can someone help me find a distro that i can find drivers for.. mainly video sound and networking( both wired and wireless).. its a dell laptop.. windows xp on it right now, i want to do a dual boot.


sorry if this is a super noob question, but im still trying to find a distro that will work..


as soon as i can get on my website to upload the report ill post a link.

What kind of dell? Check out Tuxmobil and Linux on Laptops.

dell inspiron b130

which version do i pick there are way to many ISO's... plz help...

Looks like most any of the top 10 at distrowatch will work. If you like Ubuntu (what you have listed as your Distribution), try it on the laptop. You might want to use the Gparted Live CD (see my signature) to shrink your current XP partition ahead of time.

Those other links I posted show people have Fedora, Debian, Kubuntu and Suse installed without too much trouble. Seems like the sticking points are the wireless chip, the 56k modem, and the screen resolution (which is the easiest of the three to fix).

i like Ubuntu but i cant get on the net with it..

Ubuntu so far is the best bet I would have since it has the most packages.

Sabayon IMO has good hardware detection....but is not that newbie friendly.

Mandriva is good I think....

look on wikipedia ( list of linux distros, or comparison of linux distributions ) for a distribution that focuses on hardware detection.

If you're new to linux, make sure that you have your wireless card on BEFORE it's done booting. Since most linux have to load the drivers during boot and if the devices are turned on after it they most likely won't work.

Also, if you know the drivers needed you can download them for linux on XP, save them on some external drive or CD, and install them when you're on Linux.


hope this helps in a way.

how do i have find them

just type in the name of the driver you need in a search engine, and put 'linux' behind it...i.e.

"IntelPRO Wireless 2200, driver, linux "

or something like that.

sometimes the vendors even have Linux drivers. Since it's open source, many people work on making drivers, since, usually, people get frustrated when they can't find a driver and write their own. :P

ok i got mandrakelinux 10.1 installed but its only texted based... im going to try to figure out how to put it in the gui mode or whatever its called...

type startx, or you might have to install some video drivers

it says no file found..

where do i get the file

that means you have to install x

Mandrake 10.1 is an old distro with an old kernel ; it won't work with a recent laptop.
You could try Mandriva 2007.1-One : it's a live-cd and it provides a lot of drivers.
http://www.mandriva.com/en/download

try freespire.
Admittedly, the gui ain't the best IMHO, But it has _wonderful_ hardware detection and loads of drivers.
freespire.org
_or_
frozentech.com
NOTE:I have no afillation with frozentech. I just like the price.