Thinkpad L 15 gen 2 advice

[Liam Proven]

On Sun, 22 May 2022 at 05:53, Phil <phillor9 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> The Thinkpad T420 laptop is an ex-government disposal unit which I've
> owned for 4 years, it's actually 11 years old, and it's overheated form
> the start. As I say, there is no dust inside (it's just a matter of
> removing the keyboard, and the cooling section is very easy to clean). I
> have increased the RAM from 3GB to 4GB and the fan runs at what I judge
> to be a normal speed

OK. This falsifies one earlier statement of yours.

That is *not* the maximum RAM for a T420.

I have two T420s in regular use.

A Core i5 unit with a 120GB SATA SSD and 6GB of RAM. It currently runs
ChromeOS Flex. It is fast, stable, and the fans almost never come on
at all.

And a Core i7 unit, with an nVidia GPU, 8GB of RAM, a 250GB miniPCI
SSD plus a 500 GB SATA SSD. It dual-boots Windows 7, Windows 10, and
Ubuntu 20.04.

I have also previously had Fedora 35, Ubuntu DDE, Elementary OS 6.1,
Debian 11, Devuan 4, Gecko Linux, Pop OS, Linux Mint Debian Edition,
and multiple other distros on it.

The point being, it dual-boots fine. For clarity I had all those
distros on it _at the same time_ alongside Win10, multibooting
happily.

Even with 8GB it is not maxed out: these machines take up to 16GB.
https://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Category:T420

In normal use with Linux, you should not be able to hear the fans
running _at all_ except during bootup, or very heavy use, such as
compiling new DKMS kernel modules or something.

Secondly, it dual-boots fine and SSD or HDD makes no difference to
this. What *does* make a big difference is whether you are booting in
UEFI mode or BIOS mode. The machine can do both, and in the CMOS
settings program you can choose:

* BIOS only
* UEFI only
* BIOS then UEFI
* UEFI then BIOS

The combination of which you have chosen *plus* whether your disk is
formatted old-style with MBR and BIOS GRUB, or new-style with an EFI
System Partition (ESP), makes a big difference.

... And you have not told us.

So, for instance, my mPCI SSD is formatted with GPT and is UEFI
bootable. If I set that as the primary boot drive, the machine starts
in UEFI mode from the ESP on that drive.

My SATA SSD came out of an old Thinkpad W500 which does not have UEFI,
so it is partitioned with MBR and BIOS boot. If I set that as the boot
drive, the machine starts in BIOS mode and does not need or use an
ESP.

I'm trying to move an old BIOS Ubuntu install to the miniPCI SSD and
convert it to UEFI boot, and so far, I've failed. But it starts fine
from the SATA SSD.

If I want Windows, I press F12 and choose the miniPCI SSD. It boots
into Windows 10 21H2 and runs flawlessly, but the fans are on much of
the time.

I prefer these machines and I find them fast, stable, reliable, with a
great keyboard, and exceptionally well-supported under Linux.

I put 8GB in the 420 for about GBP £10 and that's the fastest-speed
memory that the machine supports.

My advice would be:

* Don't buy a new model
* Add more RAM. It's cheap. You don't have enough.
* Update your BIOS.
* Give us more info about your disk setup. You say it can't dual boot.
It 100% most definitely can, but you have not provided us enough info
to help. I think you have posted before about this, I asked then, and
you didn't give more info then. Do some Googling, learn how to find
out, then find the info and provide it.

Tell us:

* The BIOS version
* Your boot settings
* How your disk is partitioned
* Whether you are booting in UEFI or BIOS mode

-- 
Liam Proven ~ Profile: https://about.me/liamproven
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