[OFB Cafe] New Laptop... A Report

[saki]

Donald Spoon wrote:
> 
> I also grabbed the latest KUBUNTU iso image and burned a CD.  This iso 
> has KDE 4 on it.  Once I re-rigged my BIOS to boot from the CD, I put in 
> the KUBUNTU CD and tried the live disc option. which was the first one 
> on the list.  Amazingly, it booted the first try and even discovered the 
> wireless WIFI chipset, wireless mouse, audio, and proper Xorg screen 
> driver!  In short, KUBUNTU "just worked" on this new machine!  I was 
> especially amazed at it discovered the wireless WIFI chipset (which 
> supports the draft N spec too).  All I had to do was supply a few config 
> items, like which AP I wanted to connect to and the WEP key in order to 
> connect to my home Lan!  I did a little digging and found out the 
> included chipset was an Intel Wireless Link 5100, and Intel has 
> published drivers for it.  In fact Intel these drivers are now 
> incorporated in the new Linux Kernels!  (2.6.25 and higher I think)!  
> Intel seems to be aggressively supporting Linux.   The live disc feature 
> is really neat, in that it let me see if I was going to have any 
> hardware problems before I actually changed anything up.  It now seems 
> that I can safely put Ubuntu or Kubuntu or probably Debian Lenny on this 
> computer without having any major hassles!  
> 

Hi, Don,

Yes, Kubuntu and Ubuntu 8 are good- I use the latter on my oldish 
laptop, and, as you say, "It just works". I'm using it now for 
distribution to anyone I can persuade to try it.

BTW I have tried the latest Open SuSE 11 which did not give the same 
easy and comprehensive install, particularly on the wireless side. This 
also goes for Mandriva 2009 and Fedora 10, but YMMV

On my main box I have Debian Lennny and I have no problems with that 
either (same with my lap-top).

Terence