At Mon, 25 May 2009 15:02:28 +0200 CentOS mailing list <centos at centos.org> wrote: > > Content-language: sv > > > ---Executing: recode > >-----Original Message----- > >From: centos-bounces at centos.org [mailto:centos-bounces at centos.org] On > Behalf > >Of William L. Maltby > >Sent: Monday, May 25, 2009 2:24 PM > >To: CentOS mailing list > >Subject: Re: [CentOS] Auto-installing security updates? > > > >> >Probably not the best distro for Laptops, > >> >but many people on this list are using CentOS on their laptops. > >> > >> So what's considered to be the "best" choice for laptops? I understand > >> mileage may vary and so on, but I think there might maybe be a general > >> consensus at least? > > ^^^^^^^^^ > > > >Not likely on this list. More likely, a "preponderance", maybe even a > >"majority", but I wouldn't be surprised if even those aren't achieved. > >BTW, "general" is redundant with "consensus". > > I'm sorry. I'm not a native English speaker or writer. > > Ok, so what would you guys suggest using on a laptop, if CentOS was not an > option? I read in an earlier post where somebody suggested chosing distro > based on the hardware. Suppose this hardware is a Dell Latitude a few years > old, with no built-in wifi, but rather either a Dlink DFE-680TXD or a 3com > 3CRWE154G72. CentOS will work just fine. (Probably *any* distro will work just fine.) CentOS will work with older hardware. The only hardware that will be problematical will be winmodems -- *ALL* linux distros do badly with winmodems. It is a combination of lack of documentation about what is going on inside the winmodem and a serious lack of motivation: most Linux developers have real internet connections and no longer have an interest in dialup, plus *real* (RS232-based) modems are cheap and ALL of them work out-of-the-box. From many points of view, winmodems are pointless hardware. CentOS only has these problems WRT laptops (or desktops to a lesser extent): It is an 'conservitive' distro (same can be said about all of the RHEL-based distros). This means three *main* things: 1) Support for bleeding edge hardware might be a problem. Mostly things like sound cards, WiFi NICs, and (cheap) digital cameras. Most other hardware is 'standardized' enough to work on some level (eg video cards will work at basic resolution levels, etc.) RedHat does back port critical hardware drivers (things like mass storage controller drivers (SATA, SCSI, RAID, etc.)). 2) You won't get the most recent, hot, bleeding edge version of software. You also won't get buggy software either. No great loss IMHO. 3) RHEL distros will lack most of the flashy toys (eg fancy multi-media), including flashy eye-candy. Only 1 is really a 'problem' for laptops, since fresh off the showroom floor laptops tend to have all sorts of bleeding edge hardware. With a desktop one can mix-and-match compatible PCI cards, etc. and avoid or cure these problems. One *could* just snarf a suitable kernel from FC-land if one knows what one is doing, etc. 2 & 3 can be solved with a combination of CentOSPlus, epel, rpmforge, and lots of fun with rpmbuild and srpms from FC-land (or even more fun with tar & make and related tools). I've even dropped in RPMs from Mandrake and SUSE onto my system (rpmfind.net can be quite useful at times). I've even snarfed srpms from other distros and bashed them though rpmbuild, usually after tinkering with the .spec file. -- Robert Heller -- 978-544-6933 Deepwoods Software -- Download the Model Railroad System http://www.deepsoft.com/ -- Binaries for Linux and MS-Windows heller at deepsoft.com -- http://www.deepsoft.com/ModelRailroadSystem/