Hello.

I'm looking for a distro that will support the following functions (BY DEFAULT -- NO MODIFYING OF 12,000 DIFFERENT FILES!)

-Support for my wireless card (Intel PRO/wireless 2100 mini pci)
-Web Server
--PHP
--mySQL
-KDE

That's it.

I've tried Debian, but to get my wireless working would take about 72 hours of straight-through decompressing/renaming folders with 86 dashes in them, dealing with make files that don't work, commands that aren't found, downloads of drivers off obscure geocities sites and rebuilding the entire kernel.

I just want something that will work out of the box (or with very little or very simple modifications).

If you haven't noticed yet, I'm becoming very fed-up with linux and nothing ever working for me!

Thanks
PulsarSL

I don't have much experience with wireless, but from what I've read on these forums, that's one of Linux's weak points right now. Just seeing people struggle with ndiswrapper makes my head hurt. The other requirements you have just about any distro can handle. The auto-configure-wireless thing... I don't know. Maybe Mepis or Linspire?

Easy solution - SuSE

I've heard alot about FC4 having good hardware detection/support. is this true?

I'll give SUSE a shot

thanks

FC4 is CPU hungry distro

Why not use slackware? It comes with all the packages your want also the wireless install is not that hard if you follow the instructions clearly. I have a desktop and a laptop both dual booting slackware 10.1 with WinXP. The laptop has Intel PRO Wireless 2100 and i've installed wireless drivers in under 30 mins...also i've upgraded the driver (upgrade was a bit tricky but I just wanted to play with it). Also, I recently installed a wireless card in my desktop (after researching and finding one that can be installed with least pain) and was able to set it up in 15 mins. The card is Airlink101's AWLH4030 and is fully supported by Madwifi.

Here's the website for intel pro 2100 wireless drivers...

Hope this helps...

Tux,

To tuxrules!
Notice, notice. He's desperate! When will people learn patience?! Slackware for this guy will be THE last drop. He needs simple automated setup. SuSE gives him one. We also want him to stay with us, don't we?

To PulsarSL!
Keep this in mind, Linux is always ready for you, but question is whether you are ready for Linux.

are you using wpa with madwifi? so far I have had a real hard time with FC4 and Ubuntu with madwifi and ndiswrapper + wpa_supp

Ive been looking at gentoo but I'm not sure it will work there either from the posts on the gentoo forums. I can connect fine in Ubuntu and FC4 at times but it wont stay up or if it does it causes a kernel panic on reboot.

Mandriva is the way to go! I found that SUSE is popular, but not as intuitive to install. If you want a simple setup and a wide range of hardware support, use the latest Mandriva.

As well, if you want to test your hardware without doing an install, you can try the Knoppix CD. It boots from the CD and runs the OS without any install. It also configures a wide range of hardware. Many security guru's use it for testing customer wifi sites, so I know that it has good support for wireless.

Eric

I double checked with the Mandriva hardware database and your wireless card is supported out of the box with a base install.

Check it out at http://www.mandrivalinux.com/en/hardware.php3

download http://mirrors.kernel.org/suse/i386/9.3/boot/boot.iso
burn to a CD
boot from it.
auto dhcp
install via ftp
server ip: 204.152.191.7
directory: /suse/i386/9.3
accept modules
wait for it to analyze package selections
change anything that you want different.
Packages: 2 ways to select: categories (broad), package groups (individual packages, make sure the box next to check dependancies auto is checked)
For you I would use a swap partition and one big root partition. This is the way SuSE will configure it. This CD is over 50 MB, and almost all of it is hardware drivers. If you can't install via network with this CD, I don't think there is support for your wireless in any distro. This is the full version of SuSE 9.3 Professional. If you use the boot CD, as described, it is free. It is very easy and advanced. It works very well. I installed it in a virtual machine, and checked it out. It worked perfectly. I burned the iso to a cd, and did an upgrade, as I had SuSE 9.2. This operating system is awesome. The webserver is apache2. That is awesome, too. I would consider downloading some tools to administer the web server. It can be a nightmare to care for without proper tools.

http://www.zegeniestudios.net/ldc/index.php

might be some help for you. just found it linked somewhere else and it seems pretty handy.

depends how much of a newbie you are.