So my beloved Thinkpad X230’s Screen decided to slowly crack down the middle the past few days. And being that the past few months have been really difficult I decided to treat myself and move to my “New” backup X230 and put the “old one as a current backup. For the sake of this post Brick 1 is the old one and Brick 2 is the new one.
Specs
Both Bricks are Identical in specs. Just Brick 2’s body is in much better condition and has Bluetooth as well.
- I5-3320m-Dual Core 35 watt CPU
- 8 GB Ram
- 240 GB SSD
- IPS Screen
For a long long time I used Pop!_OS as my distro of choice but more recently I have moved to Fedora. Fedora seems to offer the stability of Pop!_OS (if not more RHEL) while also being the most modern of all Debian Distros.
Software
For the Brick 2, I have moved from Fedora 35 with Gnome manually updated to 42, to Fedora 36 with native Gnome 42. Gnome 42 animations and overall smoothness is vastly improved and shows on my older machine where micro stutters happened quite often on previous Gnome Revisions.
I follow the parts of the guide that I need from the Linux setup master Mutschler. Mainly just Updates, System Name, increased mirrors, Gnome tweaks, and Flatpack/Snap support.
My Software remains the same on Linux.
I set my basic Keyboard shortcuts of CTRL+` to clipboard history, and Super+E for Files.
Log into my Google account.
I Dual Boot a minimal Install of Windows 10 with some super basic testing utilites.
And thats Pretty much it.
Why the X230
I love my X230 it’s the perfect blend of old and new. It’s modern enough to run a full-blown Linux De as well as dual boot Windows in a pinch. While still having all the comfort features of an old-school laptop. Like actually being durable, water-resistant, upgradeable/fixable, with all the ports none of the dongles, one of the best keyboards in the world, and a Trackpoint. I get 6 hrs of heavy use with a new cell battery. All while being absolutely dirt cheap.Cannot recommend it enough for your daily beater laptop.
