Whats the best Linux?

.Kencs · 3 Mar 2012 at 13:54

I'm looking for a distro of Linux which will recognise my WiFi USB Dongle with no messing around, looks good, easy to use, and will allow me to install Wine easily so I can install Photoshop and Dreamweaver.

I like the look of Linux Ultimate, and I like the ease-of-use of Ubuntu...

So, what would you recommend?

Just done a bit of browsing on Google and seen a lot about Linux Mint for Desktop or Arch for customizing...Which would be the better out of the 2? And ideally would recognise my USB wifi dongle as well

PermaBanned · 3 Mar 2012 at 14:24

What make and model is your WiFi dongle?

.Kencs · 3 Mar 2012 at 14:29

PermaBanned said:
What make and model is your WiFi dongle?

Netgear WNDA3200

I liked Ultimate Linux, but as I have NO knowledge on linux I couldn't get it to install for whatever reason. Ubuntu 11.10 worked pretty much 'out-the-box' so looking for the same kind of thing, a smooth effect, easy to use and looks good

PermaBanned · 3 Mar 2012 at 14:46

Seems you need ath9k_htc, which according to the Arch wiki has been included in the kernel since 2.6.35. So pretty much any distro from the past year or so should pick it up no problem.

I never really saw the appeal of Ultimate, each to their own i suppose. The problem with recommending a distro for a beginner these days is that Gnome 3 was released, but i would still probably say Mint. I mean, you can spend ages on distrowatch trying to find the "perfect distro" or you can just download something and get on with it, change if you don't like it and stick if you do. Every graphical installer i've come across has been incredibly easy to use, and to set up partitions.

Bit of a wildcard, but one i've been keeping an eye on recently that looks great for beginners would be Chakra:

http://chakra-linux.org/index.html

Not the best site, but the distro itself uses KDE and is Arch Based, seems to come with quite a few apps and features that make it easy to use. If you do decide to give it a go then let us know what you think, would you?

.Kencs · 3 Mar 2012 at 14:59

PermaBanned said:
Seems you need ath9k_htc, which according to the Arch wiki has been included in the kernel since 2.6.35. So pretty much any distro from the past year or so should pick it up no problem.

I never really saw the appeal of Ultimate, each to their own i suppose. The problem with recommending a distro for a beginner these days is that Gnome 3 was released, but i would still probably say Mint. I mean, you can spend ages on distrowatch trying to find the "perfect distro" or you can just download something and get on with it, change if you don't like it and stick if you do. Every graphical installer i've come across has been incredibly easy to use, and to set up partitions.

Bit of a wildcard, but one i've been keeping an eye on recently that looks great for beginners would be Chakra:

http://chakra-linux.org/index.html

Not the best site, but the distro itself uses KDE and is Arch Based, seems to come with quite a few apps and features that make it easy to use. If you do decide to give it a go then let us know what you think, would you?

Thanks for this advice mate, really appreciate it.
I will give Chakra a go now. Will my Netgear dongle work straight off with it? I wouldn't know where to start to manually install it

PermaBanned · 3 Mar 2012 at 16:03

I believe it should, since the module needed to run it is in the kernel already it just needs to detect and activate it.

.Kencs · 3 Mar 2012 at 17:53

It's actally quite nice. I've been running it for about half hour and not had any negative comments about it yet

Still dont know if i prefer it over Ubuntu, il have to see

dodgem · 4 Mar 2012 at 10:45

I tried Chakra for a month or so. It does install easily, and the KDE plasma desktop is nice (first time i've used KDE). However, i had connection problems with remote file systems - not sure what was causing the problem but it occurred on wireless and wired connections. My laptop is a Dell Latitude D620 and for as long as i've owned it, it has never had any driver issues in Linux, everything for this lappy is in the kernel

The connection issue was that it took quite a while to read the contents of a directory on my server, and would often fail to save a file there, or spend a minute or so doing it. I'm pretty sure i was using ssh to connect to the drives, but i forget now - back on Arch which is performing flawlessly as usual

I also found that there was a lack of software in the repositories (the Arch repos aren't compatible). You can do all the normal stuff, it's just that as soon as you want something slightly off the beaten path you can't find it.

I think Chakra is a nice little distro for a newcomer to Linux, but I just felt that I would have a harder time customising it/getting it to work like i wanted than i would with Arch, hence switching back.

For the OP though, if you want something that installs easily and looks nice, go with Chakra, definately not Arch

.Kencs · 4 Mar 2012 at 14:08

Well, after using Chakra, I decided to give up and stick with Ubuntu 11.10...It's simple and will be ideal for me to use to learn Linux

I also couldn't install Chakra, it kept saying the program had terminated and then wouldnt let me select a partition so not using Ubuntu and im starting to get to grips with things a little better. It's just gonna take a while getting us to the Terminal