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.

  • Hellfire103English
    10·
    11 days ago

    Here are three sites that will make your life a whole lot easier:

    • DistroWatch.com - This is basically a database of various Linux distros, BSDs, Unices, and other similar OSes. It’s a good way of looking into a distro before installing it.
    • DistroChooser - This is a basic quiz that suggests Linux distros for you.
    • Linux Hardware - This is a database of hardware. I use it to check driver support before buying a new machine. It is hosted in Russia, though, so be careful.

    If you or your dad are new to Linux, don’t bother with DistroWatch or DistroChooser just yet; go for Linux Mint.

    I started my Linux journey with Mint on a ThinkPad T400 back in 2019, and now I’m one of the few people in my university writing Bash scripts without using ChatGPT. This shouldn’t be a flex, but it is; and I owe it to starting with Mint.

    • 87Six@lemmy.zipOPEnglish
      4·
      11 days ago

      Man you just linked a whole gold mine, thanks, those are a lot of resources

      And yea, if you code / script without using AI you have my damn full respect because I’m 100% tired of dealing with bugs written by AI.