Hello,

LOOKING FOR THE BEST DISTRIBUTION TO START OUT WITH IN MY LAPTOP

I'm quite new to Linux. I've been playing around with LiveCD's with different distributions, and I've been putting off installing it as my main OS.

I've just bought a new Acer TravelMate 5720 with these specs:

Intel Core2 T7300
Intel Media Accelorator X3100
2GB DDR2
250 GB HDD
and wifi with I don't know what chipset yet

The laptop came with Vista Home Premium, and I bought Ghost 14 and a 500GB external hard drive, because I want to make an image of the (Vista) Hard Drive, as well as my XP hard drive from my old laptop.

My intention is to have Linux my main OS on the new Acer, and then have virtual PCs (Vista, XP, and whatever else I want to try out). I've made the images as well as the .vmdk files to restore them with VMWare.

**I just want to make sure I have the best distribution that will be able to run all my devices on the laptop properly, or learn how to put drivers in for them

I was thinking about Ubuntu (the latest Long Term Support).

Does anybody have any suggestions??

Thanks,

Conrad

Oh, one last thing, my laptop also has an incorporated camera, and I wanted to make sure that I can use that as well.. Not a big deal, but might come in handy.

i have an acer laptop that has totally different hardware, so can't comment on the distro or you.

If your camera is the same acer orbicam as mine though, then it doesn't work, I'm still trying to find a driver that works for it.

I like Gentoo, but it is not for the feint of heart. It can literally take a week to install, but when you are done you will have an install that is completely customized to your hardware, and I guarantee you will know more about Linux internals.

I have installed Gentoo on three different laptops and several industrial single board computers. It handles unusual hardware configurations very well.

e waller

I would second Gentoo, it is one of the best I've used, and for the faint of heart you don't have to go through all the complex stages of install. there is a live cd/dvd that you can boot from to see if your hardware is supported and then install straight to disk in a few easy steps. Chances are high that your hardware will be ok if live cd's have worked, you should google your graphics chipset though and find out what your wifi card is, so there will be no nasty surprises.

Hey thanks for the responses! KEEP'EM COMING!


I'm downloading the Gentoo live CD and also the live DVD (we'll see when they both come in.. going very slowly at the moment).

I just remembered that Dell sells laptops pre-configured with Ubuntu, and I'm kinda wondering if I should have just bought a Dell... that way I'd be sure that everything works, but then again, that defeats my purpose of learning!

I checked out the Dell website, and my laptop is a bit superior in Hardware for less money, but then again there's the risk that I won't get everything running.

I'll check out Gentoo, and I'll keep my Windoze laptop until it's all configured. My plan is to get it running as fast as I can and sell my windows lap on eBay, but my main goal is to learn. So Gentoo might be my best bet.. I've been checking out the reviews of it on this site, and it looks good.

Oh, and the new cameras are not an orbicam, it's called Acer Crystal Eye. Don't know if I'll find a driver for that! :-S

I don't know if I want a Crystal eye watching me anyway.. it would be nice to make it work though!

Any other comments??

Thanks for

You can also try out Mandriva 2008.1 (will be released by this week) Live CD. Mandriva is also a laptop-friendly distro.

Ok, I just downloaded the Gentoo 2007 Live CD (2008 is still in the beta stage and I'm a bit wary of that) and I stuck it in my new laptop, and already it doesn't recognize the wifi hardware. I did a "iwconfig" and it told me "no wireless connection."

Is that difficult to remedy?

Can you provide the output of

lspci -v

(It may require that you run with root privileges)

Thanks ewaller for the response. Well, first of all, I live in Spain, and the laptop has a spanish keyboard, on the live install, I opted for 13 which is spanish (I think) but it doesn't work right.

I did manage to get a lspci -v on the terminal, I copied it to a .txt file with open office, but there's no way of getting it off the computer!!! It recognizes my usb connections, but I plugged my usb memory in and it doesn't recognize it or let me access it or save anything to it.

What am I looking for? I didn't see anything that talked about wifi..

Looking for help,

Conrad

Conradilius,

I think you have a Intel 3945ABG Wireless chipset and it should show up on the PCI bus. If there is nothing in the lspci output that gives any hints as to which wireless chipset you have, it may be that the version of lspci in the live CD does not know about your chipset (only if your chipset is very new). If that is the case, there will be some unknown devices with device codes in the form 8086:4220.

If you do have the 3945ABG chipset, you need the package: iwlwifi. Sadly, I don't know how to do this with the live CD. The good news is this is a driver that seems to be provided by Intel rather than a third party.

