Hi!
I've just recently managed to put my computer fully working with Ubuntu, but in the next few months I am going to replace my motherboard and my processor.
New Motherboard is an Asus A8N-E, it's cheap enough and I think it's supported in it's entirety few more checks on that department, but I believe thats the best choice. Please warn me, if you've heard them, about unsucessfull stories about this board.

The processor is a AMD64 2.00GHz Venice that I'll cool with a Thermalright XP 90-C.
The GPU is an XFX Nvidia 6600GT 128MB DDR3.

*drools*

What I have problems with is my choice of distro.
I have a Wi-fi card. The MSI PC54G2 which is based on the ralink 2500 for 54Mbps and the Ralink 2400 for the rest. At least that is what I believe. SerialMonkey driver will be used. Ndiswrapper officially does not support this specific manufacturers card/model

I managed to install it under Ubuntu 5.10, which is why I use it at the moment.


I like Ubuntu and it's nice for detox from Windows, which is also my case... I'd like however to learn a lot more about Linux, so Ubuntu isn't really where I'd like to stay.

When I knew I was going to change to Linux from Windows I started looking at possible distros to follow.
I looked at Mandrake which had always been my distro, and that failed due to the wi-fi card.
I tried Suse since it had recently "opened" up, same problems with the wi-fi card.
Tried Ubuntu 5.04, same. Lastly I tried Gentoo 2005.1 and I couldn't even get past installing kde, so I decided I might as well get internet running in linux before I go and do something that hard.
So I got Ubuntu 5.10 running with net and ditched windows all together.

Now I'm still looking at distros to change and since this one worked with my wi-fi card I have a fallback to resort too. Newbie proof.

I keep looking and people keep telling me dirt on these diferent distros, which to me is really confusing since I've never actually used any of them.

Which do you think I should use?
Considering my wi-fi card which is THE requirement to get off the ground fast.

I thought of Gentoo and SlackWare for, at least me, obvious reasons.
It's all the huff and puff I hear about these distros being ladders for newbie knowledge.
Also thought of Slackware because of historical reasons. If it lasted this long its got to be good! Gentoo more because of the huff and puff; and slackware also because I still remember my dads book on the 3.*somethings* version of this distro. (3.5 I believe!)

Please indicate others that you think might be good for me to look at.
Nothing like LFS please... I like to get started, not being thrown into a pit!
Heard about Arch, but that was the first time I heard of it.
Thought of Xandros, but for easy I have Ubuntu.

Thanks to all! Even those who only read this.

Guess no one cares...


If nothing else then....

All your bases are belong to us!

Maybe you ought to ask about getting your wireless card working properly if its failing in Mandriva and Suse. You can then use the solution you get, to configure wireless on any other distros that you try out.

If you want to learn cool linux, debian is really slick. It is one of the most powerful distros, you can patch pristine kernels with supplied debian patches, to compile the latest, and greatest kernel. There are several front ends for package management. All packages are available online. You can install debian over the internet. Kernel compiles are amazingly smooth and easy. I have never found any software that doesn't work with debian, except Windows software. So I got VMware Workstation and made a Wndows XP virtual machine. Now I can run windows in a window, inside linux, in KDE desktop.

SuSE is also what I use, but it is pretty brainless linux. You don't really have to learn anything to use SuSE, but it works really well. It is difficult, or impossible to compile the kernel in SuSE 9.x. I have tried several times. Source packages have many problems with SuSE 9.x.

The good thing is, SuSE 9.3 comes with like 10 GB of packages. You can download the boot.iso for network installation off any SuSE mirror, in the /suse/i386/9.3/boot directory. Then you just burn the iso to a CD, boot from it, and do a network install over the internet. It tales about 3 hours with cable at 600k/s.

It is best to install at night, from a US mirror. You get more bandwidth off the SuSE mirror at night.

A mirror is an ftp, or http address that mirrors the SuSE distro. Distros all have mirrors.

It's not that no one really cares, it's probably more along the lines that this type of question is asked way too often. Even though you gave more and better details of what your trying to do, etc, most members are probably tired of this same ol question of, "which distro should I use?" which is asked way too often nowadays. Researching is the best thing anyone can do for themselves on these types of questions. There are plenty of sites that offer the differences, what distro supports what natively and so on out on the net.

You might want to try a 64 bit distro.

I have actually switched from slackware to Ubuntu 64, as i have found that they bear a lot of resemblances

Slack is a sure way to learn linux properly though. If you are feeling ambitious you might want to have a look at Fred Emersons slamd64;

http://www.slamd64.com/

which is an unofficial port of slackware to 64 bit, and has a few minor niggles, but doesn't have quite so much software as the full slackware. It has a few things which need fixing, and you might find yourself manually compiling software in a 64 bit environment. This in itself is a learning curve, as configure ifles in source code often need modifying so they will build successfully on the 64 bit system. Whether your wireless card would work in it without too much playing around, I couldn't say, but I would gamble that you'd need to build the drivers yourself.