[TriLUG] Good distro for laptops?

Robert Floyd r.floyd3 at verizon.net
Mon Oct 6 12:08:48 EDT 2003


I'm looking for a new distribution for my new laptop. Here's the situation:

I recently acquired an HP Pavilion ze5470. It's fairly state of the art, 
including a buit in DVD burner and built in 802.11g. Currently, I'm dual 
booting to SuSe 8.2 Professional, which is a pleasant enough distribution, 
but lacking, IMHO, in support for modern laptops. Specifically, it doesn't 
handle power management properly and its support for wireless network cards 
is poor. (I realize no Linux distribution currently supports the 802.11g in 
my machine, but SuSe also doesn't recognize my LinkSys PCMCIA card without 
hardcore tweaking of config files.

What I'm looking for is a distribution that handles ACPI, wireless cards and 
notebook type 3D graphics cards out of the box/CD. 3D support is less 
important than the other two. It should also be a distribution that can be 
figured out by someone who is reasonably computer literate but not interested 
in kernel compiles.

I would appreciate any and all insights you may have to offer.

TIA,
Robert Floyd
Durham, NC



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