Soon-to-be proud owner of an R3! W/ questions

First off, I'd like to say hello to everyone and introduce myself, my name is Jesse, and I finally bit the bullet an ordered an Alienware after wanting one for YEARS! According to the rep I talked to in Dell's live chat, the expected delivery date is the 14th of July, but I'm going crazy waiting :/ I can't wait to start gaming and enjoying the Alienware experience. My first question is this- Does anyone happen to know any Linux distro's that happen to fully work out-of-the-box with the R3 with the following specs?

Intel® Core™ i7 2630QM 2.0GHz
8GB Dual Channel DDR3 at 1333MHz
2GB GDDR5 AMD Radeon™ HD 6970M
Either Killer™ Wireless-N 1103 a/g/n 3x3 MIMO for Gaming & Video OR Intel® Advanced N + WiMAX 6250 a/g/n 2x2 MIMO Technology, I can't remember for sure but I'm leaning towards the Intel card.
Slot-Loading Dual Layer Blu-ray Reader

I ask because I want to learn how to start coding, and now I'll finally have a pretty powerful computer to aid me in my education


And also, generally how long have your orders to Alienware taken to arrive on your doorstep? The original EDD was 7/20, then 7/18, then 7/11, and now its 7/14... I'm extremely impatient sadly...

 

You're going to have a tough time finding a fully functional Linux distro for that laptop, the little bit I've seen has been buggy drivers and ocasional problems. If you don't want full functionality of every device in the computer and just want a basic distro and interface you should be fine with just about any of the newer distros. As far as the delivery date goes they will usually beat the delivery date by a few days to a week unless they are out of one of the parts you ordered.

 

When did you order? I wish they could drop my EDD too like they did for you.

 

@DaneGRClose- Thank you for your input, I could probably deal with the buggy drivers as long as the driver for the wireless card is fully functional... my previous computer was an HP Pavilion dv6-1230us that had a wireless card that had literally NO working drivers for ANY Linux distro... I could probably sort things out for better or worse if I at least have working internet...

@pp ph- I ordered my M17X on July 3rd, I called simply to ask how long the laptops usually stay in production (I'm an EXTREMELY impatient person, the fact that I'm pretty much days away from being able to play the PC games I've already bought is killing me) , and they offered me UPS Next Day Air at no extra charge, needless to say I took them up on their offer. To be honest, I've heard a lot about Dell and Alienware's representatives being uncaring/ unhelpful, but I've yet to come into contact with one that has disappointed me. They are always friendly, and always more than willing to answer my questions, update me on my order status. I take whatever Dell's site says as far as order status is concerned with a grain of salt, that's the only thing I'm honestly not happy with- they update their page more or less "when they get the chance." :/

 

Heh, I received my laptop the day the status updated.

I think it took mine 18 days to arrive from the day I ordered it. If I remember correctly. If you want an average figure, there is a lot of data in the order status thread.

 

Yeah Dell usually does that, half the time it shows up before you know it's there, constant status updates by phone are a good thing Also your drivers for the wifi are going to depend 100% on what wifi adaptor you ordered, if you ordered intel you should be good, anything else you may not be.

 

I'm pretty sure I got the Intel wireless card, but I'm not sure, hopefully everything will work hassle free

 

I've heard the latest Mint distro (11 IIRC) works pretty well on the R3. There's a linux thread in here somewhere if you want to search for it.

 

Thanks man, I'll definitely have to look into that, I'm really hoping openSUSE is compatible, maybe I might get lucky