Best Linux for mobility?

[mobilewannabe]

I heard Kubuntu is the best for laptops.

A friend of mine tried Madriva, which he claims is good but lacks driver support (he has a Sony Vaio).

[abf]

Ubuntu is great for laptops. Kubuntu is almost pretty much the same, except for ubuntu is better, because Kubuntu is plagued with kubuntu-specific bugs. it will be resolved soon, but not right now.

my 2nd best pick is PCLinuxOS (or first pick if you like KDE over gnome)

and as always...there is Gentoo. Build it to match your hardware best :)

[mobilewannabe]

What about drivers? I guess laptop users rely heavily on 3rd party drivers?

[adoroar]

There is no best linux distro for laptop's.
Linux is Linux... is Linux :)

Check out http://www.linux-laptop.net/ for guides for specific laptops.

[abf]

adoroar.... yes, though "linux is linux" different distros take their own spin on it all. so for a noob like that guy, a distro that has most things already configured will be a hell lot simpler than going gentoo or LFS. you know what i mean. so in that case, PCLOS and Ubuntu is probably the way to go as far as best distro for laptop.

as for drivers. not much in terms of "3rd party" for linux. everything is open source, except for fglrx (ati) and nvidia which you gotta install yourself (in most cases). everything else is jsut there. its a matter of installing it if its not already there adn make sure it loads up on boot. best way to really know what you need and what you dont is by getting a distro and getting dirty with it.

[mobilewannabe]

BTW, is Linux itself (Kubuntu for instance), multithreaded? Will it take advantage of my Core Duo T2300?

[adoroar]

Sure! You just need a linux kernel that's SMP enabled, most distro's won't do that per default, so you'll most likely have to do it yourself, maybe someone can explain how this is done in kubuntu? :)

[seablade]

My thought would be that it would be done the same in KUbuntu as in most distros and you would have to recompile the kernel by hand, but it has been some time since i used an Ubuntu Distro on a regular basis so I am not sure I could be certain on that.

Seablade

Waiting for Dapper to go on his Powerbook.

[mobilewannabe]

I just tried Kubuntu on my desktop.

It was an amazing experience (waaaay better than Fedora, and interestingly enough, way faster).

In the System Properties (or whatever it was), there were options for Sony and IBM laptops, but not for anything else.

Would anyone like to comment on that before I install this on my Acer.

[abf]

i am not sure of an acer package, i know that the kernel contains, sony, ibm, and asus laptop-specific pieces. but still generally it should run just fine.

i mean, your specs should be supported just fine. don't forget to install fglrx.

and once again, i will urge you to go with Ubuntu (w/gnome) over Kubuntu (w/kde) because at this point Ubuntu is more stable, and more complete.

[mobilewannabe]

Wel, I installed Kubuntu on my laptop, and cried my eyes off for all the time wasted. It doesn't work.

Whent he booting process gets to 'Checking Battery Status' (or something like that), it gets an "OK" and stops. That's it, the only thing the it responds to is Control-Alt-Delete to properly restart the system.

[abf]

if you press CTRL+C it will skip the step that its on.

if boot fails on kubuntu, it will fail on ubuntu as well.

my best advice, try PCLinuxOS-0.92

[mobilewannabe]

OK, so the test is "Checking Battery State..."

But that's the last completed test. After that there are no other tests the boot stops on...

The cursor blinks and nothing happens. CTRL-C doesn't help. :(

What's going on?

[abf]

since it has something to do with battery i assume ACPI is the cuprit.

on boot, modify the command by appending "noacpi" to it. just to be safe, also disable usb by "nousb"

[mobilewannabe]

No effect.

[mobilewannabe]

bump

[mobilewannabe]

So I guess it's simple the fact that the new laptops are not yet supported by most linux distributions?

[efalis]

I have an Acer 8204, I've tried the following:

Libranet 3.0 - could not get the proprietary ATI driver working, and there were other problems with booting up (noapic, nolapic and acpi=none worked around it).

SimplyMepis (latest) - not bad, but the proprietary ATI driver said there was no build environment, so I updated to Debian unstable, installed kernel 2.6.15 smp and proceeded to honk up the environment so that it wouldn't boot except to the original Mepis 2.6.15 single processor kernel. Then tried building 2.6.15 smp from scratch and none will boot.

Ubuntu - have a live CD sitting on the desk. Will probably try it this weekend, time permitting.

- Ed

[beaviskob1]

Listen to ABF try PCLinuxos .92! You will have activate it in control center. I have a eMachines M6811 and its SWEET!

[mobilewannabe]

Downloading Gentoo and PCLinuxOS.

Will update if anyone is interested.

[beaviskob1]

Downloading Gentoo and PCLinuxOS.

