DeviceGuru has posted notes from installing Debian’s Lenny distribution on an older ThinkPad notebook with a 600MHz Pentium III processor. The story includes suggestions about tuning Lenny’s default GNOME UI with a custom launcher dock, and “real” versions of Firefox and Thunderbird. Read more here

Overall, I’m pleased to report that my installation of Debian’s new “stable” release (aka Lenny) on the Thinkpad was relatively painless, and everything I’ve tried so far works well, including these important laptop functions:

WiFi access to my home network
Bluetooth file transfer to/from my mobile phone
Suspend/resume and hibernate/resume via GNOME’s power button
Suspend/resume when the Laptop’s screen is physically closed/opened
Despite being based on a 600MHz Pentium III CPU and just 192MB of SDRAM, that tired, old, under-resourced laptop truly has a new lease on life.