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.

  • HumanPerson@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    0·
    11 months ago

    I’m a big fan of Debian stable for school / work laptops. Older packages aren’t great, but if you aren’t someone who needs the newest libreoffice version or something, it works fine. Updates will basically never break it apart from major releases (which you have a few years before you have to worry about, although you can upgrade sooner).

  • Revan343@lemmy.ca
    0·
    11 months ago

    I have a similar ThinkPad, I run Mint with LxQt, though xfce is a good option too

  • Logh@lemmy.ml
    0·
    11 months ago

    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.

    • JustARegularNerd@aussie.zoneEnglish
      0·
      11 months ago

      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

  • minimalfootprint@discuss.tchncs.de
    0·
    11 months ago

    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.

  • notthebees@reddthat.com
    0·
    11 months ago

    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

  • Hammerheart@programming.dev
    0·
    11 months ago

    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.