[Techtalk] report on shiny new Thinkpad, or, Windows sux worse than ever

[Carla Schroder]

Ok, here's the preliminary report on running Linux on a brand-new Thinkpad R32 
from "Boy Do We Heart Linux" IBM.

In a single phrase: Microsoft has attained new levels of evil with OEM 
installs. And shame on IBM for going along with them. 

It's a dandy notebook, with the usual good IBM quality. It appears that 
everything is supported in Linux- modem, wiFi, sound, power management. BUT- 
and here's the big but- setting it up to dual-boot is darn near impossible.  
First off, there are NO software CDs included. Nada. zero. Zip. None. Not 
even a recovery CD. There is a recovery partition on the hard drive, oh 
that's a good idea. :P However IBM will ship a recovery CD, free, on request.

(Why, you ask, do I even care about Windows XP? Because, grasshopper, my 
clients use it, so I probably ought to have a smidgen of familiarity with 
it.)

There is zero flexibility. I tried creating a partition to install windows on, 
leaving room for a Linux install, and the damn recovery CD ate the whole hard 
drive. 

So I ran my faithful Knoppix disk- for those who have not tried it, it's a 
heck of a great Linux- and used Qtparted to shrink the windblows partition. 
Here's dirty trick number two: winderz cleverly puts some files waaaaay out 
at the end of the physical disk, which defragmenting does not move. So it 
takes up the whole freakin disk anyway. So Qtparted cannot do its job.

I suppose I can dredge up a copy of Norton Speed disk, or something similar, 
to cram all the files together at the beginning of the disk. But I gotta tell 
you- this reeeeeeaaaaallly sucks. Shame shame shame on cowardly hardware 
vendors who let themselves be bullied into selling such anti-customer 
products.

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Carla Schroder
www.tuxcomputing.com
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