Tuesday, September 4, 2012

New laptop, new Linux distro

Call me nerd, but i was getting crazy waiting for my new laptop. Today, after months of anxiously awaiting, i've finally put my hands on it!

My new beloved laptop
The story of this laptop is quite interesting (for me, at least) so let me tell you.

There is at least one good reason for this laptop to be special: it's the one i
bought with my first own project money (a grant coming from a CERN-FCT project,
FCT being the Portuguese Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia). I was supposed
to order it in March, but then i messed up with some bureaucracy and the grant
didn't start until May. Meanwhile, my previous laptop was literally burning,
meaning that it easily reached 98 C degree with normal use. When i tried to run
heavy codes, the temperature reached 100 C degree and the laptop automatically
turned off, to avoid CPU damages. Not to mention that it was really impossible
to work on summer with a 98 C degree stove under the hand!

At any rate, i finally order this new laptop in June, but it only arrived in July,
right the day i left Portugal for almost two months... at that time, i was
attending a conference in Aveiro, close to Porto and 2 hours by train from
Lisbon... so, long story short, I didn't manage to get the laptop before i left
and i spent the whole summer wondering on this fantastic new toy, still closed in its envelope on my office desk.
For those of you who are still reading this, it's a Lenovo X220, a small
(12.5'') laptop with excellent specs and all: a fantastic compromise between
autonomy, power and portability. The keyboard is just amazing and this is
probably why this post is so long and boring.

Finally, i've just finished to put Linux on it, together with the latest KDE
version. I admit i spent quite a lot of time in order to decide which Linux
distribution the baby Lenovo was going to sport. This time, after having tried
basically all major Linux distros around, i opted for Chakra Linux, which
i'll probably review one of next days.

A screenshot from Chakra Linux installer


Now let me close this and continue playing with my new toy :P

4 comments:

Unknown said...

Did you notice i didn't talk about any apple? It wasn't just by chance, of course... if you know what iMean®

Unknown said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Unknown said...

LOL! I wasn't surprised to know that you love the keyboard, Paolo. :P Congratulations on the new Lenovo X220! It looks quite classy, you know. That would be perfect for a physicist like you. :)

Lakendra Wiltse

Unknown said...

I know how it feels to finally be able to buy something out of your own hard work! Don’t forget to let your laptop rest even for a while so it won’t get “burned” again. Congratulations!

-Benita Bolland