Linux Distro : Search and Instal

[Reddox]

Morning ladies and gentleman !

I've recently been looking to put a laptop on a linux distro, but I don't follow news about them and have all the options in mind

Balance : Fast, reasonably easy to operate.

From what I've tested, the distros don't detect the network card, and since the driver seems to exist only in .exe, that could be a trouble you might be able to fix.

[Eigenvektor]

How familiar are you with Linux? Ubuntu is probably the easiest to get into for inexperienced users.

 

Since you mentioned a notebook and driver issues you should probably mention the particular model of laptop and network card, otherwise people can't exactly tell you whether this is supported and how.

[pythonmegapixel]

Linux not detecting the network card is, by and large, going to be a Linux thing, not a distro-specific thing unfortunately.

[Reddox]

1 minute ago, pythonmegapixel said:

Linux not detecting the network card is, by and large, going to be a Linux thing, not a distro-specific thing unfortunately.

I figured that yeah, would you still have something in mind, and I'll figure out how to install the driver later (I guess Wine should work once I've installed the OS)

[MoJoMax]

2 hours ago, Reddox said:

I figured that yeah, would you still have something in mind, and I'll figure out how to install the driver later (I guess Wine should work once I've installed the OS)

Try Linux Mint it's easy to use

[C2dan88]

2 hours ago, Reddox said:

and I'll figure out how to install the driver later (I guess Wine should work once I've installed the OS)

No you cannot use wine for installing drivers.  Drivers built for windows is not the same for linux

[Reddox]

1 hour ago, C2dan88 said:

No you cannot use wine for installing drivers.  Drivers built for windows is not the same for linux

I'll look that up thx

[Reddox]

1 hour ago, C2dan88 said:

No you cannot use wine for installing drivers.  Drivers built for windows is not the same for linux

Did not know that thx !

[LogicalDrm]

-> Moved to Linux, macOS and Everything Not-Windows

[Reddox]

17 hours ago, Eigenvektor said:

How familiar are you with Linux? Ubuntu is probably the easiest to get into for inexperienced users.

 

Since you mentioned a notebook and driver issues you should probably mention the particular model of laptop and network card, otherwise people can't exactly tell you whether this is supported and how.

Not that familiar, used a ubuuntu distro for a while.

This laptop is a L200HA (Asus - Vivobook)

Wireless controler : AzureWave AW-CB231NF (M.2) ; It is recognized in some distros (Mint) but not in others

[Eigenvektor]

5 hours ago, Reddox said:

Wireless controler : AzureWave AW-CB231NF (M.2) ; It is recognized in some distros (Mint) but not in others

Not familiar with it, unfortunately. Maybe someone else can provide more info. However, I was able to find this: https://deviwiki.com/wiki/AzureWave_AW-CB231NF

 

According to the page, it probably uses the driver "ath10k" which has been in the Linux kernel since version 4.4 (Jan 2016). Ubuntu 20.10 is on kernel version 5.8, so I would expect it to work out of the box. It's possible some distributions don't include that driver in their kernel by default, or maybe have it blacklisted due to known issues.

 

So I'd probably try some recent version of Ubuntu (or a derived distribution like Mint, PopOS, …) and see if it works.

 

Most modern distributions should include drivers as "kernel modules" meaning they aren't compiled into the kernel itself and instead are available as modules that can be loaded at runtime as needed. Assuming ath10k is indeed the correct driver you could check if it is available as a kernel module like this:

sudo find /lib/modules/$(uname -r)/kernel/ -name '*' | grep ath10

You can find the list of loaded modules with "sudo lsmod" and try to enable a module with "sudo modprope <name>"

[TorC]

". . . laptop on a linux distro" ?

 

See https://forum.peppermintos.com/index.php?topic=7871.0

 

If peppermint doesn't play well on this laptop, neither will lubuntu.

And it certainly will not run Wine to anyone's satisfaction, if that's what OP wants.

[Reddox]

2 hours ago, Eigenvektor said:

Not familiar with it, unfortunately. Maybe someone else can provide more info. However, I was able to find this: https://deviwiki.com/wiki/AzureWave_AW-CB231NF

 

According to the page, it probably uses the driver "ath10k" which has been in the Linux kernel since version 4.4 (Jan 2016). Ubuntu 20.10 is on kernel version 5.8, so I would expect it to work out of the box. It's possible some distributions don't include that driver in their kernel by default, or maybe have it blacklisted due to known issues.

 

So I'd probably try some recent version of Ubuntu (or a derived distribution like Mint, PopOS, …) and see if it works.

 

Most modern distributions should include drivers as "kernel modules" meaning they aren't compiled into the kernel itself and instead are available as modules that can be loaded at runtime as needed. Assuming ath10k is indeed the correct driver you could check if it is available as a kernel module like this:

sudo find /lib/modules/$(uname -r)/kernel/ -name '*' | grep ath10

You can find the list of loaded modules with "sudo lsmod" and try to enable a module with "sudo modprope <name>"

I'll try that out thx

[Reddox]

1 hour ago, TorC said:

". . . laptop on a linux distro" ?

 

See https://forum.peppermintos.com/index.php?topic=7871.0

 

If peppermint doesn't play well on this laptop, neither will lubuntu.

And it certainly will not run Wine to anyone's satisfaction, if that's what OP wants.

Actually does pretty well on most OS's, just trying to figure out the best option

[TorC]

1.9 GHz Atom with 2GB RAM?

Bodhi

antiX

Check them out.  Both have lower RAM requirements for good perfomance.

 

"Only some 3D games with very low demands are playable with these cards."

 

Best wishes!