[CentOS] Recommendation for a Linux alternative to Centos - ATH9K disaster

[Jerry Franz]

On 01/25/2011 09:49 AM, Always Learning wrote:
> I persuaded a reluctant friend to buy a new computer. I enthusiastically
> extolled the joys and benefits of Centos and promised to install it on
> his new machine - dual booting with Micro$oft Windoze 7.
[...]

For a new laptop your best hope for a successful native install is 
probably Ubuntu 10.10. Laptops in particular are difficult platforms for 
hardware support and CentOS5 is not 'cutting edge'. If you want CentOS 
on it to work well, you will probably need to wait for CentOS6 - which 
could be a month or two.

An alternative I've used is to install VMware Workstation on top of 
Windows and install Linux into a VM. Running fullscreen the practical 
difference is nil. Then you by and large get the laptop hardware support 
gratis from the windows layer including things like wireless and video 
drivers drivers.

-- 
Benjamin Franz