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It should be mentioned that Linux runs perfectly on a great number of IBM’s ThinkPad models of notebook. The same can be said about sub-notebook computers, all modern series included. Many mainstream distributions such as Debian, SuSe or RedHat can be installed from the box.

There are several series of ThinkPad. Each model is distinguished by gently different architecture. However, there are a number of ThinkPad models that can not be used for running Linux. The article provides some of the models that are suited for Linux.

ThinkPad 340:
This monochrome-only device is distinguished by a 486SLC processor at 50 MHz. It is supplied with disks whose capacity makes up 200-360 Mb, depending on the model. David N Turner lets us know of good set-up of Slackware 2.3.0 on a 340CSE which has 12 Mb memory and 200 Mb hard disk. However David N Turner notifies that you may come across the same floppy disk change problem as the 750 models devices.

Ps/Note E35
Jerome Kaidor notifies that he has managed to make Linux 1.2.0 work on his Ps/Note E35, which he considers is substantially a ThinkPad 350 without PCMCIA slots. He succeeded in compressing everything he required into 21 Mb, even X having installed.

ThinkPad 360
This model includes options which are aimed at the 486 DX2 at 50 MHz. The disk options vary between 340 and 810 Mb. There are also dual-scan color and active-matrix screens. Linux is perfectly suited for this model according to the words of Richard Soderberg.

ThinkPad 370
Anders Odgaard informs about successful set-up on he 370C, which is similar to the 755 model. Particularly:
“Slackware Linux 2.1.0 was used. Initial booting was done with the `bare’ bootdisk, and I used the `color144′ rootdisk. At the boot prompt one must write
mount floppy=thinkpad”.

ThinkPad 701:
This model is characterized by the attractive fold-out keyboard and by modernized TrackPoint “joystick. The screen options are based around dual-scan passive and active matrix options. The disk capacity varies from 360 to 720 Mb. The processor of this model can be either the 50 MHz Intel 486DX2 or the 75 MHz 486DX4.

Linus Torvalds (born on December 28, 1969, Finland, Helsinki) is a famous software engineer. Torvalds marked the beginning of development of the Linux kernel and git revision control system. He grew interested in computers thanks to his maternal grandfather. In 1988 Linus Torvalds joined the University of Helsinki. In 1986 he graduated the University by taking his master degree in computer science. A significant event in his life was the discovering and reading of the book “Operating Systems: Design and Implementation” by Andrew Tanenbaum. The author of this book presented the structure of Unix operating systems basing on the example of “Minix” Software. Linus took a great interest in this. Later on, he purchased a computer with an Intel 386 CPU and installed Minix. By analyzing this system, Linus discovered some defects in the program. Therefore he began to do the terminal emulation program independently. This was the beginning of Linux creation. Linus added new functions to the software. Owing to these innovations, the software acquired features of operational system of full value. Originally, Linus Torvalds was about to name his operational system “Freax”. However his friend suggested naming it Linux.

On the 17^th of September, 1991, Linus presented the source code for general use. The system attracted attention of a great number of programmers. They began to work on its improvement and additions. The software has been spreading out up till now on terms of public license GNU-GPL.

Do you have too many accounts with different passwords or PIN codes to remember? Do you keep passwords written down? Once you might forget these passwords and than you cannot access an important forum, website or even your email account! Don’t worry, the problem is already solved!

The idea of secure passwords has appeared a bunch of years ago when the number of passwords has increased. As it is insecure to use the same password for multiple accounts, you need to either remember all your passwords or write them down anywhere. Luckily, there are some solutions that allow us to maintain security and use secure passwords at the same time. This kind of software is called password managers and we’re going to include a brief review of them.

What is a password manager? A password manager software helps a user to organize his passwords. Password manager uses a local database, where the encrypted data is stored. It may also have additional features such as automatically filling in forms or generating random secure passwords.

Password managers are available for many platforms such as for Windows, Linux, MacOS X, Pocket PC, Smart Device, Palm OS and U3. We have taken most popular 3 password managers for linux and are going to describe them below:

Password Gorilla

The Password Gorilla helps you manage your logins. It stores all your user names and passwords, along with login information and other notes, in a securely encrypted file. A single “master password” is used to protect the file. This way, you only need to remember the single master password, instead of the many logins that you use. The latest version 1.4 was released in July 3, 2006. Password Gorilla is platform-independent software, runs on most operating systems has been tested on Windows, Linux and Solaris.

Features:
- Password Safe 3 file format is supported.
- Search Password option.
- Hide main window when coming up and asking to open a file.
- Improved seed for initializing the pseudo-random number generator.
- Allow closing a locked database using the “X” button.

KeePass Password Safe

KeePass Password Safe is a tool for managing user’s passwords, released under the GNU GPL. The program stores logins, passwords and addresses of the URLs in an encrypted database. Access to the database is obtained by providing your password or a file-key. KeePass uses strong and secure encryption algorithms such as AES and Twofish, and hash SHA-256. KeePass keeps encrypted passwords in his memory even after starting and opening a database. There are Linux, Windows and Pocket PC editions of this software and it is highly recommended if you are planning to use them on multiple devices.

GPass

GPass is a password management software for GNOME desktop. GPass encrypts the file that keeps the password collection by using Blowfish security algorithm, one of the most secure on the market. The latest version of GPass is 0.5.1 and was released in March 25, 2006. Requirements are: GNOME2 libraries, OpenSSL cryptographic library.

There are some password managers that are integrated in browsers. An example could be Lastpass. It can be integrated with Firefox to store all your passwords. The only thing that doesn’t seems to be good is that your passwords are stored at a remote server and the possibility of data leek is much higher. Though I don’t think they have any reason to steal your data, it is much more pleasant to have the password database stored at a hard drive or a removable media, just like flash drive. Modern Password managers can be run from a USB Flash so that’s another good feature: your password database becomes portable and you don’t need to keep in mind all your passwords.

We recommend you to use password managers for everyday needs. Never share your password files to anyone and do not write your passwords to a text file. Let password manager do its job!