Ubuntu works out of the box with my Dell D610 (Pentium M) and it's
wireless (Intel). If you like KDE then Kubuntu might be your cup of tea.
Joel Ebel wrote:
While some may find it surprising that I recommend anything but
Slackware (They shouldn't be. I'm aware of the benefits of all the
distributions) For your situation, I think I'd suggest Debian or a
derivative such as the current popular bandwagon, Ubuntu. Debian
offers very easy updates and package management, and a huge selection
of software. Two of your primary requirements. Plus, it would be
something new for you, and you seem interested in the educational
experience of it. Slackware is inappropriate for you since you value
a good package manager. Gentoo you've already ruled out yourself
since you would spend too long compiling. A binary distro would be
nice, and because of the great package management and wide selection
of software, I think Debian would be your best bet. Fedora is getting
an increasing set of software with Fedora extras, but it sounds like
you may have become frustrated with rpm, which should probably rule
out SuSE and Mandrake as well. Debian's package management system is
one of the best things it has going for it. Check it out. Just learn
about acpi to take advantage of the laptops power management.
Joel
Randy Barlow wrote:
I'm a student and so I had to keep a PC around with Sata... I mean,
Microsoft Windows for some programs (well yeah, I could use Wine too,
but the stories I've heard about getting it to work made me just go
the easy route...) So now that the semester is winding down, I think
I'd like to switch this system over (well, back) to Linux. This
system used to run FC3. Now I don't want to start any distro wars or
anything, but... I didn't really like FC3 for the laptop because
every time I updated the system packages (like the kernel) I had to
go an reinstall all the wireless stuff, which was a real pain.
So I'm looking for recommendations on any distributions that are
really laptop friendly. Here's a list of things that are important
to me (in order):
1) Wireless has to work, and preferably easy. By easy, I'd like to
not have to do anything. Install it and it works. Maybe this isn't
possible, but I thought I'd ask anyway just in case.
2) Package Management. Just something that makes getting the
software I want and keeping it up to date easy (including the
aforementioned wireless stuff). And it would be nice if it had lots
of software to choose from, so I don't have to do too many manual
installs.
3) Power Management would be nice. I've got the Pentium-M. If you
don't know much about it, it is incredible when it comes to saving
those laptop batteries. I've got a machine with a 15" screen that
will last literally 4 1/2 hours on battery, so long as I turn down
things like the brightness of the screen and the clock frequency of
the processor. If there were a distro that were already set up with
these or similar capabilities upon install, that would be awesome.
4) Trying something new. At this point, I'd call myself an amateur
in my Linux/Unix skills. I'm no expert or advanced user, but no
beginner either. I've run Red Hat 6,7, and FC 2 and 3 before, and
currently as I mentioned previously I'm running Gentoo on my main
computer (and I love Gentoo!). But you know, I'd like to get a taste
of what else is out there, so something new would be refreshing.
5) Optimization for Pentium-M. Well, Gentoo is the best way I can
think of the achieve this, but Gentoo also requires you to take
vacation time to install. Any distro that offers a precompiled
version for the Pentium-M would be nice, especially if their package
manager can also get me optimized software. I'd much rather have the
previous requirements than this one, but hey, I'll take this too if
it's out there!
Thanks for any responses or thoughts you may all have!
Randy Barlow
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