Try AntiX, Debian based & lightweight live/installable distro.
http://antix.mepis.com/index.php?title=Main_Page
http://sourceforge.net/projects/anti...al/antiX-13.2/
http://antix.freeforums.org/

is the driver available or not? as you know there is no magic Linux driver fairy...
Debian does have non-free drivers if you enable them.

My beauties

http://oi39.tinypic.com/29llnbt.jpg
http://oi49.tinypic.com/w83tp3.jpg
http://oi49.tinypic.com/35hlfux.jpg
http://oi41.tinypic.com/2chxqog.jpg

Out of the box eye candy. Maybe Netrunner

1 members found this post helpful.

it all depends on how you define EASY and BEAUTIFUL

for ME
that is a text install of cent or Debian
-- nothing easier

for someone that has NEVER used a text based terminal ....

OpenSUSE 13.2 KDE

opensuse is very GUI ( Graphical User Interface )centric

The solution for that would be a hardware solution, not a software one.

Is there a function key that might turn the wireless on and off? I had a computer that had such a key, but you would never figure it from the image on the key itself. Look for a key that has an antenna, an inverted triangle, or some such image on it.

Also, it might help to know which wireless chipset is the the computer. Try booting to one of the Live CDs and running the command lspci from a terminal. A portion of the output should report the wireless chipset (assuming that whatever turned it off did not render it completely invisible to the system).

try this : http://www.linuxmint.com/

Funky...whatever..
Wifi chips are not widely catered for with GNU/Linux, better to check the hardware before the distro. Firmware stuff exists for some distros but some chips will work on any Linux and you can get USB plugin sticks that use non-proprietry software, eg, TPE-N150USB but not cheap.
Note, have you tried rfkill in regard of the keyboard turn off switch? It sorted my Broardcam problem out. Try, rfkill --help

Fred.

Fedora has the most latest and uptodate drivers and apllications. Use a fedora live cd
http://www.fedoraproject.org

Hi funkypunkypinkypow,
You can also look at Puppy Linux.
It's a live distro. It can be run from CD, DVD, Blueray, USB, even can be installed on Hard drive.
When running live It can save back any changes you made or new programs installed in a savefile on drive you choose, even on the same CD,DVD or Blueray you are booting from in multisession mode.

Please take a look at Tahrpup 6.0 CE, a 32 bit ubuntu based Puppy linux variant, It can install packages from ubuntu repo from it's package manager. It's just 200Mb iso to download.

There is also a debian based DebianDog puppy. 150Mb iso.

I use Fatdog64-631 the stable one, and I am testing Fatdog64-700 beta2. It is 64bit puppy made from Linux from scratch. It's 250Mb iso.

I am only general desktop user. I mostly use Vlc, Firefox, Gimp, Libre-office, Libre-CAD etc...But there are many other sofwares available too.
Also being in ram they start and work so fast. My system gets to desktop after I press power ON button in just 13secs, that too not using SSD, Booting from usb2.0 stick.

Just take a look, it won't mess with anything that is preinstalled on your friend's drive, and gives faster experience than other live distros I tried.

I am new to linux. I have win7 and ubuntu 13.10 installed on my machine. But since I found Puppy in Feb this year, I have been using it and never booted in win7 entirely and occasionally boot ubuntu.
Thanks.

- Neeraj

Do not think so 'pal' (thus between qm)

Great looking desktops

Netrunner is my usual go-to for new users and clients that want to get into Linux but want a graceful learning curve and want it to look nice.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AKeB...c&spfreload=10

Since live usb (with maybe persistence was mentioned)

Thank you. Mostly Fluxbox setups. The Studebaker is a Icewm setup. All AntiX

My laptop has a broadcomm wifi card and when I was using Mint 13 it worked quite well with the bcmwl-kernel-source driver.

Usually, the older the hardware, the better, because a driver would have been created by then.