Good hardware detection + lightweight distro

Hey guys, I've used linux in the past (mepis, gentoo, suse, ubuntu) but on a desktop. I'm trying to get away from windows if i can and I'm looking for an easy setup but not a bloated distro (suse) to install on my w3j since I'm a busy guy at the moment. I've heard ubuntu still sucks with wireless drivers so I'm looking for other alternatives. Mint, sabayon, pclos? any other info would be appreciated Also, I'm a gamer, but I've compiled cedega cvs from scratch before, so as long as I can get drivers I should be fine.

 

Mint would probably be good. It's based on Ubuntu, but with the proprietary stuff installed.

I use Ubuntu proper myself, and it has worked well.

 

Yeah I just popped in FC6, I can't even find a configuring utility for my network card. Mint had it out of the box . And mepis failed. but then again this is just running of the live cd.

 

I honestly don't know if Mint installs the ATI drivers... you might want to check their forums for information on installing the proprietary ATI drivers.

 

DreamLinux has a multimedia edition that might be worth checking out. Also PCLinuxOS has a suppergamer version that has many of the necessary Nvidia and ATI drivers already installed as well as a bunch of trial version (doom quake etc) already installed.

For a light distro look for something that uses the enlightenment or xfce Desktop environments, something like Xubuntu or Elive.

 

Good luck getting games beyond Tetris and Chess type graphical capabilities to run on Linux. WINE (and the few competitors) can only do so much. But your desire to move away from Windows is a right one. I suggest trying K/Ubuntu again and apparently Sabyon is good. It is remarkably simple to remove bloat from Linux (that is, if there is any).

 

I've gotten almost every game I have to run in linux through Wine. Oblivion and Microsoft sponsored games (Like Halo) are the only ones I'm having trouble getting to work.

 

I heard PS2 use some kind of Linux based OS. Is this true?

rj686, Ubuntu is not so sucks in wireless, but Ubuntu+broadcom are really sucks.

 

I don't know if it uses Linux, but there is a video on youtube that has a guy with Ubuntu on his PS.

 

The Playstation 3 operates on Yellow Dog linux. And its possible to install linux on PS2's and Xboxes.

 

You could have a look at GRML (Debian based) and just install the packages that you need above it. Personally, I'm using Kanotix with fluxbox and it's pretty lightwieght. If I had to re-install, I'd probably make it grml with Kanotix due to some of the problems the Kanotix distro is running into at the time (one of the main leads moving, the project stagnating a little, etc.).

 

Forgot to add, grml has some very nifty features that let you use it on multiple hardware very easily. It has this really REALLY nifty option: http://grml.org/config/grml-config.html which lets you save configurations per machine (save configuration ; restore-config - restore configuration; mkpersistenthome - create persistent home directory; more options available via bootoptions (see following documentation). So, for example, you can put it on an external USB drive. You can then set it up to work on your machine. If you take the USB to boot up on another machine, you can do all the necessary changes (ex. edit config files, etc.) to make it work perfectly on the 2nd machine. You can then return to the old machine and tell it to use the old profile. Nifty.

 

I would recommend going with Ubuntu (or Xubuntu if you want really lightweight). There's a lot of support and a lot places to get help. Plus, Automatix2 makes things really easy. Just make sure you have a wired Internet connection if you're using 6.10. Most wireless cards (including many new ones like the Intel in my laptop) don't seem to work out of the box with Ubuntu. Of course, you could always just use 6.06 LTS as I do; it seems to have overall better hardware detection out of the box, but I'm sure things are getting better in Edgy as they continually update it.

Also, if you have an nvidia GPU, you could try PC-BSD. It has pretty good hardware support,a nd its package (PBI) system makes things as easy to install as Windows. But don't plan on having a wide variety of software or playing games. But it's good to fool around with.

 

I would recommend Ubuntu. It is great for noobs and seems to be the distro people are moving to. I run CentOS which is just a free version of Red Hat.

 

Have a look at Puppy Linux 2.13. The distro is really lightweight (80MB), lives entirely in RAM, and is really fast. It works well on my Dell Inspiron E1405 with C2D T7200.

http://www.puppylinux.com

 

Wow, this distro is really interesting. Will play with it for a while. Imho it is the first one which is better than Ubuntu itself.

PS: Xubuntu is lighter but it was not so good at hardware recognition for me.

 

Kubuntu is probably lighter than Ubuntu (being KDE, instead of GNOME) and will have good hardware detection.

I think Gentoo is super light, but less user friendly.

 

I like Puppy Linux & DSL (**** small Linux).

I just can't get my WiFi to work with the two.

 

I am also fun of those two, but Mint did wifi for me without any effort of mine.

 

If you liked Mint, look forward to the next release of Ubuntu, Feisty Fawn. Includes many of the niceties and new config tools.

 

I might give Mint a try this weekend. I have it downloading right now. It seems like fun to try different versions of Linux. I liked (K)Ubuntu quite a bit, but just never got to the point where I was able to use it as my primary OS. I am hoping to start with Kubuntu again at the next release, and make it my primary OS.

 

Try DesktopBSD 1.6-RC1, it's matter of a single CD only

 

Another vote for Puppy Linux. I don't know of a better lightweight distro. I have it on my USB key.

DSL looks good too except it uses the 2.4 kernel which does not work with a mini PCI express wireless card no matter how hard I tried.

Puppy has a recent version of ndiswrapper included already. All you need is a wpa_supplicant dotpup package and you're ready to launch wireless.

 

oh yeah, I already tried new beta2 of it.
Though praising Mint here, my heart is still with Puppy linux and its cool concept.
I just have to learn more to configure it for my specific needs.

 

I feel the same. If I can get my WiFi to work with it then we are in business.

 

Freespire works with wireless cards. It's one of my favorite distros, along with PCLinuxOS. I'm not a fan of Puppy Linux, Mepis, DSL, or Ubuntu. I haven't tried anything else.

 

Do Freespire and PcLinux already recognise Intel's speedstep feature for mobile processors? They use 2.4.*kernels, isn't?

 

theres so many versions of Linux...how does everyone keep track on whats the best or not >.<

 

Well, whats best is a matter of personal opinion. I'm an Ubuntu fan, but that was only after I tried out about a dozen distros. I started with Fedora.

There are a few "types" of Linux distro. I used the most popular one from each camp, to find out what style suited me, and then narrowed my choices to the distros similar to that one. Then tried them until i found the distro that is perfect for me. I like both Arch Linux, for its awesome performance, up to date packages, and light weight, but I like Ubuntu for its masses of tech support, tutorials, packages built to click and run, and things like that.

 

Sidux ( www.sidux.com ) does a great job detecting hardware, and although it doesn't ship with non-free drivers, it DOES have scripts for automatically installing them for you. It's pretty light, no bloat. Debian based means there's more apps than you can shake a stick at, all ready to get via apt. Forum is very newbie-friendly.

 

There is probably no best, or at least best for all.

One way to look at is to group them by package managers

debian - apt
fedora - rpm
suse - yast (?)
gentoo - emerge

and then all the derivative distributions.

apt- ubuntus, linsipre (?)
etc