I'm looking for a good distro to use on my laptop. After using Slackware and then all the user-friendly ones like Mandrake, Fedora, etc., I gave Ubuntu a try because I heard it worked with Alps touchpads. Well, that turned out to be false (at least in my case.) Ubuntu also appears to be very finnicky on my system so I am looking for a new distro to try. However, I was very impressed with apt-get and would like to stick with a Debian-based distro. I want a distro that is:

- Easy to install (doesn't use the "here's a list of 1,000's and 1,000's of packages - take a random guess at what you think you might need" approach) but doesn't install a lot of unnecessary software 90% of people will never use.

- Supports an Alps touchpad "out of the box." Generic PS/2 mouse support hasn't worked for me once and configuring the Synaptics driver to work with an Alps touchpad can be a real pain.

- Well-configured out of the box. I gave Ubuntu a try but had trouble with my ethernet and USB mouse (since it won't work with my touchpad) stopping randomly. And the fact that it wouldn't (auto-)mount my USB flash drive and Fat32 hard drive partition didn't improve my opinion any.

- Uses Gnome as the defaut manager.

- A net installer isn't necessary but would be nice. Through all the trial and error of trying to find a distro I really like, I have ended up with a mountain of CD's and DVD's that are going to waste - about 30 or so discs if I had to guess.

I know I might be asking for a lot but if anyone knows a of a good distribution that meets my needs, I would love to hear about it. I would ask for support for my integrated WiFi card too but it is a Broadcom "B/G" card so I know that the chances of that are next to nothing (without using NdisWrapper that is.)

-Brandon

Try Mepis!

I'll give it a try. I'm downloading it right now actually. But, I do have a concern. The web site mentions KDE and not Gnome. My laptop only has 256 MB of RAM and half of that is used up by the system itself when running KDE (or at least it did under Mandrake 10.1.) Does it come with Gnome too? If not, I could always just install it. But even then, would the system stll work well with Gnome? It seems like every distro really favors either Gnome or KDE and you can use the other but you will be missing out to a certain extent.

Also, is Mepis made to be a live CD like Knoppix? At this point I don't think it would stop me from using it but I always wonder about using a distribution that is made to be a live CD. There is something about running off of one CD and auto-configuring from scratch at every boot that makes me doubt things. Maybe that's a silly thing to think but...

Doesn't debian itself work? Have you tried sarge (cause of the installer)? Cause I also have a laptop and my touchpad (a synaptics) works fine with it.

I tried it a while back when I was first starting out with Linux and was turned off by the massive list of packages in the "addition software" part of the installation. I had no clue which ones I needed and which one I didn't. Even now, with a fair bit of Linux experience, I still probably wouldn't know exactly what I need. Maybe I'll give it a second try though.

And do you know what company made your touchpad? The one in my laptop is an Alps touchpad which doesn't actually have its own driver. Synaptics (which is made for a different brand of touchpad) will work but requires a fair bit of tinkering.

Have you tried Kanotix? I don't have a laptop and I couldn't tell you whether it offers support for your specific hardware, but I know some people have been pleasantly suprised. It is based on Debian, and it is a live CD with an option of install to HD if you like, just like Mepis. But unlike Mepis (which uses a mixture of unstable and testing and who knows what else), Kanotix is supposed to be pure Debian Unstable - so it is easy to keep up to date using Debian repositories.
Also, Libranet 3.0 is just around the corner and it might be worth trying when it comes out. Libranet 2.7 is a bit old now, but it was a very solid system.
Finally, you could try to stick with Ubuntu, and see if you can get it to work. If you tried Warty and it came close to what you wanted, you might want to see how the next release (Hoary) is shaping up...

PS. There is absolutely no problem with running KDE in 256mb of RAM!

download mepis 2005.b04 i think it is, it has gnome. i have downloaded simply mepis, and then added gnome , but the download was pure debian gnome, and when i booted into gnome on simply, it had an error message - i posted it in the debian forum, all i did was delete the error message, and everything seemed to work. kind of wierd-having mepis and debian on the same distro.

MEPIS!!!!

im using pro mepis here :-)

i just installed debian on my 700m (dell laptop) and the touchpad worked fine, i have a huge list of other problems like it freezing every time i close the screen, wireless issues, resolution problems (700m is 1280x800), and im sure there are more, so for this reason (mainly the freezing, i think i could figure out the rest with some effort) i am also looking for a new distro, im pretty new to linux so i would like things to be somewhat easy to set up, but i tried suse 9.2 (very easy setup) and it seemed to be just as slow as windows, so i think i want something more slimmed down. but if your biggest issue is the touch pad, debian worked for mine, i think i have the same wants out of an os as you posted, so if you find something you really like, post it and ill try it out.

Libranet. I'm using 2.8.2 on my notebook and it recognized and configured my ethernet card right off without any input from me at all.

The only hardware it didn't recognize was the monitor, which was a breeze to configure.

I've tried several that seem to work well:

Ubuntu:
Simple, single CD install (text-based menus) and no package selection. It includes only the basic things you need for a simple desktop oriented configuration (no development tools, servers, etc.), but you can get those from the Ubuntu and Debian repositories if you want them. If you choose Ubuntu make sure to check out the very excellent beginners guide at UbuntuGuide.org

Progeny Debian:
My personal favorite. The installer is based on Red Hat's Anaconda, so setup is a no-brainer. It comes preloaded with a ton of development tools (Java, Mono, the latest Perl, Python, PHP, etc.) as well as the newest versions of Apache, MySQL, and PostgreSQL. Check it out at ComponentizedLinux.org

Libranet is OK too, but they haven't had a new release in a while. You're probably better off with one of the above.

Good Luck! Let us know what you decide

Just curious...what the heck is Libranet 2.8.2? I run 2.8.1 on my laptop (toshiba...64MB...2MBvideo...cardbus modem + ethernet)....runs great. Stripped down the packages, recompiled the kernel (got rid of a lot of junk) and learned to configure IceME and I'm really pleased.

Kanotix , Ubuntu are working good in my laptop
I prefer Kano though and Ubuntu Hoary is what Im talking about, never liked Warty

You can try my remastered distro. I think it would work well for you, although it doesn't have gnome. I put a minimal kde with the most popular net apps out f the box. I made it to be lean and fast, fully upgradable but without all the unneeded crap that no one ever uses. It's debian/knoppix/feather based and synaptic is included so you can install whatever you want. I don't know about your touchpad but I'd say if it works in knoppix, it'll work with mine. I only have 3 test machines.

Check it out

featherweight.dangerousron.com

Ron

I am sure Mepis and Ubuntu work fine on laptops.