The X40 is dead; long live the X!

Well after some missteps in trying to acquire a new ThinkPad X200 (they quit making it while my order was pending, and I couldn’t establish complete Linux support for the X201s) I am now back in business with a ThinkPad X60.  It isn’t a new computer but functionally it’s just like my old X40 and I already knew it would run Linux without any surprises that would require expert assistance.

I tried one of them thar fancy laptops with all the doodads and whimmydiddles and whatnot, and it ran Linux real good but it was just too dadgum big and fragile. 

Many people would find a ThinkPad X to be too small but for some reason I find it easier to type on than a regular keyboard.  Maybe this is because lateral movement is painful for my hands, I don’t know.  The X keyboard is only 3% smaller than a regular one (though a very compact design) so you wouldn’t think it’d make that much difference.  I wore my old X40 to a frazzle; most o f the keys are shiny, there’s a noticeable dip worn into the spacebar, and the hard drive is going.

The Lenovo guy was a bit freaked out when I canceled the order.  He said; “I don’t understand, the 201 is virtually identical except for a faster processor.”  But I went to an Intel briefing: the i5 has a different internal architecture from the old Pentium dual-core, and it uses a tweakier front-end bus.  So maybe it would work, or maybe it needs work.  I’ll leave that up to the geniuses at Canonical and maybe get one a year from now when I can verify it.  Also I am not anxious to buy the first example of any production run, not even from Lenovo.

Meanwhile I’m trying to remember how the hell to set permissions on /var/www so I can work with the Apache installation.  Right now it’s root/root.  I added myself to the web-data group and would like to make that folder rwxrwxr_x with ownership by root/web-data.  But I’m rusty: anyone know if that’ll work?  Or what will?

NOTES:

  • I sold the ACER that I bought last November, to a whippersnapper who seems to enjoy all them doodads.
  • Picture not by me; I stole it from ThinkWiki.
Posted by George on 03/14/10 at 03:12 PM

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