whats your favourite distro and why?

okay im getting slightly pissed their is no perfect distro for my particular setup that simply works (internet and compiz-fusion functioning) without me having to get into the tedious installation methods as I am on a wireless connection.

Mandriva : nvidia cards were detected and beta nvidia X server was installed no problems. Animations were on by default, everything works including dual monitors. However it did not come by default with the broadcom driver i need to connect to the internet through my wireless adapter. Bummer.

Kubunutu: nvidia drivers not installed but detected as hardware upgrades. Wireless driver detected and installed without internet connection, restart and connected to my internet great so it works. Tried installing NVIDIa through the apt package installer. reboot computer failed to resume image. for whatever reason the xorg has to be manually edited because kubuntu wouldn't discover the newest version of the NVIDIA driver (which creates the xorg for you).

Fedora 10: Came with neither the NVIDIA driver or the broadcomm driver i need for my wireless adapter.
Also attempting to install the necessary driver manually failed because it refused to let me login as root. Apparently "wasn't listed on the 'sudoers' list" which I still have yet to find as I added myself as root by default I dont understand the problem?.

UltimateEdition: This was great because it came with every app I could ever possibly need in the near future. Blender, Gimp, Pan news reader, desklets, gmailcheck, HTML,CSS,JAVA,PHP editors, and like 20 games, wine etc. The distro I grabbed was almost 2 gig (a regular live cd being like 700mb). The probelms: Did not detect my wireless driver or my video card/driver. The package installer was annoying. I tried manually installing the drivers but bang managed to fuck up the xorg.conf again and couldn't boot.

So what am I left with? I have fedora10 running right now and im working to figure out why I cant login as root even tho their only 1 default user and I set the root pass at the same time as the user. The best for getting instant access to the net was kubuntu. The best for detecting my video drivers and doing the dirty work for me: Mandriva. The best package that came with everything I needed other than drivers: ultimate edition.

Has anyone found a distro that can automatically detect nvidia and linksys drivers install them without an internet connection? This is obviously meant to the people using dual-boots as VMware drivers or other emulators are detected automatically or by manually installing vmware tools.

What distro do you enjoy and why?

I'm running Ubuntu 8.10. Unfortunately, I can't help you with the wireless setup aspect of it. I despise wireless and only have it on my laptop which is WinXP. If I recall correctly, I had to use generic Nvidia drivers for my grfx card. I don't remember what I had to do with my mobo (Nvidia) drivers. I don't think I had any issues with my mobo.

Can't you connect to your network using a Cat5 cable and just install your wireless over a wire?

You could always go for Gentoo. Though I don't really use it myself <- Intrepid

Just gave simplyMEPIS a whirl and it detected my wireless drivers no problem. However the navigation is not ideal and my family is pissed I stole their keyboard because the bluetooth drivers even after installing what I thought was all the correct packages STILL refuses to authorize the pin number when attempting to pair my keyboard/mouse

from what I have read WLAN problems are universal and only the newest releases of certain distros contain the right drivers to get wireless internet working from first fresh boot.

the newest xorg nvidia driver is not available in the package manager which sucks because you have to do it manually and everytime I do I screw up xorg.conf and have yet figure out why thats happening. The install package creates a new one automatically why it cant do it properly is beyond me at this point tho im giving it my all to get it working so far the only distro to do it automatically was Mandriva tho I could be wrong I spent a lot of time in the terminal in the past few days :p

Chronos wrote:
Can't you connect to your network using a Cat5 cable and just install your wireless over a wire?

1 floor up , rig is heavy and annoying to move. part laziness.

sorry for dbl post oddly it wasn't letting me load the edit page in this browser.

Im familiar with a large amount of linux distro's

Try linuxMINT, Slackware, DSL

Well, DSL is solid, but not really intended for primary OS.

On my laptop, I had to install Nvidia drivers made by Ubuntu community.... worked like a charm. I'll try to locate that page, you should be able to find it on the Ubuntu forums

I have the newest driver saved on the external for both the broadcomm wireless driver and the NVIDIA newest driver but everytime I install it manually it fails to boot the process I follow:

end the x server

Code:

ubuntu:
sudo /etc/init.d/gdm stop

kubuntu
sudo /etc/init.d/kdm stop

x server stop then I navigate to where isaved the package then install from root

Code:

sudo su

(login)

cd /home/usr(me)/Documents
sh NVIDIA-Linux-x86-180.22-pkg1.run

installer opens I agree to the license I try to connect to the ftp for preconfigured kernels -connection not found so it compiles one itself. It then asks if I want to automatically configure the xorg.conf I say yes (tried no didn't help either) then it finishes I start up the x server again with:

Code:

/etc/init.d/gdm start

or /etc/init.d/kdm start

then

Code:

#reboot

system boots up I select the correct boot from the bootloader screen. kernel begins loading right after the loading screen black screen and/or goes straight to terminal.


