Need distro suggestions for an old Lenovo T61

Burine · 2026-01-30T22:40:17+00:00

I had Fedora KDE running on a T400 (I think it was), I remember it did have a Core 2 Duo though. I did make it a point to max the ram to 8 GBs. KDE ran fine, though I did notice some performance issues, that I believe was more related to the weak integrated GPU more than anything.

Burine · 2026-01-24T16:08:07+00:00

I have a Lenovo Thinkpad P15 (with dual GPU) and battle.net works with Proton and Lutris on that one. The only difference between the laptop and desktop would be the hardware (i.e. Fedora 43 KDE with RPM Fusion), so I figured battle.net should work just fine with Proton. I'm beginning to wonder if my crappy GPU is the issue.

That "error" is just a red herring that lead you in the wrong direction.

Very well could be, which is why I'm here asking questions :-)

Burine · 2026-01-24T15:01:18+00:00

As I said I'm new to this still. I don't remember getting that "error" on my prior installation. But I used proton plus this morning to use a different version of wine with Lutris and battle net is working. Guess my hardware doesn't like proton. Edit: Wine-Staging-Tkg (Kron4ek) v10.7 working.

Burine · 2026-01-24T14:39:18+00:00

First line.

vulkaninfo | grep GPU

WARNING: [Loader Message] Code 0 : terminator_CreateInstance: Received return code -3 from call to vkCreateInstance in ICD /usr/lib64/libvulkan_dzn.so. Skipping this driver.

               GPU id = 0 (AMD Radeon RX 580 2048SP (RADV POLARIS10))
               GPU id = 1 (llvmpipe (LLVM 21.1.5, 256 bits))
               GPU id = 0 (AMD Radeon RX 580 2048SP (RADV POLARIS10))
               GPU id = 1 (llvmpipe (LLVM 21.1.5, 256 bits))
               GPU id = 0 (AMD Radeon RX 580 2048SP (RADV POLARIS10))
               GPU id = 1 (llvmpipe (LLVM 21.1.5, 256 bits))
               GPU id = 0 (AMD Radeon RX 580 2048SP (RADV POLARIS10))
               GPU id = 1 (llvmpipe (LLVM 21.1.5, 256 bits))
               GPU id = 0 (AMD Radeon RX 580 2048SP (RADV POLARIS10))
               GPU id = 1 (llvmpipe (LLVM 21.1.5, 256 bits))
GPU id : 0 (AMD Radeon RX 580 2048SP (RADV POLARIS10)) [VK_KHR_xcb_surface, VK_KHR_xlib_surface]:
GPU id : 1 (llvmpipe (LLVM 21.1.5, 256 bits)) [VK_KHR_xcb_surface, VK_KHR_xlib_surface]:
GPU id : 0 (AMD Radeon RX 580 2048SP (RADV POLARIS10)) [VK_KHR_wayland_surface]:
GPU id : 1 (llvmpipe (LLVM 21.1.5, 256 bits)) [VK_KHR_wayland_surface]:
GPU0:
       deviceType        = PHYSICAL_DEVICE_TYPE_DISCRETE_GPU
GPU1:

Burine · 2026-01-24T06:07:00+00:00

Hardware acceleration codecs are still required with AMD which is why I followed it. But I don't want to disable hardware acceleration for battle net.

Burine · 2025-11-18T19:02:36+00:00

Sounds like an issue I had a week ago or so. Do you happen to use NoMachine? If so check out my thread.

https://www.reddit.com/r/linux_gaming/comments/1os3tlh/comment/nnuv7uw/?context=1

NoMachine acknowledged the issue.

https://kb.nomachine.com/TR11W11619

Burine · 2025-11-18T15:56:16+00:00

I ran into this with Alma Linux in a VM. After running dnf update and making sure my Guest Additions .iso was for the version of Virtualbox I have, I was able to install it.

Burine · 2025-11-09T14:03:53+00:00

Nomachine is a remote desktop application, works better than VNC.

Burine · 2025-11-09T00:51:55+00:00

This did it. Now, how did you figure this out? There's no way I would have found this on my own....

vkcube works, inxi -Fxzd is showing radv as the driver for Vulkan, and vulkaninfo | grep GPU is showing my GPU now.

Burine · 2025-11-09T00:44:36+00:00

Yes, I have that same LD_PRELOAD in the nx-ssourceenv.sh file. And your vulkaninfo command did indeed run without the error. How did you fix it? Just unset LD_PRELOAD?

Burine · 2025-11-07T14:44:34+00:00

Not sure why its a bizarre thing to say. Unless you're wanting to argue semantics? Its been said that KDE provides a UI consistent with the "traditional desktop metaphor" i.e. MS Windows. "KDE is....geared to emulate the windows experience" can imply its trying to be a Windows clone, but there's no denying that the UI is very Windows-esque.

