What Linux distro would be best for a Sony PCG-FX310.

[alfredo]

It's a laptop.


I've never run Linux on Intel. All my experience is on the PPC chip.

A friend is giving me a free laptop.

[hobbit709]

1. Shouldn't be a problem

You might try a Live CD first of whatever distro you want to use.

[alfredo]

2. I was a big fan of YellowDog Linux and it is based on

Redhat. I'd prefer using something that uses a Debian style package manager. I've done my time in RPM hell and would rather type apt-get, than look all over for dependencies. I've used Gentoo Live CD on my Mac and it was pretty good.

[longship]

3. Some recommendations.

First, use "The Google" ;-) Search for "fx310 linux" or "pcg-fx310 linux" and see if you can find a report on drivers and distributions which work well. If this isn't a brand new machine it's likely that somebody has gotten stuff working.

Second, if you are a Linux geek, you might want to try Gentoo Linux, which is the absolutely most configurable Linux in the business. Yes, Gentoo does things differently, and yes, Gentoo has a steep learning curve. But Gentoo also has the best technical documentation of any distribution and a huge repository of software and drivers. If you can't get it working with Gentoo, you can't get it working with *any* Linux.

Warnings about Gentoo:

* Gentoo installs take time and are substantially manually done, step-by-step, command-line command by command-line command. All programs are compiled from source code upon install and this takes a while, sometimes days (on slower machines). The benefits are awesome because you get a very fast, working system every time.

* Once you switch to Gentoo, you might be spoiled. Its docs and support forums are the absolute tops in the industry. Maintenance becomes trivial because you'll have a new, deep understanding of how your Linux computer operates. But many have called the Gentoo learning curve, steep. They are probably correct.

* Gentoo has its own package management tools. It's not RPM; it's not DEB. The package is called "Portage" and it is a thing of elegant wonder. You can install RPMs and DEBs if you want, but you won't want to. However, the Portage repository is absolutely *huge*. Very few programs are missing.

[alfredo]

4. I've used Portage on my Mac. It's pretty good.

Not sure what has happened to the project, the Gentoo.org link times out.

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

5. I would recommend Mandriva 2007.

It's got surprisingly good hardware support and a very good installation program. On the other hand, it is a laptop and they are different animals from desktops. Expect some things to not work and need extra configuration. Laptop manufacturers do a lot of weird things and they don't openly document them. Some will tell you they don't support Linux.