LinuxBBQ

It's no secret that ThinkPads are great laptops. They are pretty well revered and have a huge following in the Linux world.

Post your tips, tricks, hacks, photos, poetry (lol), links, discussion, whatever...

I'll start it off the the well-known ThinkPad wiki, which is specific to Linux on ThinkPads:

http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/ThinkWiki

The ThinkPad Depot (thanks to DJ for turning me on to this):

http://www.thinkpaddepot.com/

Not so easy to find in Italy, but since everybody (I mean, DebianJoe) talk about their almighty power, I spent quite a while to get my hands on a T61. Only to watch it stolen by my wife... but that's another story.
A great laptop.

Agreed, they're awesome. Nothing short of a tank can destroy mah R51 (and I think it was the lowest budget model at the time, or at least close to it). The keyboard is also the best I have ever used on a laptop.

(Also, if anyone happens to have an LCD cable for a 14" R51, send it my way :D)

Awesome, I'm glad to see the idea come to fruition!

So like I was saying, we at the drew household love thinkpads. Arguably the best laptops ever. I just ordered the parts for my T41; keyboard, fan, battery. I will also need to order a screen for my wife's T43. Once that is up and running, I plan to make that my main machine.

Another happy thinkpad user here for a year now. My laptop is a 13 inches edge e320 with i5 2.5GHz and 8 GB ram.

@dkeg: you 'muricans are so lucky, you can get parts so easily :)

good 'ole amazon

Some more parts links:

http://www.acsparts.com/ThinkPad-parts.htm
http://www.sparepartswarehouse.com/IBM- ... Parts.aspx
http://www.getpartsonline.com/ibm-thinkpad.html

At work: t400 upgraded to 8GB RAM & 500GB HDD (vm's, sadly a necessary evil) and a stock t420.
My Baby: 2Ghz t43 2GB RAM.
Kids' box: 1.86Ghz t43 1.5GB RAM.

As far as laptops are concerned, there's a lot right about the older IBM-made ones (at least if you buy into the whole BBQ Philosophy thing.) 4:3 screens, easy to work on, hard as nails. Good stuff. I'm sure I've rattled on about them enough before. I think very highly of them.

at work everyone one has thinkpads, or vaios.
I think they have t400's
Oh I have a thinkpad 380xd - thats the reason I started with linux - so thank you to my former colleague who gave it to me.

The old T-series is perfect for BBQing. And I give a shit about that it is 'outdated hardware' and 'heavy'. 99.9% of the time it is on my desk, 0.01% being butchered :D T43 it is, the smaller bro of Joe's, added a RAM stick to get to 1.5GB.

FSF approved X60's:
http://www.fsf.org/news/gluglug-x60-lap ... ur-freedom
Hardware maintenance manual linkie:
http://support.lenovo.com/en_US/downloa ... MIGR-62866
I've got a ~1999 Thinkpad rotting away under a pile of other hardware. Last time I checked, the clitpoint was decayed and the case plastic seemed to be getting brittle. Oughta box up the whole thing and send it to one of the bbq gang for parts. It's something like 233-400MHz, came with 4GB HD. Not at home right now to check the model.
Currently testing a cheep ($270 at bestbuy) Ideapad S210 Touch 11.6" with #!.
http://support.lenovo.com/en_US/detail. ... D=UM018022
Hate the glossy screen. Maxed the ram and SSD'd it.
I'm going to check out those X60s...

My ThinkPad collection currently consists of the following featured models T500 - T400 - X61s - T61(14" WSXGA+) - T60p(UXGA) - X40 - T43 - T43p (15¨ UXGA) - A31P - A30P - A21P - 600E - 770.

There are also assorted other T61, T60, T42p, SL510, etc., parts machines and project machines, all ThinkPads. The total is somewhere around 25 ThinkPads! Plus about eight desktop machines.

My daily drivers are:
X40 - Linux Mint Debian Edition for checking the news at breakfast
X40 - AntiX for carrying around with me on my sales job.
T43 - 15" SXGA+ display running Xubuntu sits by the sofa to look up TV trivia
T43p - 15" UXGA display is my BBQ machine currently running Solyanka and Absinthe
T43 - 14" XGA is the wifeś Windows XP machine
T500 - currently testing a few KDE desktop distros

The others are just for the ThinkPad hobby. Itś something of an addiction, that I cannot seem to break.

Oh! Almost forgot to add that I spend way too much time hanging out at: http://forum.thinkpads.com/index.php

^ wow, awesome. How did you come to acquire so many. Throwaway's from work? Purchase off the interwebs?

Mostly picked up from online auctions, craigslist and the market place on thinkpads.com forum. I really, really, have too many, but every time I bring myself to sell one of them, I end up buying two more.

My first ever laptop was the 770 which I used for years, and it got me addicted to ThinkPads, then I just wanted to try different models and started collecting. I very well could have bought and sold 50 plus of them over the last eight years. Never bought a new one, though. Spent over $300 on the 770, and over $200 on a T23 a few years ago, but most of them have cost $25 to around $100.

Damn Neil, you almost have enough ThinkPads to put a different BBQ spin on each one! ;)

Unfortunately I still have no Thinkpad lying around in my house but the next lappy will be one, and used of course, maybe even new if I have enough money. But I always suggest Thinkpads to family members and my mum and my sisters have one. :)

Are other Lenovo laptops, like the IdeaPad, a good alternative to a ThinkPad?

Hi vic,
I have had the chance (?) to use an Ideapad Y560 (IIRC) for a few months, which comes with two gfx cards and a glossy display. Hated every minute with it, but its hardware was perfectly recognized with Debian (#!, aptosid, siduction, BBQ, Ubuntu, Deepin), and even gfx switching worked. Everything else about it I didn't much like. The display has very low contrast and is too bright, the touchpad overly sensitive, it produced a lot of heat, and the overall manufacturing quality was a bit cheapish.

I'd rather go for a second hand (old) IBM-ish Txx than a new Ideapad. That's of course JMHO. If you see a second hand Txx for good money (below 100 EUR), simply get it for kicks, and use it as desktop PC (the battery will definitely be stuck somewhere at 30% capacity). Hardware support is first class.

Many of the things that I love about the T-series aren't as profound in some of the other models. It doesn't make them 'bad,' just that they're more 'generic laptop' IMHO.

(edit: MB replied while I was typing, but that's pretty much my opinion as well.)