[SOLVED] I need advice on picking a new Distro

[RobinVossen]

Hello all,
Its been a long time since I've been here and I see a lot has changed.

I know normally these kinds of posts/questions are frowned upon.
Though I really need a little bit of advice on picking a new disti for me.

I am used to using Gentoo for about 2 years. Then I got annoyed with the Linker Errors and the time Compiling took. Then I switched to Arch. And I still love it.
Though I can't seem to setup all my hardware with it without googling for ages or doing something 'Hacky'.

Now I need to reinstall my desktop. And I really want a new Linux Distri that has support for my hardware.. I remember that there was a distro that almost had a flawless support for all hardware.. and it had hardly any software pre-installed.

This is exactly what I am looking for.
I want to be able to easily install my system. I love configuring it with nano and just setup / tweak all the configs. Not a problem. And Install everything using cli. I dont want any software I wont use on my system. (see Ubuntu..)

So, big support for hardware. Little preinstalled software.. Advance installer.

Any Tips?

Thanks

Robin

[computerophil]

Hello all,
Its been a long time since I've been here and I see a lot has changed.

Hallo again,nice you returned.

Now I need to reinstall my desktop. And I really want a new Linux Distri that has support for my hardware.. I remember that there was a distro that almost had a flawless support for all hardware.. and it had hardly any software pre-installed.

Best way to find what suites you by checking various distros via LiveCD

This is exactly what I am looking for.
I want to be able to easily install my system. I love configuring it with nano and just setup / tweak all the configs. Not a problem. And Install everything using cli. I dont want any software I wont use on my system. (see Ubuntu..)

Not easy, really, the once I know best are those which do everything and more as
Sabayon, Mandriva, OpenMamba,..

Nevertheless I think OpenMamba is worth to have a look at.
I like Puppy also (even this one extremely minimalistic does everything but there exist barebones.)

Good luck

[RobinVossen]

Hello,

Thanks for your Quick reply.
Though, I think that Sabayon, Mandriva and OpenMamba all come with to much overkill apps on it.

The best for me is that after the install I don't even have X yet
So, I am a bit in the area of Slackware/Debian/Gentoo/Arch/Slax and Lunar.

Though, I cant be asked with the Driver hacking.. and getting my hardware to work.

There was a distro somewhere, though I can't recall what it was called.
That was really slimmed down, and just had a lot of Hardware support.

Thanks
Robin

[computerophil]

Hello,

Thanks for your Quick reply.
Though, I think that Sabayon, Mandriva and OpenMamba all come with to much overkill apps on it.

That's why I said: Not easy, really, the once I know best are those who do everything and more as
Sabayon, Mandriva, OpenMamba,..
(sorry, it should have been which )


..and why I reccomended the barebones of Puppy

The best for me is that after the install I don't even have X yet
So, I am a bit in the area of Slackware/Debian/Gentoo/Arch/Slax and Lunar.

I do like SLAX which is very modular but I didn't find an installer yet.

Though, I cant be asked with the Driver hacking.. and getting my hardware to work.

There was a distro somewhere, though I can't recall what it was called.
That was really slimmed down, and just had a lot of Hardware support.

Thanks
Robin

Maybe it helps you to look at my HomePage (it is in German, sorry)
there are many distros in a tabular overview ( language, main programs, derivate of, gui, ...
So maybe passing a bit through you remember which distro was the one you've forgotten.

[reed9]

These days distros are mostly comparable when it comes to hardware support. The main differences come between distros that take a hard line against non-free drivers and firmware, such as Debian and Fedora, vs distros that are more lenient, such as Linux Mint or Mandriva.

From my experience, Arch is at least as good at supporting hardware as any other distro, and leans toward the lenient end of the spectrum, since they make installation of non-free software easy for the end-user.

Is there a specific hardware problem you've been experiencing?

Otherwise, if you want a minimum install to build on, I would look to doing a debian net-install, or Ubuntu puts out a minimal installation disk as well. (Or if you want more current packages, and a rolling release like Arch, you might look to Sidux.)

[RobinVossen]

Well the hardware I am having trouble with are my wifi-Card (bcm43xx) I can get it to work. But It's a ***** since its the only way for this box to get an inet connection. And the card isn't supported during the install which makes a inet install extremely difficult.. And my Soundcard. Which is a Creative X-Fi Xtreme Audio I know about Creative Linux Sound Card Support though I just couldnt get it to work.
I really love Arch. Its on my Laptop and I love every bit about it.
I also based my Project at Work on it and Installed a bunch of servers with Arch.

If arch wont work I'll think Ill take Debian.. Ill have a look at this sidux you've said..

Or, Ill downl. Arch and try arch again with the new installer CD.

Cheers,
Robin

[reed9]

I have a broadcom card on my netbook and an older laptop, and many distros still have trouble supporting it.

For my netbook, the broadcom-wl driver works with it just dandy. This driver is included now in some distros. I think the latest Ubuntu has it. Unfortunately, the older laptop's card is not supported by the wl driver, so I use b43-fwcutter to extract the firmware needed for the b43 driver included in the linux kernel. It's really not that troublesome to do.

The easiest thing is if you can get a wired connection for a couple of minutes to download the broadcom-wl driver from the AUR. Otherwise, you can download all the files from another computer, transfer them over with a USB drive, and then build it on your Arch box.

You can of course do something similar with the broadcom firmware as well. There's an option to include b43-fwcutter during install, and then you just need to get the windows xp drivers to extract the firmware.

The creative x-fi I have no experience with, I'm afraid. Did you try this driver?

[MikeTbob]

I'd say give LinuxMint 7 a try, I think it has the best hardware support among many good Distros. You'll have to slim it down yourself but this is not hard to accomplish. I would be willing to be that it will detect and configure the Wifi card. I know Mint doesn't sound like much but it is good. I use it myself along with Gentoo. I mostly use Mint 7 for installing programs really fast when I don't feel like waiting for Gentoo to compile it. Plus it has more multimedia codecs than you can shake a stick at.

[RobinVossen]

I tried arch again, and it was to much hassle for my desktop.
I tried Mint, the install/liveCD failed. It didnt even boot.

Though then I saw the Install_From_Windows function.
Tried that, and everything worked like a charm.
However it would require a hell of a lot of cleaningup. (eg removing themes/compiz) It will be a lot less work then installing Arch.

In going to run Mint for a little while ^^

Thanks

Cheers,
Robin

[robertoprs]

Try Crux and xPUD