I have currently purchased a Sony VAIO PCG-K23 and want to move to a windows free home and mobile lab. I have worked with Linux on desktop's but never on laptops and want to get peoples opinions on which distro is best for the mobile world. I am currently looking at FC3, SUSE or Slackware but my mind is not closed to others?

Here is the config of my laptop.

Sony VAIO PCG-K23 Intel Pentium 4 2.8GHz / 802.11b-g Wireless / 15.4-inch WXGA / 512MB DDR / 60GB HDD / CD-RW/DVD Combo

To be honest, it really won't make a lot of difference. The main things to watch out for are the XF86Config/Xorg setup, and ACPI/power control. Some distros tend to be better at automatically configuring these for you (SuSE and Mandrake spring to mind) but either way you will probably have to do a bit of tweaking in order to have a polished set up. Have a look at www.linux-laptop.net for similar Vaio models - yours is not listed, so when you do get it going, you may wish to add a page for others to follow.

If you run into problems, post here under the appropriate distro or hardware forum, and we'll do our best to help.

Good luck !

Cheers,

mj

I have a PCG-K23 and I have tried Mandrake 10, FC3 and Suse 9 all of which I had problems getting the wireless networking to work. I found that Ubuntu 4.10 works the best with this laptop.

Thanks, I solved the wireless issue but am having issue with Sony memory stick reader, does that distro make it easier.

bacchus2005

I haven't tried using it, but I do know that it will automatically detect that it is a texas instruments card reader.

excellent, I am going to try it tonight, I have FC3 but am not statisfied with it and till try Ubuntu.

SuSe 9.2 was the best at automattic setup for my laptop (Dell Inspiron 8000) but it's fairly old in comparison.

Suse is still very good (I have a new notebook)

I tried SuSe but it did not recognize my wifi right away, so I scrapped the install for FC3 which I had already installed. I think it had more to do with my laptop and less to do with SuSe.

Mandrake keeps crashing on my inspiron 700m, how can i get suse 9.2? when i go to novell it only shows the dvd iso. i dont have a dvd writer only cdrw. I dont know if the intel prowireless on my laptop is not suitable for mandrake. i tried to change the settings but it just keeps crashing.

I installed Ubuntu on my Sony K23 last night and had a couple of hair moments. First by default the root user is disabled, no a major set back but incontinence nonetheless. The second may lead to my abandoning of Ubuntu, I have a RADEON IGP 340M and there is no 3d accel. for this with this distro. I enjoyed 3ddesktop and now to decide it I want to go back to FC3 to allow for this.

I have had better nights in the past.

I'm sure that if you can get 3d working with fedora then you 'should' be able to get it working with other distos. Its only a driver that does it, may take a little playing around with on your behalf though.

I have an older model sony pcg slimbook and FreeBSD runs beautifully on it, especially with the newest release 5.3 the wireless card worked out of the box all i had to do was add one line to the rc.conf file. So if you are interested in bsd at all freebsd works well! Although its not linux but it is really close to slackware.

I'm running my Compaq laptop with Debian 3.0. After a bit of tweaking it has worked perfectly. I've also tried SimplyMepis which also ran my laptop with no problems and, as it's a distro designed for the new linux user, it's far easier to install and configure.