[maltb]

Hi all,

I just bought a laptop, it's nothing that great, just something that I have to for college, surfing the net, essays, stuff like that. It has a Semperon 2600 cpu (socket 754) and 256mb ram, the cpu is upgradable to the higher Semperon cpu's and also the AMD Turion cpu's which I found pretty neat about this particular laptop I bought. That way if I ever need anymore processing power I do have the ability to upgrade without having to buy another laptop.

I was tryign to get some advice on which Linux distro to use that wouldn't hog all my resources/processing power, ect....and I got a few responces from others saying to go with Ubuntu 5.10, so I got a copy of it and will more than likely use this as my OS, since I'm not sure what other Linux distro would be as good or better than this one?

I'd like to use msn messenger the laptop, would I still be able to use msn messenger when using a Linux OS, and will it be difficult with Ubuntu 5.10 to set up wifi access, where I work a buddy of mine has a Dell laptop running Win XP Pro, and his laptop automatically detects the wifi signal at work so during breaks he uses there service to access the internet, I'm hoping that with a Linux OS such as the one I recently got and intend to put on the laptop that it will be easy to set up and detect wifi access when I'm at work or else where?

Any other advice or feedback please feel free to reply, hopefully I can get some responces from others who know more, thank you.

[Tyler1989]

You can use GAIM which supports MSN Messenger I think. The main OS's I recommend though are Fedora, Mandriva, and SuSe.

[jakec]

Mandriva, supports MSN messenger though 'Gaim' I think:

you can D/L it here:

http://frontal2.mandriva.com/en/downloads/mirrors

To find A version that is right for you

Jake

[dms0813]

mandriva would work

[macdude425]

Yes, it would. I don't recommend Ubuntu; I've had lots of problems with it, mainly with X11.

[Nitestick]

gaim is far superior to msn messenger and can access the .net network. i would reccomend debian perhaps. aMSN is another msn messenger clone. if you use debian you can use app-get to install it with "app-get install amsn" or "app-get install aMSN" i'm not sure if its case sensitive.

[void]

Read around about the different distros and decide which is for you. I use Ubuntu 5.10 on a laptop, and duel boot XP. Its a very easy install and quick to setup IMO, so I'd recommend Ubuntu. It is Debian based and has apt-get to get the packages from the repositories. I'm not sure about the wireless, but you can always get help at the ubuntu forums .here.

[Qiranworms]

Originally posted by nitestick
if you use debian you can use app-get to install it with "app-get install amsn" or "app-get install aMSN" i'm not sure if its case sensitive.

Almost. It's

apt-get install

not

app-get install

(APT stands for Advanced Package Tool)