Choose the right distro

Ok, so by now you all know that I favor Ubuntu as a distro. However, there may be times when another distro would work better for me…say, I’m installing it on a PII 300 or something. Maybe I have other constraints. Which distribution would I choose then?

I ran across an interesting “test” to determine which Linux distro I should install. It’s called ….drum roll……

Linux Distribution Chooser

It asks quite a few questions ranging from technical knowledge to age of hardware. After you answer them, you get a number of results to choose from. I only took the test once and I was recommended Debian and Ubuntu

http://www.zegeniestudios.net/ldc/index.php

Dale

Edgy on a T23

So I compiled a Thinkpad T23 from a few non working laptops and ended up with a pretty nice system 1.13ghz PIII, 512mb of RAM, DVD ROM…It will make a nice system for our 11 yr old daughter.

I installed XP on it and was having some problems with updates for whatever reason and you know I don’t need much of an excuse to install Linux on anything, so I wanted to find out how well it would run Ubuntu Edgy (6.10).

After about 30 minutes, I had it up and running. I’m writing this post on it as a matter of fact. I think this will be a fine Linux laptop. The installer picked up all the hardware including my DLink wireless network card. Obviously, it won’t do any Beryl fanciness, but it should be a great system.

On a side note, I miss my T40, from my last job, so much, that I found one on ebay and am anxiously awaiting its arrival.

Dale

Network Manager Applet Tips

I know, I know…it’s been a while. I switched jobs and don’t have my T40 anymore. I was given a Dell Latitude D600 at my new job. This job is great..not a single windows server in the building I was setting up the network manager applet and couldn’t get it to see my wireless interface. It would just say “no connection” After poking around the Google for a bit, I ran across the solution.

It appears that if you’ve already accessed an access point, the nm-applet won’t see your wireless interface. The solution? Edit /etc/network/interfaces. Find the section that has the line with your access point followed by your wep key, if applicable, and delete them…yep just whack em. Right click on the nm-applet icon and disable networking. Right click on it again, enable networking, and you should be set.

I used automatix2 to install the networ manager, but you can also use apt….I think it’s just apt-get install network-manager but someone correct me if I’m wrong