If you want, we can explore the USB drive issue, but I fear we are wandering off thread.

As a side note, Spain is beautiful -- at least it was 35 years ago when I was a child. I would like to visit again.

ewaller

If you're new to Linux, Gentoo seems like a great way to put you off Linux!

Try Mandriva 2008.1 when it's available (tomorrow) and/or (K)Ubuntu 8.04 when it's available (at the end of the month). (It [Mandriva 2008.1] has advantages over 2008.0 in terms of sound support.) The Wireless will definitely work with 3945ABG in Mandriva.

In my experience Mandriva is the best noobie distribution, but *buntu is also good. Wireless support in Mandriva is (I think) better than the anything else although a friend recently tried Fedora 8 and had good things to say about it.

On the subject of the webcam, it's almost definitely USB based and won't work!

When you have a Linux installed, go to the command line and (as root) type:

lsusb

You should see it there and some umbers in the format of xxxx:yyyy

Put that into Google along with Linux (and maybe "driver") and see what results you get.

I have an Acer 9300 with SuSE 10.3 installed. It runs everything, wireless and all. I can't quite get the orbicam to work like I want, but kopetec sees it.

I shrank the vista partition down. SuSE put it on the boot menu, and also mounts it as a subdirectory.

I'm very please with SuSE and KDE. The only secret with SuSE is to study the repository setup, and never install anything you can't install thru Yast.

I use it 9 hours a day for development at work.

Hey, thanks all for your comments, I really appreciate it. After trying several Live CD's, I decided to go with Ubuntu 7.10 (the gutsy gibbon). I wouldn't mind trying to make a Gentoo setup some time, it seems it would be nice to have a Linux setup with only the drivers you need (I think that's the goal) but I'm not that far advanced yet..

And ewaller:

Ubuntu recognized my Intel Corporation PRO/Wireless 3945ABG Network Connection (rev 02)
Subsystem: Intel Corporation Unknown device 1001
Control: I/O- Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- ParErr- Stepping- SERR+ FastB2B-

(And warned me that there was no FREE controller available) but put the driver in..

I tried configuring manually my connection to the access point, but it wouldn't connect, I don't know why, but I read into it and found the nm applet, and it connected right away!!

This is the first post I make from my new laptop with Ubuntu (YEAH!!!)


And to Doug and Superdog, the new Acer laptops don't call them orbicam, this one is called the ominous "Crystal Eye"

I happened to get off the Device manager this information about it:

Acer Crystal Eye webcam

Suyin Optronics CORP.

Port_#0001.Hub_#0003

Sonix Fecha del controlador 24/04/2007

Versión 5.7.28.500

Firma digital microsoft windows hardware compatibility publisher

C:\Windows\PLFSet.dll

C:\Windows\system32\drivers\sncduvc.sys

C:\Windows\system32\drivers\snp2uvc.sys

versión 1.0.0.2

I'm glad I didn't buy a Dell, I get better hardware for less, and I was looking at the Dell website, and the models they sell apparently have an incorporated webcam that doesn't work in Ubuntu either.. That will be something I'll be investigating. I don't use it very much, but occasionally when I chat with the ladies, I like to show them how handsome I am.
:-D


I'll investigate getting a driver for that later. So far everything works, I haven't tried burning a DVD/CD yet, and I tried to play an .mp3 in the totem movie player (the default player), but it didn't have an .mp3 codec!!! It's currently looking for it, but I'm sure there are better .mp3 players that I can install.

Anyway, thanks for your comments, and since the original post was help choosing a distribution, and I may try new distributions once I get this one up to snuff.

However, please join me in the next post: "Help configuring Ubuntu 7.10 in an Acer Travelmate 5720" I will need more help, and if I can help others, I will pass on the little knowledge I have.

Thanks again,
Conradilius

PS Ewaller, yes Spain is still beautiful!! I'm from New York, but I've been living here for 9 years and love it. Love the country, the people the food..

And there is quite a push for open source software and OS's. The government is trying to switch over, and the Universities are cutting down on Windows in any way they can as fast as they can. My job is selling hardware to universities (I'm a distributor for IBM and SUN Microsystems and others). I thought I should make the change from Linux in Virtual machines to being a straight Linux user. So far so good!

Conradilius,

Well, enjoy Ubuntu. I have installed it to play around with it. It seems to be a solid distro and has been well received by the community. It appears to work well out-of-the-box on a wide variety of hardware.

It has been a pleasure conversing.

ewaller