Best distro for a toshiba satellite M40?

aal · 08-12-2007, 01:52 AM

Hi all,

I'm trying to choose a linux distro to setup for a friend on her toshiba satellite M40.

Ideally, as well as supporting all the M40 hardware, I really want it to do all the main multimedia codecs out of the box - play dvds, stream audio, video etc.

Otherwise not much in the way of special appns required, just KDE, firefox, open office, gimp etc.

Trouble free installation and ease of use / good update tools are important for what will be a brand new user.

Any recommendations?

Thanks in advance.

regards.... andrew.

odcheck · 08-12-2007, 01:01 PM

check out

tuxmobile and linux-on-laptops

they have got a lot of good how to's

aal · 08-12-2007, 05:47 PM

Hi Odcheck,

Thanks for that, but I read the forum sticky and checked websites before posting in the first place. They will be very useful when it comes to doing the install, but typically don't cover (for example) install problems with the latest revs of an OS in combination with particular models and also don't seem to provide comparisons between OSs on a given machine, or talk about codecs OOTB.

I was really hoping to get an input from someone who'd done the job recently to recommend a distro with codecs OOTB, which runs on satellite M40 with minimal hassles?

regards.... andrew.

odcheck · 08-13-2007, 12:23 AM

I don't know any Distro where're codecs already installed.
And I would recommend Fedora 7 not Ubuntu but this is cause I like redhat Based Distros.

aal · 08-13-2007, 08:57 PM

Hi Odcheck,

This URL:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=225095

gives the following list of distros with ootb codecs:

1. dyne:bolic
2. Linspire
3. Dreamlinux
4. Blag
5. PCLinuxOS
6. Madriva
7. Kororaa
8. Knoppix
9. aLinux

I'm presently thinking mandriva.

regards.... andrew.

aal · 08-13-2007, 09:05 PM

Hi,

A few more details:

The laptop is toshiba satellite M40 / P-M 760. The main bits of H/W that are required and might cause issues are:

graphics: ATI mobility radeon X600
Modem: Lucent scorpio (soft modem)
N/W: Marvell 88E8053
Pcmcia / firewire: TI PCI 7411
Wireless: Intel pro/wireless 2200-BG
Bluetooth: Taiyo-Yuden CSP.

And I'll really need to get all of these working quickly to convince eager but impatient new user that linux is just the go!!

Is there anything there that Mandriva won't do OOTB? If so, are there instructions anywhere to fix it? Has anyone installed Mandriva on this type of laptop?

Finally, am I right to assume Mandriva live CD/single CD install will do multimedia (.mp3, .avi, dvd &c), office, firefox, gimp, burning and KDE?

Many thanks in advance.

regards.... andrew.