Hi, I'm new here as well as to linux. I used redhat on my computer many a year ago, but only for a short while. I understand a little about linux, but now am seriously looking into learning it, due to exposure to college environment. I bought a laptop recently, in fact its still in the mail. Its a Compaq Evo n600c, which is kind of old but it has alot of addons and was cheap. I was wondering what would be the best distro to get me into the linux environment, as well as function well with my laptop. Networking is an issue, although wifi is not a necessity.

P3M 1.2 Ghz
1 Gig RAM
60 GB HD

Basic specs on my machine, not alot of processor power but good amount of RAM. I will be using it for coding and compiling on the go(for CS classes) and a little gaming. Which distro would you reccomend for me, and do you have any other advice? Thanks!

there is no best, there never is. any recent user friendly distro will be fine. anything in the top 10 of distrowatch.com for example.

Ok

Let me restate my question a little bit. Which distro do you use for your laptop and why? Any distros support networking better than others?

i use knoppix cos it's not my laptop so i run it from cd!

If if did have my own, i'd use gentoo... cos i'm a double hard b*****d! ;-)

in reality. i'd probably cop out and use fedora or suse.

Take a look at Mepis, you can use it as a liveCD to test your hardware, then if you like it you can use the automated install widget.

Mepis is debian based so you get the advantages of apt-get plus it's a very user friendly distro. It's also the only distro that I've tried that
consistantly detects and allows me to configure wireless with WEP on those nasty broadcom chipsets...

It's certainly a nice base to get you going.

Dave

ACID_KEWPIE thanks for the laugh.

I have Ubuntu 5.04 dual booting on my worK laptop (Dell 600m). (IT person doesn't know that.)
I would highly recommend Ubuntu. Effortless install. Stable as hell. Package manager rocks.
Apt-get is great I had never used debian or a debian base distro before.
The only thing I can say bad about it is it defaults to Gnome. Its growing on me, but I use Fluxbox most of the time.

I like the idea of Gentoo, but have yet to get a working install yet. I am waiting for high speed maybe the stage 1 is easier. emerge better install process

Regards,
Blair

I looked on the Compaq section of Linux on Laptops and there's 3 how-tos listed. One used Red Hat and the others used Debian. Take a look at those and see what would work best for you.

I'd agree with the others, though. Try it out on live distros and see what you get.

F_M

Thanks for the info. When my laptop arrives on friday, I'll have a little bit of work to do before I chose which distro I want. Thanks again.

if u are a newbie i would use knoppix hard disk install

u boot from knoppix live cd
press
alt-f1
or ctrl-alt-f1
(i don;t remember)

press enter
and execute knoppix-installer

I just did a re-read of your original post. Half asleep last night when I answered.

If you just want to dabble in linux try - Knoppix-Mepis-Slax any Live CD.

I am assuming you are not ready to throw away your win flavor that came on your lappy and jump right into Linux. If you want to dual boot try - Ubuntu-Suse 9.3-Mandriva.
Networking should not be a problem. Wireless has always been a big headache for me. If you don't have internal 802.11 card or pcmcia card. Look to get one that plays nice with linux.

If you were booting Linux as sole OS. I say go Debian - Slackware-( I really like Slackware.)

I don't code, but a million different programs for that in most distros.

Games a sore spot for most of us. The only reason some people are still keeping XPlode around.
I have only played UT2004. (thanks Atari) There are more made for Linux. Most of the ones you want to play will work with Linux with a lot of tinkering. Some straight up won't work here.

I think that was it.

Distrowatch.com has lots of good info. Also has a stockticker like chart on the right that will give you an idea how popular a given distro is as of that day.

Linux.org has a good info on the distro under the distributions tab.

Good Luck, and WELCOME to LQ.

Regards,
Blair

Linus will be the sole OS on my laptop, so I'm leaning towards Slackware right now. I want to get as familiar with linux as possible so again this seems like the best choice. As far as wifi I will be relying on a usb wifi adapter, and I'll make sure to get on that is linux compatible. As far as games, I won't be playing very many. My Windows XP computer at home, soon to be upgraded, will suffice for all my gaming needs. Except I might play a little tropico on it, since it is kind of an old computer. Slackware looks like its where I'm headed, thanks for all the support. I'm sure I'll have more questions when I'm getting the thing working right, so expect to see more of me.

I learned more with Slack than I have with most of the other distros I have tried.

Here are a couple good tidbits for ya.

SlackBook

Shilo is a Geek

This might be redundant but here to:
LQ Installing Slackware

Good Luck

Blair

Hi!

My two-penneth. As a developing noob, I've tried a number of different distros on my laptop, starting with Debian (don't even go there at the start!), Fedora, Gentoo and now Mandriva. Mandriva is the only one that "just worked" so I've stuck with it. Its a great intro to Linux. But once you get into it I'd seriously consider giving Gentoo a go, even if you just uninstall it straight after. The whole installation process will teach you so much about Linux and the documentation's great. Plus, even though its still over my head, I just got this 'vibe' that its the best Linux distro I've tried - it's all very modern but also very stable. Debian was the only one that compared, but that was really tricky and a bit old fashioned when I tried it.

Anyway - might not be too relevant to you since my laptops a Dell Inspiron 510m, but hopefully it'll give you some ideas.

Jamie.

I am a noob to linux as well and was in the same boat as you, but I am a hardcore techie(windows administrator) as well so here is some advice as I am going through the trials and tribulations of getting linux to work on a laptop.

1.First make sure that your laptop's hardware is compliant with whatever distro you are going to use.
2. GUI interfaces make life easier I figure that as I grow I can ditch em and not use then anymore, I feel that as NOOB's they will help us get used to Linux allot faster.
3. If you have are running windows right now you can run VMware (www.vmware.com) and load any version of linux you want on your laptop if you cant get it to work then assume that it wont work with your equipment and find solutions to your problems early.

Me I wanted to use use Suse as the first distro that I ran on my laptop, but I was unable to use it, due to having issues with display drivers. So I ran Fedora Core on my Dell D610 and I have been having very few issues now I am trying to get the the little problems worked media players, recognizing my MP3 player, you know all the important stuff-LOL.

I am not the biggest fan of FC but hey it works and its easy to use, you know like they say get in where you fit in!

Hope this helps

-K