Yes but I tried iwlwifi which is the name of the driver. Not sure if that's what it was looking for. And I know it wasn't wlan0. I had a weird name that started with a w. I'm not going sure what I'm going to do a this point. I am going to get something very soon and go from there. I checked and I can get an external hd for less than $30, Anybody have any advice?

Arch Linux is a slightly more advanced Linux distribution for more experienced users. I suggest just going with something Debian based until you're more confident.

I was planning on installing debian and then getting an external hd to play with other distros. The notebook I'm looking at only has a 32 gb hd. Would it be big enough to create two 15 gb partitions with 2 gb swap?

Linux distributions can all share the same swap so that shouldn't be an issue, but how big the install gets, really depends on you. 3G2B does seem a little on the small side however - I take it this is not a new PC?

It's a new notebook. My hd fried on my old laptop but I have a new dell that is going back because it is having problems. I always like a backup but after spending that much money on a laptop I couldn't justify spending a lot of money on another laptop. There is a way to install linux on a thumb drive on my chromebook but from what I read it's a little tricky. I use parted live for partitioning and I know about swap. As far as space I try and run my distros as lean as possible. I only install terminator and chromium.

You could even post a link to the specs for this new PC?

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0...?ie=UTF8&psc=1

I just got it but I haven't opened the box yet so if anybody has any concerns please let me know!!

Sorry I'm coming to this perhaps too late to help you with Arch. If not, I highly suggest you use the netctl interface. It provides a CLI tool called wifi-menu and uses systemd combined with profiles that really make managing wifi connections much easier.

Let me know if you still want to try and I can guide you through it.