiterate) had trouble with her dinosaur of a laptop (from what I could gather it was not newer than 2012 lol). She was cursing about how Windows 7 was running super slow and how her antivirus kept popping up, how she had trouble using it and was about to throw that thing out. She unfortunately went and got a new Win 10 laptop before I could stop her, so she had this old laptop sitting around.
I asked her if I could install Linux, backed her data up and installed Arch with KDE. Made everything nice and senior friendly for her, all icons, nice and visible, blocking any chance of her fucking up by deleting important files on accident, installing everything she might need, the whole 9 yards. Then I gave it back.
Not only does it run now like it is brand new, she also likes to use this laptop more than her new Win 10 machine. Haven't heard her complain once in like 6 months so far.

[beaucarbatema]

I’ve had my thinkpad for 8 years now, love it. Gonna use it till she dies or I’m not poor. I’ve upgraded the RAM, and added an SSD recently to optionally boot Linux from. Still new to Linux but great to be able to bounce between windows 10 and Linux to learn

[shawnmiguel]

The click sound is so satisfying on these thinkpads. Thanks for the real simple walkthrough on Linux installation on a pc with windows already on it.

[LumocolorARTnr]

For backups, don't forget the hidden datafolders in appdata. Many programs store the important data there.

[N.S.A.]

Red Star OS is the best distro. Fast and stable.

[KayleLang]

15 years ago, I worked in a little computer shop and having fixed a ton of laptops. By far, Thinkpads were the quickest to get up and running. They were one of the few laptops that didn't need a million drivers after a fresh install. Sony and especially Fujitsu were the worst with this. Believe it or not, but Dell, at the time, was a close second.

[blehmeh]

Very interesting video. Linux Mint was the first Linux distro I ever willingly installed and used myself. I first used it back in 2012 on a Fujitsu Lifebook laptop my dad got for me to play Minecraft on. It wasn't a Thinkpad, but looking back, it was a business-oriented laptop with a decent CPU, a rugged build, and plentiful port selection all the same, so it's a laptop with many of the same qualities and niche as a Thinkpad. Windows 7 was what I was using at the time, and although I wasn't super critical of it, I realized over time that it ran slower and slower and eventually needed to be reinstalled, meanwhile my dualboot of Linux Mint XFCE edition was still going strong at the time, as well as running Minecraft, Counter Strike, and Team Fortress 2 without complaint. As I matured and bore witness to the dumpster fires known as Windows 8 and 10, I realized what direction Windows was going in and jumped ship entirely to Linux Mint in 2017 before I moved on to Lubuntu and more recently Debian. I owe a great deal to Linux Mint, as it's the distro that showed me the common and practical benefits of FOSS as well as the principle ones, and allowed me to make my own choice on the matter. I owe much of my programming knowledge and interest to being let loose in a transparent system that allowed me to easily install whatever programming package I wanted and interact with them however I wanted. On top of all this, Linux Mint showed me that if I put in the effort and learned about how my equipment worked and what kinds of processes go into things I otherwise take for granted, I can take something that seems old or clunky and make it shine and work like new again by working the cruft out of the process, even if tradeoffs sometimes have to be made. Whenever I used Windows, I always had to deal with parts of the black box that I couldn't access working slower and slower over time, and I always had only one recourse to beat around the bush and work around the issue from the outside running defrags and deleting temporary files only to give up as it eventually became too slow to even troubleshoot and I couldn't fix the issue, whereas on Linux, any issue could be traced back to a process that I could transparently trouble shoot and fix, with a community of people willing to help me track the problem, report it, and learn more about that process so that I'm well armed if something similar ever happens again. I'll admit I don't think Linux is for everyone, but if there is a Linux that comes close to that moniker, it's Linux Mint, because it strikes a good balance between protecting the user's freedom and allowing them to use their computer however they like with ease, all while providing an excellent coherent installation of default apps that work well together and handle many common needs right out of the box.

[Sock-qvwr]

The first laptop I used was an Acer aspire from 2006 (2007?). Recently had to sell my modern laptop cuz of money and revived the Acer with mint. So good! Even when it only has 2 gigs of ram. Just enough for writing and browsing.

[Marshdweller]

I love how you put in the usb stick vertically.

[marcotrigo]

THAT'S IT?!
I didn't know it was this easy to install Linux, holy crap!! so cool

[thedanmethenyshow.]

ThinkPads are awesome. Installed artix mainline install today and everything runs smoothly. They work well with BDS based operating systems too. I even bought an old t520 with an upgraded SSD and maxed out ram for a family member and put devuan chimera on it preconfigured with a desktop and they love it. I haven't used Linux mint for awhile now but that makes me think it's probably better for family members but they've been able to update the systems themselves thru the terminal I only showed them a couple of times but they don't always think about that and Linux mint comes with an update notifier. Food for thought on my end.

[donjon]

Nothing new to me, but it's delightful seeing this machine come to a better place where it belongs.
Also nice authentic introduction for possible new users.

[awesomeferret]

I actually still use a T510 for college, no joke. Yes, there are a few things here and there that run much better on my 100 dollar Craigslist special Latitude with a 4th gen i5 (the T510 is maxed out with a first gen i7), but a maxed out ten year old ThinkPad is so usable that it really makes me wonder why so many people have newer computers. A 7 year old midrange CPU is already overkill for 95 percent of what most people do on a computer in 2022. The screen on mine is really high end for its time, so it actually looks better than any new laptop under 300 dollars. The speakers can be EQed into near-macbook quality, and the keyboard is amazing.

[betanpc]

i did this as well with my 2gb ram computer that i gave to my cousin to use for school purposes. I used puppy and it runs smoothely

[RAZREXE]

It's like YouTube 2014 again, I'd sit all day infront of my laptop watching Linux tutorials like these.

[chubbycatfish]

I have a 12 year old laptop that I installed Bunsenlabs Linux on years ago and it's still perfectly usable.

[Stranger--]

my old lenovo has Linux Mint Xfce, i don't have enough RAM to run cinnamon and multitask. works great and gets the job done