Lenovo Thinkpad T420

Introduction

This installation assumes (For now) that the install is starting from an MS-Windows installation. If you are not on Windows, please add your favourite choice of steps, keep the emphasis on ease of understand.

Getting Started

You'll want to get yourself running off a LiveCD or LiveUSB to start. This guide will assume liveUSB, since some users find them more difficult to prepare, this is usually due to boot flag issues. (Note: Live USB restore drives are nice to have in general! The author keeps one in his college binder.

Windows

We can use LiLi for this, it provides a nice, simple interface and is fairly reliable: LiLi Download

SysrescueCD

Grab the version that Suites your needs here: Sysrescue Download Next use LiLi (Or whatever you happen to be using) to flash the image or burn your CD. Reboot, change your boot device, and you'll find yourself at a grub menu.

Since the T series are all 64-bit laptops, make sure to boot the 64-bit kernel, as the default is 32-bit. But Why?: If we pick 32-bit, later on we won't be able to chroot into our Funtoo's 64-bit stage 3. You should see a fairly verbose boot as sysrescueCD scans for modules it requires and starts up. It is safe to simply accept prompt defaults here, unless they are errors. When you are greeted by the interactive command prompt, enter 'wizard' as prompted, and accept the default entry in the dialogue. This will give us a functioning XFCE desktop environment.

Partitioning

Partitioning is the only step of this install which provides real risk to data on other operating systems. Be extremely careful if there is something you do not wish to loose. These steps are not foolproof and may result in lost data.

Pure Funtoo

You'll likely want:

/boot       :: EXT2       :: 100mb-500mb
    ''Note: We choose EXT2 because there is really no good use for a journalled boot partition, but feel free to use EXT4 instead!''
/           :: EXT4       :: 60gb (suggested floor value) - 500+
swap        :: linux-swap :: Your Ram Value
    ''Note: Only necessary if you plan to hibernate your machine ever. If not don't bother. Unless you have 2GB of ram, then consider it, but it'll be rare to use up 4GB or more of ram normally.''

You may wish for a separate /home,