2 more linux distros to try I have linuxMint and openSUSE burned and rdy. I'll post my impressions but frankly if they dont detect my bluetooth keyboard/mouse I can get over it, but when it wont detect my video cards or my wireless adapter it doesn't leave a good taste for that flavor of linux. I am trying to find a distro I can just have sit their on a partition and meet the majority of my needs (and to recommend it for others to do the same). Codecs, programs fancy eye candy I dont necessairly need out of the box I want it to work straight up so I can add whatever I need later without either a) having to haul my computer downstairs then back up just for an internet connection or b) spending hours trying to get a simple video driver to function flawlessly.

any other distros that might meet these small requirements?

Ok, for me personally, wireless has never worked out of the box for ANY distro I have tried. However, my experience has shown that you must be plugged into the internet the first couple of times before wireless will work. Have your PC plugged in, and THEN install all the packages.

You need to use appget

You can even just use the add application in most distro's like Ubuntu

I think you're over thinking the process, check out the distro forums and search for your issue. Broadcomm is typically the most compatable wireless card I have seen for linux, thus far.

Linux does take some configuring even out of the box, that's why most people do not use it. But, the benifits are very much there. How do I put it? I love the idea of linux and open source, but at the current time it is not practical for the common population. Once WINE is compatible with the majority of the games out on the market with little to no configuration, it will be a HUGE kick in the ass to move over to linux as a primary OS. If you intend to use linux, do not get frustrated with it. Think simple, search the forums. I can almost guarantee that others have had the same issue, and have found ways to resolve it.

I know that video and wireless drivers if not working properly, you can find community made ones on the Ubuntu forums... thats where I got my Nvidia Driver. IT WAS NOT MADE BY NVIDIA, BUT BY A COMMUNITY MEMBER. Just so I am clear.

I have no idea on the bluetooth, as I have never bothered to use it myself, other than my cell phone. But once again, search for community drivers, or blue tooth drivers on the community forums... it might help more than you think.... hope that helps

Im not sure how much in depth we will go into linux when I go to school for my BA in computer science. But, I am sure there will be a few friends made that will be all about linux. Therefore, not wanting to be the noob of linux in comparison, I am going to make an effort to use linux more often (mainly Ubuntu, DSL, and Slackware).

WINE is still very far from where it needs to be, but I have successfully gotten INS to launch inside of Ubuntu, however it would not retrieve the server listings. It wasnt a network/connection issue as far as I could tell, all I could access the internet, with no issues.

I hope you find what you are looking for in Linux, Blaze. It truely is the wave of the FUTURE, it's just not there yet. But, it's fully functional after you mess with it and get it configured to your specs.

Nvidia released a new driver a few days ago which address's what I think may have been the problem causing it to crash on reboot after installing the driver.

NVIDIA-Linux-x86-180.51-pkg1:

Code:

· Repaired an issue that crashed the X server
· Repaired some power management resume/suspend issues with DisplayPort;
· Repaired a VDPAU issue that caused inaccurate decoding of H.264 video streams on G86, G84, G94, G92, G96 and GT200 cards;
· Repaired an issue with the VGA fonts. The fonts could not be saved or restored on GeForce 8 and newer cards;
· Repaired an issue that caused inaccurate moving of windows running OpenGL applications on GeForce 8 and newer cards;
· Repaired various performance issues with the memory management, especially when running a composite manager;
· Repaired various hangs or crashes on GeForce 9 and newer cards;
· Repaired a rendering issue in OpenGL 16-bit RGB Workstation Overlay;
· Repaired a dual-monitor issue that failed to detect the secondary device when the X server was started after a cold boot;
· Updated nvidia-bug-report.sh to output archived logs.

http://news.softpedia.com/news/New-Nvidia-Video-Drivers-for-Linux-Bring-Support-for-Newer-Cards-109885.shtml

I'll test it tomorrow im not in the mood to crash another OS.

Jaunty Jackalope 9.04 Ubuntu is excellent! zero complaints. I recommend everyone try it!

I just downloaded the new Ubuntu release

http://lifehacker.com/5227309/top-10-ubuntu-downloads

Yakuake, Handbrake, Screenlets, ubuntuTweak, songbird, gnome do All excellent apps!

Blender, Gimp, bluefish editor, inkscape all must haves!!

install LAMP (linux,apache, mysql, php) with sudo tasksel very simple to get everything setup for web development.

maybe this requires a new topic... best linux apps?