At day Two with linux need Hardware suggestion and Distribution advice.
 

Well I may as well be honest upfront here. I'm totally green to Linux :confused: . Hopefully I have viewed my last blue screen of death. I'm fed up with MS Windows, Virus Software updates,and the constant nightmare of losing data after a crash or virus. I've made up my mind to move on too linux. I've done some reading and I like the sound of haveing a near virus free environment to operate in. I've narrowed my choice of distributions to two SUSE 10 and Xandross. I'm leaning towardS SUSE but I don't want to bite off more than I can chew. I have been looking for laptops and I and I'm also concerned about hardware conflicts. I went to Alienware.com and took a look at what they have but the notebooks I like are a little pricey. I went to getyourgadgets.net and found two brands that I like Acers and HP's, they are listed as linux friendly . The sales guy said that both of these brands work well for linux and he even suggested that I talk with some more experience linux users. Would I be safe in purchasing either brands in general and have everthing work.

I'm not a heavy gamer or anything but I would like things like the dvd to play without stalling. Most of my uses will be for Sales and presentation for clients. I'll be using the wireless lan heavily though. I know I haven't given you much to work with but right now I just trying to find a starter home in the linux world.

maillavell :Pengy:

I would go with SUSE, but seriously - you won't learn much with that type of distro. If you aren't attempting to get to deep into learning and modifying/customizing that's fine though. I believe that HP's products are quite well supported, but you have to have a look at the HCL (Hardware Compatibility List) on here before you actually commit.

Card readers (e.g. Memory Stick, SD Card, etc readers) will be about the only thing not to be supported on your laptop (most of these use proprietary interfaces that the manufacturers will not give Linux driver developers any information on).

Also, whilst laptops usually work for the most part, they may not always work straight out of the box (sometimes there's a little bit of tweaking here and there required).

Hi,

You should look here;

http://www.linux-laptop.net/

I've got linux on several laptops! And yes proprietary subsystems can be a problem that cannot always be solved. I've got a Gateway Solo 2500 without sound support. I really don't need sound for this old girl. I use the Solo for my communication and research work on the internet.

I've got several IBM TP that are used as controllers without problems.

Now for the question about 'starter home in the linux world'.

I would look at getting a system that is a desktop for now to really learn your linux. You could use a older cheap system to experiment with, be a laptop or desktop. You could always multi-boot for the distributions that you want to try or experiment with. Make sure your HD has enough space to allow this option.

I really prefer Slackware as you can see by my sig. Sure the dive into such deep water can be intimidating but the payoff is worth the time spent. Turn-key distros' hide so much from the user and you really can't tweak the system if you are shielded from the operation. CLI is the Best!

If you lurk around LQ, you will see most of the problems that are presented can be solved if the OP knew basic commands or system configuration.

Research will get you a lot of answers! Read some good reference material to get background information on whatever distribution you choose.

What are you using now? I know you mentioned windows but you can multi-boot to allow fall back when you have issues. You don't want a situation when working with a sales client. Yes, virus, adware and other problems are a reason to get away from MS. But the majority of the business world is MS based. Sure with open source the apps' are there to allow meshing of the two worlds. Yet, you will need to have compatibility with MS and at time revert back to MS to allow your work with some clients because of propriety software.

I think that you will find Ubuntu the most laptop friendly. It will probably take you about an hour and a half to complete the setup and have a working computer. The installer is intuitive and everything works. Everything except wireless, but you can set that up easily enough with ndiswrapper. Look in the Ubuntu forums. I am currently running Ubuntu on an Emachine 3215 for one of my kids and I never have to touch it.

Fedora is another great distro. Installation will not be quite as intuitive, but it works nonetheless. Expect about 4 to 5 hours to get everything working. I am running Fedora Core 4 on my Thinkpad and all works except for suspend. That project has been relegated to the back burner for now.

My last recomendation would be Red Hat Enterprise Linux. It is rock solid and fast, but the kernel will be of an older variety and will consequently require more tweaking. Expect a day or two to get this going. I bought a subscription, but am saving it for my server project.

I am a new to Linux and my recomendations are of course going to be geared to like users. I also spent an entire week of vacation installing and testing different distributions on both laptops, so I do feel that I can make these recomendations without hesitation. A word of caution. Do not let someone talk you into one of the more technical distros unless you don't need your laptop for about a week. There will be plenty of time for that later. Keep it simple on your main computer until you feel comfortable compiling kernels.

Hope this helps.