Best distro for my laptop

tonyyeb

tonyyeb

tonyyeb

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Hi all

I want to replace XP on my Fujitsu Siemens laptop. Its got 768mb RAM, 1.6ghz Celeron M CPU. I want it to boot quickly, have Firefox and work with my wireless. Which distro am I best looking at? I don't want it too bloated with software I wont ever use.

Thanks in advance!
 
I've got a similar spec'ed laptop with Vista Premium and I'm also looking for a suitable distro to do basic web browsing and to boot quickly. Being a linux nub I would have chosen ubuntu 7.10 myself. Would there be any problem with using ubuntu on a low spec laptop or would other distros suit it better?
 
I run Ubuntu 7.10 on a similar machine (1.3 Ghz Pentium M, 1 GiB RAM). It's really really nice. If the wireless card is made by Intel, then it should work right off the bat with no further futzing about. Same goes for the graphics.

I imagine that Fedora and OpenSuSE would also do similarly if you find those flavors more to your taste.
 
BillytheImpaler said:
I run Ubuntu 7.10 on a similar machine (1.3 Ghz Pentium M, 1 GiB RAM). It's really really nice. If the wireless card is made by Intel, then it should work right off the bat with no further futzing about. Same goes for the graphics.
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Ahh excellent - Both my wireless adapter and graphics are intel :D I'll have a crack at running the ubuntu live cd on the weekend.
 
Well I tried

* Ubuntu Live CD which kept complaining about the graphics driver and no matter what I tried it just kept quitting even in graphics safe mode.

* Fedora 8 Live CD would boot so far then black screen. Left it for 10 minutes and nothing...

After these two I didn't hold out much hope for getting Linux on my lappy... then I tried OpenSuse. Booted nice and quick from the Live CD, graphics worked full res, sound worked and my wireless connected no problem! I am mighty impressed, nice and quick. I am now installing it to the hd. Will report any issues in about an hour I reckon.
 
Phnom_Penh said:
Suse or Knoppix :)
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I have Knoppix downloading incase Suse fails me ;)

So far it didn't like trying to resize my Windows partition so I could dual boot. So i've binned the Windows partition and made one 20gb (1/2 the drive) for Linux and I may install Windows on the other 20gb... we will see how I get on with Suse.
 
We are installed! First post from my Linux laptop... now going to reboot to see if it boots much quicker than when I had Windows on it.
 
Ok now im annoyed. Rebooted and the touchpad and my keyboard dont respond when Suse has booted! WTF is going on!!?! I have a window that says Unlock Keyring with a password prompt. I cant type into the box or move the mouse cursor!
 
Ok we are now back up and running. I'm loving openSuse. It has everything i need, just wish it would boot a bit quicker.I can connect to my windows pc via samba, logged into msn, google talk and yahoo IM with pidgin, browsing with firefox... loving it. Just hope the keyboard/touchpad thing was a one off!
 
tonyyeb said:
Ok we are now back up and running. I'm loving openSuse. It has everything i need, just wish it would boot a bit quicker.I can connect to my windows pc via samba, logged into msn, google talk and yahoo IM with pidgin, browsing with firefox... loving it. Just hope the keyboard/touchpad thing was a one off!
Click to expand...

Yeah - unfortunately, openSuSE being one of the bigger distros, it takes a bit longer to boot.... but it is very, very pretty and has some really good tools (like YaST).

When I was using it a few years ago (9.1/9.2), YaST started slowing down after a few months use, so I replaced it with Smart (which is a lot like apt-get). Hope you enjoy it as much as I used to :)
 
Well thought I may as well try some other major distros to see how their Live CD's perform:

* Knoppix 5.1.1 - Booted fine, detected GFX correctly (no VESA here unlike openSuse) but would not connect to my wireless network. Detected the Wireless hardware but could not connect. Also looked a bit messy and not as good as openSuse.

* Mandriva 2008.0 - Detected everything including my gfx chip correctly so again no Vesa. But again the wireless wouldn't connect so I am going to try again. Seems too much a coincidence that both would not connect to my wireless. I liked the look of Mandriva (I always liked Mandrake years ago).

The only two problems I have with all Linux distros (and so Linux in general) is 1) it never seems simple or straight forward to install new software. Which package works with which distro etc...? How do I uninstall? etc... and 2) Why is it just as hard to install new drivers? Both of these departments are done by Windows in a much better fashion. It is so easy to update drivers and to (un)install software. These are areas Linux needs to learn from Windows. Everywhere else it is doing very well IMO.
 
Well I managed to get the wireless working and I think Mandriva is better than Suse so I'm installing it onto the free 20gb I have to see how it performs as an install. Wish me luck!
 
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