[linux-laptop] What distro is best for easy Laptop installation?

[John Jason Jordan]

On Wed, 26 Apr 2006 12:20:59 -0600
"Dark Shadow" <shadowofdarkness at gmail.com> dijo:

> One distro that would be nice to know about is Ubuntu as the only
> thing I know about it is that during my hours of googling for hardware
> compatability is that it was mentioned specifically as a successful
> install.

I am using Ubuntu-64 Breezy on my Compaq R3240 laptop. I love everything about it. Awesomely easy to install -- it autodetected everything except the wifi -- which I later got running with ndiswrapper.

However, you did not say what laptop you are going to put Linux on. If you haven't bought the laptop yet, then researching which ones work well with Linux is the first step. For example, get one with nVidia graphics, not ATI, and choose a wireless chip that doesn't require ndiswrapper, among other issues.

> I prefer light distros that are not resource hungry.

The more a distro autodetects things and the easier it is to install, the more resource hungry it is going to be. However, today's laptops have enough horsepower that a resource hungry distro is not as big a problem as a lot of people think it is.