[NBLUG/talk] install fest

[Christopher Wagner]

I'll second that, Ubuntu is highly recommended for inexperienced users..
I'm running Ubuntu 6.10 on my Toshiba laptop (granted, it's a couple 
years old) and everything worked out of the box (maybe not perfectly, 
but it worked). That includes Atheros wireless, accelerated video, 
built-in sound, hibernation, etc..

I use grip or Sound Juicer for CD ripping, VLC for video playback, xmms 
or RhythmBox for music playback, AcidRIP or Thoggen for DVD ripping, k3b 
or GnomeBaker (I run these two as root), for DVD creation I've been 
playing with DeVeDe but haven't had a lot of success yet.

I've had a little bit of experience getting Broadcom wireless chipsets 
to work under Linux. I did this a couple of times on Dell laptops. What 
I did was download the firmware (a .bin file, if I recall) for my 
particular chipset from a site (which conveniently had a Debian/Ubuntu 
package), install the package, modify one or two lines in a config line, 
then load a kernel module, and voila. I wish I could remember the site, 
I had it bookmarked, but it got lost amidst the background noise awhile 
back. I'll poke around a bit and see if I can't find the site again.

- Chris

Troy Arnold wrote:
> On Tue, Mar 06, 2007 at 01:25:28PM -0700, dogstar wrote:
>   
>> Thanks for the suggestions, Troy.  My understanding from talking with the
>> Debian booth guys, is that I need a newer version of the kernel to
>> support the Broadcom built-in wireless on my HP laptop.  I have been
>> resigned to waiting until next year or whenever the newer kernel will be
>> in the distros.  Is there another way?
>>     
>
> You might be happier with one of the ubuntu variants.  They're friendlier
> than straight Debian and have some nice tools for people that are new to
> Linux, while not handicapping experienced users.  
>
> There's: 
> ubuntu, based on the Gnome desktop
> kubuntu, based on the KDE desktop
> xubuntu, based on the more lightweight (but still quite good) xfce
>
> There are links to each at http://www.ubuntu.com/
> and you can switch at any time simply by installing the appropriate 
> gnome-desktop, kde-desktop, or xfce-desktop meta-package.
>
> Note, that I don't actually know if your wireless is supported in the
> ubuntu kernel.  We could figure that out by asking in #ubuntu on IRC or
> checking out the *buntu wiki's
>
> -t
>
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