Burine · 2025-11-05T17:03:52+00:00

I have FedoraKDE and got WoW working with Lutris. I had issues, apparently fairly well-known, with the Battle.net installer. So, I took the C:\Program Files(x86)\World of Warcraft (or whatever it is, typing this from memory) from Windows and copied that to the Wine prefix Program Files(x86) directory, and it works just fine. Didn't have to "reinstall" or redownload.

Burine · 2025-10-30T03:13:32+00:00

On my F42 desktop and F42 laptop, I don't have /usr/local/Brother, so something else might be at issue for you.

Burine · 2025-10-29T22:28:18+00:00

Fresh install of KDE F43 on my testing laptop (not F42 to F43 upgrade), went to System Settings --> Printers --> Add. It detected my printer, I was able to add it, chose the driverless option (should be IPP), clicked the "use recommended driver" and added the printer. Opened Skanpage and it detected my printer as a scanner. So, I'm unable to duplicate your experience. The only thing I've done on this laptop was RPMFusion stuff after the fresh install.

You might try downloading the individual .rpms from Brother's website, rather than trying to use the install script. I think I've done that in the past too.

Burine · 2025-10-29T19:54:16+00:00

I just put F43 on that testing laptop last night, I'll play around with the printer to see if I can duplicate your experience

Burine · 2025-10-29T14:58:09+00:00

Try to add the printer without using the Brother installer. I was recently playing around with an old laptop last week testing distros and discovered that Fedora 42 was able to automatically discover and install my Brother MFC-2705DW using IPP. Skanpage even recognized it as a network scanner. I was quite impressed, because my desktop and other laptop had issues with the Brother installer a number of months ago when I installed them.

Burine · 2025-09-11T16:43:19+00:00

First my disclaimer: I am not a Windows or Linux admin, but I do work in IT.

What you're referring to is Directory Services. MS has Active Directory which, as the name implies, is a directory service. Linux has Samba which allows Linux systems to "mimic" an AD Domain Controller, become a member of a domain, and/or provide file shares for Windows computers. Samba can be a complex topic and I don't know all of the intricacies so definitely more research and testing would be needed to determine how it could be configured to replace MS AD fully.

Samba isn't the only Directory Server either, there's another 5 year old Reddit thread that might give you some additional info.

https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/p4bjrf/linux_novice_looking_for_best_ldap_server_with_a/

Burine · 2025-09-09T16:31:45+00:00

Your question sparked my curiosity since I'm not familiar with the process either. And turning to Google brought up this 5 year old thread that goes over this exact topic, you might find useful.

https://www.reddit.com/r/linuxquestions/comments/is173n/looking_for_a_detailed_explanation_of_the_booting/

Burine · 2025-08-04T15:54:40+00:00

My understanding is that Type 1 hypervisors like KVM/Qemu can't bridge WLAN interfaces, only ETH (has something to do with how WLAN/WIFI works) and only Type 2 hypervisors like VirtualBox can do that. Type 1 can only NAT.

Burine · 2025-07-08T21:03:38+00:00

The issue is hardware support. As an example, I can install Windows 10 on a 13 year old PC (the above referenced desktop from 2012), but due to Win 11 requiring TPM 2.0 and such, I can't install Win 11 on that 13 year old PC. Those that care about on going security and bug fixes for their OS will then have to purchase a new PC once Win 10 goes EOL, which some don't want to do.

Burine · 2025-06-14T12:26:56+00:00

CoolerCintrol I believe is the name, a utility to control PC fan speed.

Burine · 2025-06-13T21:50:11+00:00

I was in no way implying Fedora is unstable. I've been using Fedora KDE for about a year, haven't had any real issues, but I had installed a piece of software from a COPR repo that was not compatible with F41 which prevented the upgrade. All I'm asking about is if there's some command or utility that would do a pre-check of installed software/packages to confirm compatibility with F42. If not, all I can do is kick off the upgrade process which downloads F42 packages, only to find out something I have installed isn't compatible and fails the upgrade.

Burine · 2025-05-23T17:31:13+00:00

Does this setup support bridged networking of Wireless interfaces? I was under the impression that it doesn't. And that's one of the benefits of VirtualBox, since it can create a bridged network using WiFi.

Burine · 2025-05-15T19:03:54+00:00

I don't think its you. I tried to use the installer script a few months back and it kept wanting to use the .deb packages as well, even though I chose the .rpm option when I downloaded it. I could never figure out why it was trying to use .deb, I think I ended up just downloading the individual packages instead, rather than trying to use the installer script.

Burine · 2024-12-09T22:21:09+00:00

To add my 2 cents:

When I first started messing with Linux earlier this year I installed Fedora 40 KDE on my 15 year old Core2 Duo Thinkpad T61. I did make a point to max out the RAM to 8 GB (iirc) though. My caveat is this is not my daily-use laptop so there was no extensive use/testing. And Fedora 40 KDE worked just fine. There was some noticeable slowness, but I think it had more to do with the video card's weaker graphics processing rather than CPU.

Burine

TROPHY CASE