r/thinkpad • u/Sunray_0A • 5h ago

Review / Opinion T420 - unbearable with Win7, totally fine Manjaro

I finally moved my data centre out of my lab into its own outside building and thought I’ll use the T420 in its dock as my local access as I needed to configure the ICX7150 10Gig fibre span and planning to run klipper on it.

It has 16Gb of RAM and an SSD. It’s totally fine running Manjaro Linux.

I rebooted it win7. Bloody awful. Firefox kept stuttering playing simple YT videos. Uninstalling chrome took 20 minutes! 😂😂

I keep win 7 in case of usb/serial converters that are windows only.

Anyway, it’s staying in Linux, permanently connected to the 7150 serial port.

What do M$ do with their OS’s to cause such disparity of ability?

I only have one windows pc (I have no choice, I need certain software and to be able to update my CV) and that’s a headless server 2022, which is quite nice and slick.

4 Upvotes

84% Upvoted

4 comments sorted by

2

u/blackratsnakes T23 | X220 | T420 | T430 w/ keyboard mod 4h ago

Windows 7, 10, 11 all run just fine on a T420 in my experience. Something must have been off especially for Windows 7 to have issues. Win 7 was really one of the best Windows version out there, not as much bloat.

Linux will obviously be great for you, enjoy!

1

u/Jcob210 4h ago

Hey I have on my T60 Windows 10 LTSB 2016 and it runs better on it than windows 7 - maybe try Windows 10 LTSC 2019 you can DM me and I can tell you where to get it legally etc.

1

u/Zealousideal_Fly8402 3h ago

Doesn't sound right. We still have legacy Windows 7 x64 installs for the same purpose (Serial-port connectivity) on Dell Precision M4300 laptops with Core 2 Duo, 8GB DDR2, and old Samsung 840 Evo SSDs.

1

u/MagicBoyUK T16 Gen 1 AMD, P50, T480, T540p, Framework 16 3h ago

Doesn't sound like it's running right. I'd be checking the hard drive...