[geeks] thinkpad os help needed

[Jonathan Patschke]

On Mon, 7 Jan 2019, Sandwich Maker wrote:

> 1. longshot, and straying somewhat far from topic - following a round
> of os patches, my t500 running w7ultimate can no longer run explorer;
> one or more of its libs got 'upgraded'...  anyone have a w7u install
> dvd they could send my way?  this thing came without media.

You can get this from Microsoft:
    https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows7

> 2. more on point, anyone know of any other os besides windows which
> support the thinkpad trackpointer?  it seems to be a pretty box-stock
> intel reference design otherwise, and i suspect a lot of os would run on
> it.  i'd *like* to run s9 or s10, but not without the tp.

I run FreeBSD on my Haswell-generation Thinkpads.  FreeBSD even has a
driver for the hotkeys.  Both the trackpad and TrackPoint work well.  In
fact, the TrackPoint works better (much saner default sensitivity), so I
usually disable the trackpad.

I've also had good luck running Fedora, CentOS, and Debian on them.
Devuan also runs well and has the added benefit of not using systemd.

-- 
Jonathan Patschke
Austin, TX
USA