[aaronkupen]

I've been using Windows for quite some time, and Im eager to learn another operating system. I've heard about unix and I would like to try it out. Considering I have no experience with other os's i realize it will be hard to learn but im willing to try. Now to my question... Where can I get unix?

[macdude425]

Short answer: You can't.

Long answer: UNIX, the operating system, is not freely downloadable. It is owned by the SCO Group (please, don't get us started...). Also, it is not intended to run on personal computers. But, there are lots of "clones" out there, like Linux, BSD, and Hurd, that you can download for free. Probably the most user friendly as of now would be Linux, because it is the most popular of the three and is most actively developed.

[aaronkupen]

alright, does anyone know of a unix that works well with a wifi connection?

[macdude425]

There really isn't one...I've had good luck configuring wireless with SuSE, but that's about all I (and others, like GameGuru) can say about it.

Look into Ndiswrapper.

[GameGURU]

Yeah, SuSE is the only distro that I got working with wireless. Then again, SuSE is buggy for me and crashes alot. So I switched to Slackware 10.2 and used wired networking.

For new people to Linux, I would suggest Mandriva. It's very easy to use and install and yet it has a good rap form just about everyone that reviews Linux distro's.

Once you get a little better understanding how to install and run Linux, I would suggest Slackware 10.2. It is by far the most stable distro I have used out of all of them (SuSE, Mandriva, Fedora Core 4, Kubuntu).

[horndude]

if you want wifi or any other hardware that has somewhat limited support the trick isnt searching for the right distro, its searching for the right hardware, and do so FIRST before you even get involved with linux period

there are numerous hardware compatibility lists and setup guides

there are wifi chipsets that linux does have native support for

[Qiranworms]

Do you already have a WiFi card? Use the model number, revision if applicable (IMPORTANT, I've seen barely indicated revisions of cards where the company actually changed the chipset manufacturer), and Google to find out what chipset you have, and then either post it here, or do some research yourself to find out the level of support it has.

As horndude said, distro shouldn't matter, you can either get your card working or you can't. My wireless card has a Broadcomm chipset, which aren't natively supported, but tend to work flawlessly with Ndiswrapper (a utility designed to impliment the Windows .inf driver file in Linux). I've set it up maybe four times on three different distributions. Takes about five minutes at most for me to set it up, and it has always worked perfectly.

Originally posted by macdude425
There really isn't one...I've had good luck configuring wireless with SuSE, but that's about all I (and others, like GameGuru) can say about it.

I disagree that there isn't one. My Linux system works just as well of not better with a wireless network as any other operating system in this house. Basically, it's not whether Linux works well with wireless hardware, it's whether the wireless hardware works well with Linux.

[philg]

FreeBSD, is to all intents and purposes unix, though it can't be called that due to licensing conditions, FreeBSD was based off one of the commercial variants of unix, and in the end a lot of FreeBSD code found its way back into said commercial variant. If you want to learn unix then I recommend one of the BSDs or Solaris even, though Solaris' performance is crap on anything other than sun hardware

Linux isn't a clone, it is unix-like, that is to say it is designed to behave like a unix system, but the code is completely different - a subtle difference. As such to the user it appears the same, but to the system admin, the configuration, setting up of hardware devices is quite different. If your not particularly bothered about unix but want something different to Windows this will do you. In most cases Linux is better suited to the desktop than those mentioned above

The same wifi card should work on all linux distros, its the kernel that interfaces with the hardware and that is common to all distros. It may be neccessary to update/reconfigure/compile the kernel for some distros, you'll need to read up on how to do this. NdisWrapper provides an interface for Windows' drivers to the kernel, apparently it works quite well, though I have never used it myself

[curtcheese64]

go unix!