Linux Distro Recommendation

Ok, here's the thing. I've had 2.5 years of experience with Ubuntu (and its variants), Mandriva, Debian and PCLOS on my old laptop, which just so happened to have some very Linux-friendly hardware.

I've just recently upgraded to a new laptop with some very different hardware, (AMD CPU, Broadcom bcm4312 (rev 02) wireless, Nvidia GeForce 7200 GPU) and recent testing with Ubuntu and PCLOS ended in disaster. The wireless card simply would not work, even after I followed a number of How-tos. Getting 3D acceleration working has also proven to be a challenge.

What I need is a GNOME/KDE distribution with the APT package manager, and ideally the capability to have my wireless working right out of the box. Is there such a distribution?

 

MEPIS? Mint?

 

I would be confident with some work to get both wireless and gpu working...tell me if you try again

 

I haven't tried Mepis but it would be a good suggestion since it has apt package management and it's renowned for having good hardware support

 

I agree they have among the best out of the box hardware support. But Mint is just so beautiful.

 

Hi there, I have an HP dv6420la notebook and I had the exact problem. I tried to follow, under Debian ETCH. Try the following instructions over the console:

Using root:

# echo 'blacklist bcm43xx' | tee -a /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist

# aptitude install module-assistant cabextract

# m-a prepare
# m-a a-i ndiswrapper

answer ok

download the following windows driver:

ftp://ftp.hp.com/pub/softpaq/sp34001-34500/sp34152.exe.

uncompress the driver

# mkdir sp34152
# cp sp34152.exe sp34152
# cd sp34152
# cabextract sp34152.exe

then install the driver using ndiswrapper:

# ndiswrapper -i bcmwl5.inf
# ndiswrapper -l
# depmod -a
# modprobe ndiswrapper
# cp /etc/network/interfaces /etc/network/interfaces.orig
# echo -e 'auto loniface lo inet loopbackn' | tee /etc/network/interfaces
# ndiswrapper -m
# echo 'ndiswrapper' | tee -a /etc/modules
# echo 'ENABLED=0' | tee -a /etc/default/wpasupplicant

reboot

Enjoy wi-fi

 

You're already using the most comprehensive distros. Switching will not get you more drivers "out of the box."

Most wifi hardware is proprietary and only Windoze drivers will ever exist. That is why we have ndiswrapper. It sounds like a kludge, but it is actually easier to get working in the real world than a lot of other stuff. On Debian Etch, I had to install kernel source to compile ndiswrapper against. On more "user friendly" distros they do that for you. It needs to see symbols which don't exist in the kernel image, so it can make a loadable module. Then the ndiswrapper-utils just suck in the Windoxe driver that came with your hardware, and you get a module that will load and run your card.

The one gotcha is if you pick the wrong file from the driver CD, the utils will think they loaded it, but it won't work. You have to completely remove the bad driver before you can load the good one. This takes trial and error. If they have different NDIS drivers for diferent windoze flavors, try the Win2K one first.

 

im using mint and my wireless was working out of the box

 

Ummm, just a small little point here. BCM4312 is only very recently supported. In the kernel 2.6.24 release in fact, and you have to be using the everything-git to have those packages, same deal for bcm4311 rev 2

 

Install Fedora 8. For the wireless follow this guide:

http://bcm43xx.berlios.de/

For the video card, add the livna repository and yum install kmod-nvidia, add nvidia in the driver section of Xorg.conf and restart X server.

Good Luck

 

i second the F8 recommendation. even though it lacks the restricted driver module of Ubuntu, getting hardware to work using 'non-free' drivers is trivial (a couple of command line commands and/or adding repos).

 

What kind of wireless card do you have? and vid card? thanks