Mint 13 or 14 for ThinkPad W530, released July 2012.

[sofasufi]

Hi there.

I am about to purchase a ThinkPad W530, which was released around July 2012. I am currently running Mint 13 on my existing ThinkPad, but am wondering whether I would be better loading Mint 14 onto the W530, as it was released several months after Mint 13 LTS/Ubuntu 12.04.

My main concern is around drivers. Would it be better to install Mint 14?

Thanks,

SofaSufi...

[AlbertP]

I don't think it matters. You will need Bumblebee anyway for the NVIDIA Optimus graphics: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bumblebee. This can be done on both 13 or 14.

[sofasufi]

Hi AlbertP, thanks a lot for your swift assistance. The one question I have in reply is: If Mint 13 is based on a kernel that was released prior to the W530 being released, how can I be sure that it will have the necessary drivers? I'm thinking especially of all the other drivers, unrelated to the NVIDIA Optimus graphics which as you suggest, I will look at the Bumblebee link to sort out. Thanks, SofaSufi.

[AlbertP]

I just see that you need a newer NVIDIA driver version than the one provided by default in 13, which is normally not a problem but can be harder to get working in Bumblebee. In 14, Bumblebee should work right away (it'll automatically install the default NVIDIA driver, which is recent enough on 14).

Apart from that it's just normal Intel hardware, which should work fine with 13. Intel usually releases drivers well in time to get it into Linux before (or sometimes shortly after) the hardware launches.