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Looking for a good Linux LiveCD distro

June 23rd, 2005

I personally can’t stand Microsoft Windows. I’m looking for a nice fast one that has most of the tools I need to use, like OO.o, gaim, Firefox, XChat, GIMP(GNU Image Manipulation Program), and also a decent GUI(Graphical User Interface).

I’m posting this with a Ubuntu LiveCD x86 distro. It seems decent, boots fast *enough*, but I wouldn’t mind something faster.

I ran a Ubuntu LiveCD PPC(PowerPC) distro, and it turned out that it didn’t support my Airport Extreme card by default. Maybe I’ll tinker with it and try to get it to work.

Any suggestions?

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 23rd, 2005 at 10:02 pm and is filed under Tech and Geeks.

4 Responses to “Looking for a good Linux LiveCD distro”

  1. Niran Says:
    June 24th, 2005 at 12:25 am

    The chip used on Airport Extreme cards is made by Broadcom, who is notorious for not providing Linux drivers, or even specifications for the chip so someone could hack together a driver. To make matters worse, I think they’ve actually made a Linux driver so manufacturers can use their chip on embedded devices that run Linux. The only work around is to use a program called ndiswrapper that wraps around the Windows driver, but that only works for x86 since it uses the Broadcom-provided drivers that are precompiled for Windows users. Don’t expect Linux support for Airport Extreme cards anytime soon.

    If you can find a cheap enough WiFi add-on card (traditional Airport cards will work), then that’s probably your best bet.

  2. Alex Shanks Says:
    June 24th, 2005 at 11:37 am

    Why are you using Windows when you have an iBook? :-)

    Also, if you search your IMing logs, I told you not to get into that because most of the time your internet connection wouldn’t work properly with Apple hardware, did I not? :)

  3. LokiSnake Says:
    June 25th, 2005 at 10:57 pm

    Heh, I wasn’t using Windows. I would prefer not to touch that kind of stuff. :P

    I think I need to hunt down an x86 box for Linux then. I just want to play around with it. Or even a laptop if it is cheap enough.

  4. Elliot Says:
    June 27th, 2005 at 10:40 pm

    If you want a laptop, this is cheap enough.

    Dell Inspiron 6000 laptop
    1.3 GHz Celeron M 350
    15.4″ widescreen WXGA TFT
    512 MB DDR2 SDRAM
    8x DVD+/-RW dual-layer write capable Burner
    40 GB HD
    Free shipping
    $649, no rebates to send in

    Deal expires 6/29/05

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