NotebookForums.com › Forums › General Notebook Discussions › Linux & Other OS's › Best Linux for mobility?
New Posts  All Forums:Forum Nav:

Best Linux for mobility?

post #1 of 33
2/25/06 at 11:58pm
Thread Starter 
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).
Reply
Reply
post #2 of 33
2/26/06 at 12:33am
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
Reply
Reply
post #3 of 33
2/26/06 at 3:44pm
Thread Starter 
What about drivers? I guess laptop users rely heavily on 3rd party drivers?
Reply
Reply
post #4 of 33
2/26/06 at 4:22pm
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.
Reply
Reply
post #5 of 33
2/26/06 at 4:56pm
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.
Reply
Reply
post #6 of 33
2/27/06 at 3:20am
Thread Starter 
BTW, is Linux itself (Kubuntu for instance), multithreaded? Will it take advantage of my Core Duo T2300?
Reply
Reply
post #7 of 33
2/27/06 at 8:14am
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?
Reply
Reply
post #8 of 33
2/27/06 at 5:44pm
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.
Reply
Reply
post #9 of 33
3/1/06 at 2:54am
Thread Starter 
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.
Reply
Reply
post #10 of 33
3/1/06 at 9:31am
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.
Reply
Reply
post #11 of 33
3/2/06 at 12:31am
Thread Starter 
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.
Reply
Reply
post #12 of 33
3/2/06 at 12:52am
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
Reply
Reply
post #13 of 33
3/2/06 at 1:21am
Thread Starter 
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?
Reply
Reply
post #14 of 33
3/2/06 at 9:29am
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"
Reply
Reply
post #15 of 33
3/2/06 at 7:05pm
Thread Starter 
No effect.
Reply
Reply
post #16 of 33
3/3/06 at 12:18am
Thread Starter 
bump
Reply
Reply
post #17 of 33
3/3/06 at 5:45pm
Thread Starter 
So I guess it's simple the fact that the new laptops are not yet supported by most linux distributions?
Reply
Reply
post #18 of 33
3/3/06 at 5:54pm
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
Reply
Reply
post #19 of 33
3/3/06 at 8:32pm
Listen to ABF try PCLinuxos .92! You will have activate it in control center. I have a eMachines M6811 and its SWEET!
Reply
Reply
post #20 of 33
3/3/06 at 8:42pm
Thread Starter 
Downloading Gentoo and PCLinuxOS.

Will update if anyone is interested.
Reply
Reply
New Posts  All Forums:Forum Nav:
  Return Home
  Back to Forum: Linux & Other OS's
NotebookForums.com › Forums › General Notebook Discussions › Linux & Other OS's › Best Linux for mobility?