OS Reviews ( Mac OS, Linux, Windows , etc)

[Spazosaurus]

Quick question...What is the best 'live' distro of linux that I can use on a notebook?

[Crixx_Creww]

windows

[Spazosaurus]

lolll. Seriously now, anyone?

[vivman1107]

I recommend PCLinuxOS, Kubuntu and Mandriva One in that order. I am just a bit partial to KDE. I have not tried them on a notebook, though.

[disciple]

windows

ROFL!!!!!!!


i haven't tried pclinuxos (ever) nor mandriva since it was mandrake, 
but kubuntu is pretty sweet on notebooks..


it being live, however, certain things prolly won't be enabled ( like the broadcom chipset i mentioned above)

nice support for the extra buttons (volume control), wireless , bluetooth , touchpad,  acpi events , etc..

i'm with viv with a KDE leaning.. gnome blows..

lol j/k

[Spazosaurus]

Well there's a mini pci Broadcom wireless adapter in my notebook so you're saying that it might as well as might not work?

So it's Kubuntu Feisty Fawn Herd 5 i'm looking for right?

[disciple]

ah!! broadcom.. the mark of the beast!!!
lol


ahm.. off the live cd,  i honestly don't know if there's a way to  have it download the firmware and point to it on a usb key

(the driver itself is open source.. the firmware isn't.. therefore it can't be distributed with  GPL licensed software, or somethin to that effect)

i really am not familiar with mechanics of running the live as your main environment.. sorry..  but i will look around and see if i get some info for you



have you enough resources to run a virtual machine?   there are nuffimages out there you can d/l and run with vmware player.. you can even create your own, if u so inclined

[Spazosaurus]

What i'll do is try to run it off the cd when its done downloading. If there's no dice with the broadcom, i'll dig up vmware and create a virtual machine with it, maybe even install it within the vm. You see, evey once in a while I get curious as to what improvements has been made to linux and determine whether I can actually switch off Windows. Can't wait to ee what's what with this one.

[disciple]

So it's Kubuntu Feisty Fawn Herd 5 i'm looking for right?

nah herd releases are alphas .. there is an offical beta that supersedes those

http://kubuntu.org/announcements/7.04-beta.php

What i'll do is try to run it off the cd when its done downloading. If there's no dice with the broadcom, i'll dig up vmware and create a virtual machine with it, maybe even install it within the vm. You see, evey once in a while I get curious as to what improvements has been made to linux and determine whether I can actually switch off Windows. Can't wait to ee what's what with this one.

i totally hear yuh....  good luck ! 

[TriniXaeno]

lol @ windows.

nice review disciple.

I tried for all of 15 minutes to get a wireless card working under linux recently. downloaded some ndis wrapper nonsense from sourceforge and gave up shortly thereafter. Glad to hear it's getting easier.

[TinyGrasshopper]

I don't know about nonsense. That's how I got my Broadcom working when I switched.

[TriniXaeno]

you're a guru

I am not. lol

maybe you can pass HQ some time and get mine running. Would be much obliged.

[Fkacn_tt]

NoobGoneWild what card do u have

[TriniXaeno]

It's a motorola pcmcia wireless 54G

825g

[Spazosaurus]

Ok so I got my hands on the Kubuntu 7.04 beta. It appears to recognise my broadcom wireless adapter but refuses to connect to my wireless network. Firstly, i cant even seem to find a way for it to search for available networks. When I enter all the info manually, it still wont connect. What gives?

[disciple]

u rockin the live cd?  or u had end up doin the vm way?

[Spazosaurus]

The live CD went pretty well. Only thing is that i'm not getting through with the wireless. If I do, then i'll even consider making a lil2 gig partition to install it.

[Fkacn_tt]

iwlist scan, is the search command

[Spazosaurus]

linux noob here. more details please

[Fkacn_tt]

i never used kubuntu but the commands should be the same. You said u can see your adapter, thats good open up a konsole and type iwconfig interface(interface is the name of your wlan card,it should look like eth1,rausb0,wifi0 or wlan0) after the command has finished u should see some info about your card, dont worry about this, leave that konsole open and open a new konsole type iwlist interface scan, this will bring up a list of avaliable networks, open back u the first konsole and type iwconfig interface essid <access point essid> key <wep key or wpa paraphrase> then press enter, if the access point is not on the default channel u would have to configure the card by typing in iwconfig interface channel <channel number> press enter, now u have to put in the access points MAC address, new command iwconfig interface ap <access point MAC> then press enter, and that is it for first part.

second part is to get the access point's ip address because it is not given sometime, ok type dhcpcd -d -t 10 interface this will request an ip from the access point, now open up your web browser and see if it worked

if u decide to install kubuntu u should get wlassistant, its a really good program and would save u from having to do this everytime u want to connect