Hi everyone.

Can anyone guide me into choosing a Linux distro for this laptop (or laptops in general)?

I want to get it for my dad as a general browsing machine that can maybe also play some very old games. (think 2010 era)

How do I pick a distro? I tried checking the drivers page but it seems, at least from this page, that there are almost no drivers available on linux for this machine.

The same seems to be the case for many other laptops I looked at…I also have a ThinkBook 16 G7 IML as a work machine that I could not find proper drivers for (keyboard, camera, graphics card - I get artifacting very often)

Help? How do I research this?

EDIT: Thanks for the overwhelming support! What I took away is:

  • Most drivers are packaged in the kernel in Linux so no dedicated drivers are needed most of the time
  • Proprietary drivers are an issue (camera on the 16 G7 IML, Nvidia drivers)
  • The 940MX may not have Linux support, I’ll check
  • It’s a good laptop overall
  • Consider Mint, Tuxedo OS, Zorin (for mac users), Ubuntu
  • Consider A485 (AMD version of T480 with Vega 8), T470 (non-P - no nvidia driver issues), T480 (faster low power CPU than T470 high power CPU)
  • Resources: DistroWatch.com DistroChooser Linux Hardware

Yes I’ve considered desktops and would build one in a heartbeat if it would be useful for my dad, but he 100% needs the portability. Thanks for the heads up.

This thread proves 100% that the linux community really is friendly as hell. I don’t know where people get the impression that noobs are treated badly.

I just checked compatibility between Mint and the 940MX and it seems good. Here are some links. The ones with “computer” in the link are specifically T470 or T470P models. The site is very slow for some reason but it will load eventually. If you get a gateway timeout it’s likely to succeed if you retry.

  • BennyCHill [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
    2·
    30 days ago

    There are no drivers available because they are not needed, vast majority of hardware drivers are included in the Linux kernel, sometimes proprietary firmwares are needed but most distros tend to include them.

    One of the big exceptions to this rule is the Nvidia driver, more recent cards now have an open source driver, but the 940mx included in the T470p is old and unsupported and wont do you much good on Linux.

    i saw on the shop you linked they have a T480 with 8th gen i5 available for slightly more: https://www.pchouse.ro/lenovo-thinkpad-t480-14-fhd-i5-8350u-8gb-ddr4-256gb-ssd-nvme-windows-optional-laptop-refurbished-grad-a.html
    This is one of the most popular Thinkpads currently because 8th gen intel made a large leap in performance (so the T480 low power CPU is almost as fast as the T470p high power one) and it also has pretty much perfect Linux support.

    Otherwise the A485 would be my secret recommendation although kinda hard to find. its the same exact laptop as the T480 but with an AMD cpu which is pretty much the same speed as the intel one, but its integrated graphics are much faster, in fact almost matching the 940mx performance.

    • 87Six@lemmy.zipOPEnglish
      1·
      30 days ago

      I saw that A485 too and wanted to get it myself but couldn’t find it :-/ Might wait more for it. It uses the Vega 8 I think and that iGPU impressed me greatly. I saw it play Battlefield 1 on 720p low at 50 FPS and was immediately impressed.