Getting ready to do some travelling for work (Hooray for people that love our alpha!), and figured I should move things from my much beloved purple Dell (which is the quadcore I got when I needed one), to the Lenovo Thinkpad W520 that is my official business issued laptop.

My dell is running straight-up ubuntu, with gnome modified to start fluxbox as its window manager (You have to understand that I *love* fluxbox-- you have to twiddle to get the themes so you like it, but if you're addicted to tabs, as I am, you're done). But.. that was kind of the "install everything and gradually remove what you don't want" approach. So, with the new shiny, I've opted for something in between the bare metal I started with when I was running gentoo, and the fully loaded ubuntu: lubuntu.

Lubuntu is small, stil ubuntu based (and I do like ubuntu-- gentoo was fun, but I have a toddler now.. and not nearly as much time left for figuring out why my system/tools don't work), and quite honestly, the devs did a great job of smoothing the experience of using something isn't gnome- or kde-centered.

The first thing I did was swap openbox with fluxbox (painlessly!). I'm now focused more on getting my data transferred to the new box. I'll post more as I start fussing with settings.

Good things to note:

• Stuff just worked. No huge show stop issues (and this with a W520). Granted, I didn't ask for trouble: I'm using the 32bit version of lubuntu natty--this thinkpad model is newer than the LTS release.
• I am (thankfully) not the first to get ubuntu working on this model of thinkpad.