On Tue, 20 Sep 2011, stripes theotoky <stripes.theotoky@googlemail.com> wrote:

I'm looking at this as a replacement laptop.

http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=6106&review=lenovo+thinkpa d+w520

Does anyone have any experience of running Linux on it? Is there support for VT-x in the bios. I am hoping to configure it as Linux with Windows 7 64 running in Virtual Box.

http://etbe.coker.com.au/2011/09/09/modern-laptops-suck/ Thinkpads are generally good for what they are, but modern laptops suck because they seem to be designed to compete with desktop systems - and the Thinkpad W series seems to be one of the worst in this regard. Modern laptops can't run on your lap because they either have passive cooling in the base through a metal shell (like Macs) or cooling vents (like Thinkpads). They also can't run at high speed when closed (so you can't close the lid after starting a big compile) because the keyboard is used as part of the system cooling. The one you are looking at has an NVidia graphics controller which means it will either be slow or have a binary-only kernel module. I expect that KVM will work as it works on my Thinkpad T61 and I haven't heard reports of regressions in such things. I haven't tried running Windows under KVM though. -- My Main Blog http://etbe.coker.com.au/ My Documents Blog http://doc.coker.com.au/

stripes theotoky <stripes.theotoky@googlemail.com> wrote:

I'm looking at this as a replacement laptop.

http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=6106&review=lenovo+thinkpad...

Does anyone have any experience of running Linux on it?

Someone probably has, but unless they're on this list, you'll have to search the Web with your favourite search engine to find any comments that may have been made. I have a Lenovo X200 which is quite well supported (as it must be, since it's running Linux exclusively), but every model of laptop is different, and what applies to one won't necessarily be relevant to another. If you can try it before buying, I would suggest taking the opportunity to do so. I appreciate the quality of the keyboard on my laptop; apparently, Lenovo (and IBM before them) have an excellent reputation for keyboard design. It's ideal for typing documents, e-mail, shell commands, configuration file editing, etc. The keys are almost full-size, and well spaced. You could also look up the technical specifications and check that the hardware is supported. There's probably a BIOS manual available on Lenovo's site - in the case of my laptop, it's part of the service documentation, which can be retrieved as a PDF file.

stripes theotoky wrote:

Hi all,

I'm looking at this as a replacement laptop.

http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=6106&review=lenovo+thinkpad...

Does anyone have any experience of running Linux on it? Is there support for VT-x in the bios.

That page reports it has a Intel Core i7-2920XM quad-core CPU (2.50GHz, 8MB cache), Intel Turbo Boost 2.0 (3.50GHz) You can look this up on https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/List_of_Intel_Core_i7_micropr... Which reports that All models [in the relevant subsection] support: MMX, SSE, SSE2, SSE3, SSSE3, SSE4.1, SSE4.2, AVX, Enhanced Intel SpeedStep Technology (EIST), Intel 64, XD bit (an NX bit implementation), TXT, Intel VT-x, Intel VT-d, Hyper-threading, Turbo Boost, AES-NI, Smart Cache. So the CPU supports VT-x. Whether the BIOS will let you turn it on is another question, but I don't see why it wouldn't.