On Thu, 2006-03-09 at 15:11 +0000, Keith Watson wrote:
From: Simon Royal Sent: 09 March 2006 14:52
Hi
I have posted a few posting for opinions on some distributions of Linux and have still not come to any conclusions.
What is the best Linux out there in terms of user interface, compatibility with 3 party hardware and general range of software available.
I know more and more software developers and producing linux versions of their software but I want to run Linux on a laptop with wireless internet, any suggestions please.
My personal favourite is the latest release of Ubuntu (5.10 - Breezy Badger). I've found that it seems to support everything pretty much out of the box and seems to be good at recognising laptop h/w.
I'll second the Ubuntu recommendation, has worked pretty much 100% on any hardware I have tried it on. SuSE used to be my favourite (and still is pretty good if you want a point and click, just works sort of distribution) I keep meaning to pop SuSE/Novell on a VM to give it a whirl..my last SuSE installation was 9.1 (with upgraded KDE packages)
I haven't tried the next release (6.04 Dapper Drake) so can't say how much improvement there's been between it and 5.10, but I found 5.10 to be a lot better then the previous Warty Warthog release and, hopefully, Dapper will improve on 5.10 as much.
Personally if Simon is new to linux...or still at the beginner stages of the Linux learning curve then I would recommend avoiding Dapper until it is released in April..I moved over to Breezy a bit early and there was a lot of (expected) brokenness and almost daily package updates.
Anyway with Ubuntu distribution upgrades being so easy there is no issue with starting with Breezy and upgrading to Dapper when it is "ready"