I’m looking to mainly use it for school and was wondering if there’s any recommended distros out there for thinkpads.
Its a Lenovo Thinkpad T480.
Older Thinkpads are very well supported by pretty much everything, so it might be helpful to know more about your experience and what you’ve liked or not liked, and what you intend to run on it.
Linux Mint or Fedora aren’t bad options, Fedora will require a larger version upgrade at least yearly.
With 8 GB of RAM and 5500 CPU passmark points, that’s a good laptop for Linux Mint. Download their “edge” version of Mint, so you get the latest kernel (so it has more chances of supporting 100% that laptop).
Dude, it’s upgradeable, just put 32Gb in.
This @cheezits@lemmy.ca! I run Linux Mint on a T410 with 4 GB of Ram and a 250 GB SSD and the user experience is quite ok for normal day to day usage like playing light games, browsing and HD video streaming.
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DE is more important than distro in regards to RAM. Ubuntu runs on a pi, it should be good on any computer
I have been using a t450 for the past 5 years as my only pc. For about 4 years I used Arch without any major issues, but my “optimizations” became too much to maintan. For the past year I’ve been using Kinoite and it’s brilliant.
Everything runs good enough out of the box and in my daily use I haven’t noticed that I’m running a 9 year old machine. I even play games that should have no business running on that crusty old thing. Also, the stability is divine.
I use Linux Mint and currently Fedora on my Thinkpad.
ITT: Every distro
The question is so generic and open ended it’s not a surprise. The only filter on this is “runs well on ThinkPad” and “lightweight”, which are both up to interpretation
Mint works well on my Thinkpads
You can’t go wrong with Debian or Fedora.
Mint. LMDE.
If you got a Nvidia dGPU I recommend PopOS. It gave me the best energy options and ability to switch between iGPU and dGPU out of the box. It even found new firmware for my T480 and installed it without a hitch.
All of them would be fine, also what wireless card and does yours have a gpu. Iirc the 580 had an option for an mx150 so I wouldn’t be surprised if the 480 had one.
Intel wireless cards are well supported, others not so much
Kubuntu works well on mine. A friend has Lubuntu on his.
I have a T560 and i run debian with sway. It serves the dual purpose of getting me more comfortable in the terminal (i even use power shell on my windowa desk top a lot more now), and it runs much better than KDE or gnome did. Im missing some obvious quality of life settings like easily adjusting the power settings (it never sleeps, just turns off the screen and locks). But again, im trying to get more comfortable using the terminal so for me its more of a “take the training wheels off” thing.
Debian or OpenSUSE. Can’t go wrong.
I have LMDE on my T580.
I run LMDE 6 on my Thinkpad. Takes a bit of initial TLC to get tuned, but it’s rock stable.
Cinnamon is a really stable DE, I’ve had almost zero issues ever with it. It’s a little plain, but not ugly, and you can add themes if you really want to pretty it up.
