laptop linux

Hi there,

Me again. Well it's like this really, I have an IBM thinkpad here, and it is next to useless not quite useless, but certainly sits next to it in class and copies what it can. And I thought to myself, how about a reinstall, or the little recovery discs that shops are a fan of, only to find that they never gave it to me, they showed it to me and demonstrated how to use the recovery disc only to take it out and not put it in the box. I knew enough then to keep all discs that came.

So, I thought to myself, what do I use this for, and it turns out internet stuff only. Linux, I thought nice secure, don't have to worry about a lot and it would make me feel that I know something too.

But which one, where and how, drivers wireless card etc... any help out there would be usefull, I did once find a tutorial on which linux on this site, and I can't find it now, and to be honest even that was a little over my head.

Can I have a suggestion of a linux that would suit me, for internet access only laptop.

Kind regards

Soontobegeekyfrond

Hi Soontobegeekyfrond

I would recommend you if you want to have a Linux on your Laptop try either SUSE Linux or UBUNTU Linux. SUSE is now Open Source and I have never had any Problems with it. You can also Try UBUNTU which is of course free and you can find it in nearly every PC Magazine. For you I would recommend you the Ubuntu Linux because it is easy to install and comes with alot of Drivers. Here is the Link for Ubuntu: http://www.ubuntu.com/download and here for the SUSE Linux: http://en.opensuse.org/Welcome_to_openSUSE.org. I hope I could help you with your Problem.

I've run Fedora Core 2-4 on two different laptops for about 3 years now. The first one had limited disk space so it ran only Fedora (and had Vmware for the few windows apps I had to have, think management gui's). While Fedora comes with wireless drivers (and they did work), I had an ipw2200 card and used the updated drivers/firmware from sourceforge (ipw2200.sourceforge.net). The biggest pain with it was when the kernel updated; however, I started keeping the source on my computer for just such events and it wind up being only a minimal inconvenience. The only thing I've had problems with wireless wise would be WPA (and I don't know if its a driver issue or a user issue).

On the second, newer laptop, I dual boot Fedora Core 4 and XP Pro (missed having games on those long business trips) since it had quite a large harddrive. I haven't noticed any issues as of yet and both seem to work quite well. I have a slightly different Intel card in it, but the wireless drivers do work ( I do NOT care for the new schema of having to load the wireless firmware after boot....that sucks...; however, I could see where that could be safer, especially given some of the conferences I attend from time to time). Oh one last side note, it also has Vmware on it and runs the vmware image from the old laptop as well as loads the XP image from the other boot sector :) That was a rather interesting thing to do, had a bitch getting the scsi stuff to work right, but it can be nice to share between the two systems.

I am not going to say its better, I am just telling you that Fedora has worked for me without issue for a few years now on my laptops.

/neb

OK I found one that was spose to be easy to install, Debian, but it won't install. I can't Fdisk the laptop, as there is no option to start it in DOS prompt, only safe mode. I tried just going over the top, but it then hangs half way through the installation.

How can I deal with this?

Fustrondation

If you like Debian try Ubuntu, it is very easy to install. I am running Mandriva and Ubuntu on my Eurocom and have had no problems. Myabe for the ease of use get Ubuntu it's really easy to get going plus it uses Debian packages.

Any GNU/Linux distribution can be a good laptop linux..
Depending on your skills..

Linuxes that make it easy are mentioned above..
But don't think for a second that any other distribution can't have the same functionality..
You just need to find out what you want to use it for and select the distribution that suits you most..

As for wireless, most common wireless chipsets are supported by all linux distributions..

I've for instance installed Slackware on two laptops (some IBM thinkpad type and a Toshiba 5100) and configged the hack out them to make 'm suit my needs..

Last time I installed linux on a laptop I was too lazy to go that way and just installed Kubuntu 6.06 LTS