01-08-2005 03:33									#1
	Best Linux Distro for a Laptop Support Apolyton buy from Amazon

It's that time of year again, with school coming up and the need for Linux on my laptop (dual-boot with Windows XP, of course).

I just completed surgery on the laptop, imaging my old 40GB drive over the network and replacing it with a new 100GB Seagate Momentus 5400.2 (which is kickass, I may add). I'm partitioning 40GB for Linux, 60GB for NTFS/Windows.

So I want to put a distro of Linux that works well on laptops -- specifically, I don't want to spend 3 weeks and jump through 100 hoops to get things such as Pentium M/Centrino power throttling to work, adjustments for monitor backlight brightness, etc. These types of things "just work" in Windows, and I want the same in Linux.

It's an IBM ThinkPad T40. 1.5GHz Pentium M, Radeon 7500 32MB, 1GB RAM, integrated Cisco 802.11b wireless (mini-PCI).

Ideas?

	01-08-2005 03:35									#2
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At first I thought MNG had resurrected his old thread

	01-08-2005 03:37									#3
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As a minor bonus, it would be nice to have it work with my USB bluetooth dongle (D-Link DBT-120) to interface with my iPaq and GPS receiver...but I can understand if that's not possible.

	01-08-2005 09:55									#4
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bump?

	01-08-2005 11:59									#5
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Uhh . . . . . why excatly do you want to install Linux on your laptop ?

	01-08-2005 12:35									#6
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He's doing an IT degree. You can join the dots.

	01-08-2005 16:48									#7
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There are several projects people have completed, perhaps so of them will work for you to. All of them require considerable amount of tweaking of course.

http://bellet.info/laptop/t40.html

http://thunk.org/tytso/linux/t40.html

http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/walt.../linux-t40.html

http://www.math.rutgers.edu/~amurphy/linux/IBM-T40.html

heres a listing of projects

http://www.linux-on-laptops.com/ibm.html

	01-08-2005 18:38									#8
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If you want to go for a readymade distro , try Debian ( or a derivative ) . It may be the best for hardware support .

	01-08-2005 19:38									#9
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quote: Originally posted by aneeshm Uhh . . . . . why excatly do you want to install Linux on your laptop ?

It's either Linux or Solaris.

If I install a *nix on the laptop I can use the wireless network at school and not need to use the god-awful Solaris workstations or Linux PCs in the lab.

	01-08-2005 19:39									#10
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quote: Originally posted by aneeshm If you want to go for a readymade distro , try Debian ( or a derivative ) . It may be the best for hardware support .

I started downloading both Debian and Gentoo last night anyway, and I was amazed at the bloat of Debian...2 DVDs (~9GB?).

	01-08-2005 19:44									#11
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Why you would download a full Debian distribution with all its huge software packages is beyond me. Just download what you need to get the system running (there should be such an option like a minimal system) and install the rest over the internet.

	01-08-2005 19:46									#12
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Lots of people recommend ubuntu

Why don't you go with one of the BSDs?

	01-08-2005 19:46									#13
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I am morally opposed to not having the full OS on CD or DVD. It helps prevent some needless complications.

When I last tried Linux on my T40 1.5 years ago, the internet wouldn't even work (Cisco wireless drivers sucked).

	01-08-2005 19:48									#14
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The full OS != The full OS + all ported software packages.

	01-08-2005 19:51									#15
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It's not bloat if you don't install it . It seems you're downloding most of the repository , aren't you ( full set of some thirteen or so CDs ) ?

And may I suggest *BSD if you want just a functional *nix ? AFAIK , you prefer the BSD environment and license to an equivalent GNU/Liux one .

	01-08-2005 21:27									#16
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I'm concerned about hardware support...Linux was not working last time I tried, I doubt BSDs would be any better with driver support.

	01-08-2005 22:28									#17
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The BSDs are known to have better support for some drivers , but I wouldn't know , I haven't really used them . Try Linux From Scratch if you're really wanting to customise your distro ( and have some time to invest ) . LFS handmade distros tend to be great for people who know what they're doing .

	02-08-2005 00:03									#18
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Gentoo status: bust.

Can't get the damn wireless to work. The airo driver supposedly comes with 2005.0, and it's loaded, and it's detected (iwconfig lists it).

However, I can't do anything with it. "iwconfig eth0 essid Wireless" (which should said the SSID to "Wireless") doesn't do anything at all. Typing "iwconfig eth0" shows the SSID set to "" still.

Worthless.

Hopefully Debian/Ubuntu fair better, but they're still downloading.

	02-08-2005 16:05									#19
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Some of laurentius sources say the driver needed comes from the madwifi project: http://madwifi.sourceforge.net/
T40 Atheros is listed under compatibility there.

	02-08-2005 16:39									#20
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@ Asher

Tried hacking the config file ( if there is one ) manually ?

	02-08-2005 18:37									#21
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Didn't know which one to hack, and from what I had read if the device shows up in "iwconfig" the driver installed correctly.

	02-08-2005 20:49									#22
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Hmm . . . . .

After reading the man page for iwconfig , I'd say you try this :

iwconfig eth0 essid "Wireless"

with the quotes , followed by

iwconfig eth0 commit

which should fix it . If it doesn't , then try Ubuntu/Debian .

	02-08-2005 21:42									#23
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The Ubuntu/Debian DVDs should be done by the time I get home.

What is the advantage of Ubuntu?

	02-08-2005 21:55									#25
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I wish you luck in your Quest Asher.

Now who has some ideas for what kind of LinuxI should put on my Anchient....

Dell Latitude, Pentium 2 , 64MB (yes MEGA BYTE) Ram, 20 GB hard drive. (someone gave it away and I was like "well if its free I guess so").

	02-08-2005 22:04									#26
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Ubuntu - simple and small , supposedly with good hardware support ( at least , everything I have works flawlessly , but then I have no wireless equipment ) . Debian - has everything , so has the best hardware support , but is a bit more difficult to set up than the other , more user-friendly distros ( and I'm not including Gentoo is the user-friendly category - it is a source distro , after all ) .

	02-08-2005 22:08									#27
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Laurentius has hit gold in this link .

	02-08-2005 22:09									#28
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I don't have the same wireless card as that guy does, I have the Cisco Aironet wireless.

	02-08-2005 22:17									#29
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BTW. the reason why the wireless doesn't work in Gentoo is because you've got to pull out some triksy ****. Apparently, the card doesn't quite have an OSS driver yet.

I've tried installing it on a T40 before--I dunno how Debian will do, but somehow, I doubt it'll be able to work.

Honestly? I'd suggest using VirtualPC. That way, you can have linux on top of hardware which it will support, seeing as it's a vague baseline.

	02-08-2005 22:20									#30
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Cisco has had one on their website for over a year: http://www.cisco.com/pcgi-bin/table...net-utils-linux

The "airo" driver included with the new linux kernels is supposed to work with it.