Will update if anyone is interested. :thumbup:


HUGE difference between those distros! Remember Gentoo designed for custom installation. PCLinuxOS geared for easy installation on all different machines but then can be taylored for you. It doesn't matter what ditsro as long as it works for you!

[RANGER@CISS]

Kind of a stupid topic, cause linux comes in various tastes

[beaviskob1]

Kind of a stupid topic, cause linux comes in various tastes


Ah my friend "the only stupid question is the one not asked!":bored: . Not to start a flame war but that post was uncalled for and not needed :moon:. As a novice or someone just beginning to want to explore Linux why not ask to see if there was a specfic distro that handled the needs of laptops? :scratch:

[lynuhx]

I'm a huge fan of SuSE 10 :w00t: as it includes a wide range of mobile orieinted tools and drivers. I do have the commercial DVD installer, but all of the laptop tools are in the free download as well. The only thing I've found to be a pain is Wi-Fi. You definitely need to learn some shell commands if you plan on using wireless in more than one place.

Hope that helps! :thumbup:

[abf]

suse and fedora are in ABF's dog house! both were just beyond bad.

[mobilewannabe]

No luck with PCLinuxOS, no luck with Gentoo, no luck with SuSE, and didn't even bother with Fedora.

It is so sad, that someone like me who has very little knowledge in this new and mysterious world (Linux) is unable to enter it, because of all this limitations. :(

I had Fedora 4 for a few months now on my desktop, but I barely use it, because I do my school work on my laptop.

[Ernest_P_Worrel]

Try Ubuntu, Zenwalk and PC-BSD? I like all three of those. :$

Ubuntu and PC-BSD are straightforward in their installs. But for Zenwalk you have to use fdisk when you boot from the disk. Ok when it boots you type root to enter root mode. Then u type fdisk/dev/hda I believe (if u just type fdisk it will tell u exactly what to type). Then it will say type m for list of commands I believe, type o on the list (this will wipe the partition table on you hda and start with an empty hd. Then you create a new partition (cant remember the letter for it, but it will say in the commands). Then you have to choose a type of partition again in the commands and it will list the different types, choose linux (its like number 40 or 50 something). Then you write the changes to disk using the m commands again. Next you exit fdisk and type setup. Before it starts installing you first have to choose the target partition to install to and the media to install from (both in the setup menu). The installer for Zenwalk never sets up my internet right, so during install I usually just skip the network install section, you can configure it from the xfce4 desktop by right-clicking after zenwalk is installed. Also during installation it will ask which type of log in mode u want, text or graphical, choose graphical cuz xfce doesnt like to launch from text mode for some reason. During installation it will ask you to make a root password, but the non root user u have to create. When the users menu shows up during install create a new one and the group its in for non root use. And you can download the Zenwalk iso right here (http://downloads.schipplock.org/linux/zenwalk/2.2/).

[beaviskob1]

What happened with pclinux? Where did it fail? Did the livecd boot? Don't give up just keep trying I'm sure another distro will work, it will take TIME and effort but it will be worth it. If you were under the impression it would be as easy as mac or dows you are mistaken. :) Finding the best distro for yourself is half the fun.

[mobilewannabe]

First of all, many things don't work with all those things that I tried. The one common piece of hardware that doesn't seem to be detected by any of those (yes, even SuSE) is the ethernet controller. Needless to say, the laptop is almost worthless without it.

I am not even going to try to guess whether the wireless controller will work if the installation was a success.

There also seem to be strange "stops" during the installation (Kubuntu being more prone to them).

Simply put, nothing is really going well or my 5672. So in the main time I have to use SSH to connect to my college's Unix/Linux machines remotely (ewww).

[beaviskob1]

Ah time to read up :) This is all part of the linux experiance. Ndiswrapper will probably get you wireless up but once again you will need time to get it going. The ethernet is most likely a simple command or two away. Each distro has it's own control center in which you should be able to make changes. You just need to find one distro to get you close then work from there. Good Luck and Have Fun! You will end up learning alot if you can stick with it. For the fun of it look at the forums at osx86project.org for some interesting reading about lappy's like yours. Maybe someday Steve will let us have access to OSX86! I have seen it running and reallly like it.

[amosbatto]

To get Ubuntu Breezy Badger to install on my Compaq Presario v2410US it had to use:
expert noapic nolapic noapci

[YourDoom123]

i seriously recommend you jump in with both feet, and try gentoo. its hard, but if you follow the handbook, you'll make it. it takes hours to do it (sometimes days) but at the end, you know every single item installed on your machine. Nothing you don't need will be installed, and everything you need will. So you can get all your stuff working during the install itself. Thats not to say stuff won't work, but thats the fun of linux.

[seablade]

I never reccomend Gentoo to a complete novice at Linux to be hoenst. Learn the basics first with Ubuntu or the like, then go with Gentoo to learn the advanced stuff and customize to your hearts desire.

Seablade