[wplug] Is anyone out there using Linux on a Lenovo IdeaPad 100S?

[John Lewis]

I haven't had that exact model, but I had the Lenovo IdeaPad Z565 and it
barely worked after a year. The hinges broke in under a year and I think
the motherboard started to fry.

Maybe you will have better luck than I did, but I say away from consumer
models, especially if they are not in the 11.6 inch form factor because
of durability issues. This one is 14 inches so it is on the high end of
the sweet zone, I wouldn't go any bigger.

Linux would probably work fine in it, but swapping wireless network card
could be a pain because of bios white lists Lenovo likes to do. I
recommend buying an sshd hard drive such as this one
http://www.amazon.com/Seagate-Laptop-2-5-Inch-Internal-ST500LM000/dp/B00B99JU5M/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1448850960&sr=8-1&keywords=sshd+laptop+hard+drive,
and taking the slow default one out and storing it in a safe place until
the unit comes out of warranty and then reuse the hard drive, unless
things go bad. It is probably less work than going through the motions
of cloning the hard drive with ddrescue.

Right now my main laptop is the Thinkpad x140e 2500. It is durable and
supports my workload, and has 8 hours of battery life, but runs some
graphically intense programs slow. I see the Lenovo Thinkpad 11e going
for less than 300 USD on Amazon you may want to take a look at.
http://www.amazon.com/Lenovo-ThinkPad-X140e-inches-Notebook/dp/B00JI9IPAQ/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1448850947&sr=8-2&keywords=Lenovo+thinkpad+x140e



On 11/29/2015 08:16 PM, Pat Barron wrote:
> I'm considering picking one of these up on Cyber Monday sale.  It
> ships with Windows.  Of course, if I were to get one, I'd want to
> change that, if possible...  ;-)
>
> Can anyone share any experiences using any Linux distro on the IdeaPad
> 100S?  I'm particularly interested in feedback on ease of use, ease of
> installation (of Linux), and ability to easily go back to the
> originally shipped Windows version of necessary (e.g., in case there's
> some kind of BIOS/firmware update in the future that must be installed
> from Windows).  I'm also wondering what the feasibility is of swapping
> out the flash drive that is included (which is, as I understand it,
> 32GB eMMC) with something larger.
>
> I'm not expecting to do any kind of serious development or anything on
> such a machine.  I'm mainly interested in something like this for
> situations where I would like something a bit more sophisticated than
> a tablet, but don't want or need to lug a full-blown laptop around. 
> And of course, the price, size, and (especially) the very light weight
> of this particular product make it very interesting for this kind of
> purpose.
>
> So, if you have experience using Linux on this hardware - or, really,
> any kind of cheap, lightweight, "just a bit more than a tablet"
> computers that have an actual keyboard - I'd be very interested to
> hear about it....
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