suggestions for a particular laptop

[paradive]

my friend has a dell inspiron 3500 that's throwing VFAT errors.
a clean install is in order.

i've been googling and the results are....
*buntu: prolly not.
red hat: maybe.
freebsd: probably.

he's an idiot. i wanna keep it as user friendly as possible.

one of my questions is... i haven't been geeking out with freebsd in about a decade (and, i'm disabled now; can only type with one hand so i don't type well and my memory is SHOT. i have no idea which conf. file applies to what, commands, etc.)
desktopbsd? how painless is the install for it?

*buntu and red hat... the google results i was reading were pretty archived. perhaps the kernel's gotten more hardware compatibility since?

so....... suggestions?

p.s. he's just gonna use it for listening to music (so sound card compatibility's a must), email & surfing.

[jayd512]

he's an idiot.

Don't sugar-coat it... just tell us how it is
That said, Ubuntu or Mint would be my first choices. Very easy to use and setup.
Most hardware is supported out-of-the-box, so you should be set there.
Running a Live session first will help confirm that before going through an actual install.
I have Ubuntu 10.04 installed in one of my partitions, and i don't recall needing to install any extra drivers for anything.

[paradive]

Don't sugar-coat it... just tell us how it is
That said, Ubuntu or Mint would be my first choices. Very easy to use and setup.
Most hardware is supported out-of-the-box, so you should be set there.
Running a Live session first will help confirm that before going through an actual install.
I have Ubuntu 10.04 installed in one of my partitions, and i don't recall needing to install any extra drivers for anything.

yeah, i'd love ubuntu, but i heard of a lot of problems with the sound card. can you confirm or deny this?

[jayd512]

If he's got a fairly exotic card, then there may be issues. But the same could be said about Windows.
Ubuntu (and Mint, for that matter) have excellent hardware detection.
Like I said, I run Ubuntu and I stream audio, watch movies and play games. Audio is quite crisp, clear with no jitter.

Best way to find out, though, download it and try it. You can find it here: Download | Ubuntu
Try the live session first. If all works there, you're golden, and can move on to the installation.

[paradive]

If he's got a fairly exotic card, then there may be issues. But the same could be said about Windows.
Ubuntu (and Mint, for that matter) have excellent hardware detection.
Like I said, I run Ubuntu and I stream audio, watch movies and play games. Audio is quite crisp, clear with no jitter.

Best way to find out, though, download it and try it. You can find it here: ubuntu
Try the live session first. If all works there, you're golden, and can move on to the installation.

it's the stock card - NeoMagic NM3298.

thing is, i don't have it on me. i wanna make sure i can get it working, then he's gonna mail it to me. =/

[jayd512]

Do you know the brand and model of the laptop?

[paradive]

Do you know the brand and model of the laptop?

as i mentioned in the original post, dell inspiron 3500.

[jayd512]

Sorry... missed that
The RAM looks like it would be the main limiting factor.
With that in mind, perhaps Lubuntu would be more appropriate.
You may also want to take a look at antiX or Mepis.

Any one of those should work pretty well for what you need.

[paradive]

my friend has a dell inspiron 3500 that's throwing VFAT errors.
a clean install is in order.

i've been googling and the results are....
*buntu: prolly not.
red hat: maybe.
freebsd: probably.

he's an idiot. i wanna keep it as user friendly as possible.

one of my questions is... i haven't been geeking out with freebsd in about a decade (and, i'm disabled now; can only type with one hand so i don't type well and my memory is SHOT. i have no idea which conf. file applies to what, commands, etc.)
desktopbsd? how painless is the install for it?

*buntu and red hat... the google results i was reading were pretty archived. perhaps the kernel's gotten more hardware compatibility since?

so....... suggestions?

p.s. he's just gonna use it for listening to music (so sound card compatibility's a must), email & surfing.

i meant desktop bsd.