Linux

I have an IBM Thinkpad 240X, a great little laptop - I hope this helps with installing Ubuntu Hoary on it. I've tried a few different distributions on this laptop, Fedora Core 3 and 4 and Debian 3.1 (latest stable). I thought Fedora was just a little too resource intensive and Debian was a based on kernel 2.4 (and doesn't come with the really nice device management which needs 2.6) - the surprisingly good middle ground I got sent free on CD from the Ubuntu site, how good is that!?

The vital statistics:
IBM ThinkPad 240X (type 2609-62G)
[500MHz Pentium III (switches down to 120ish when running on battery)]
[800x600 16bit screen]
[Cirrus Logic CS4297A rev 4 soundcard, according to Ubuntu]
192MB RAM (64 onboard, 128 expansion)
12ishGB HDD

I've not had to install the drivers for any of this, which is nice, it's all worked out the box for me.

Installing Ubuntu:
There were a number of different options, a network install using a Debian boot disk. This was the only way that I've got any operating system on this laptop without using any other laptop, simply - the CD-ROM system on this laptop is really annoying. Basically, you boot from the Debian boot disk and change the sources to the Ubuntu ones, at this point I didn't really have the bandwidth to do this (dialup :( ).

The option I used was swapping the harddrive to another laptop (with integrated CD-ROM) and installed Ubuntu up to the configuration phase and swapped the harddrive back - presto chango, Ubuntu finished off everything, installing and testing the sound etc...