Linux for RV Camper notebook travel etc

[Scottusa]

Linux for RV Camper notebook travel etc

Which Linux and which notebook/laptop hardware will offer the most
in being able to do WIFI email, possibly broad band or satellite internet,
use GPS mapping and maybe even watch TV with a TV tuner card ?

I am 25 year Microsoft user and fairly savy but no Linux experience.
I consider the right choice up front to select the most capable
OS and compatable hardware to be the most important.
If I know it CAN work then I CAN learn how to use it.

I am willing to spend as much or even more than I know I would
for microsoft just to be able to escape their stranglehold.

What is the hard learned wisdom of the group ?

thanks
Scott in Atlanta

[cybertron]

What is the hard learned wisdom of the group ?
Based on the lack of replies I would say not much.:)

Any distro should work pretty well for what you're doing. It would probably be worth looking into Ubuntu, MEPIS, Mandriva, SuSE, and/or Fedora Core. They're all distros that are largely oriented toward new users with not much Linux experience. Of course, distro choice is largely a personal preference, so you're probably going to have others recommending others, but IMHO those would be the ones to start with. If anyone says Gentoo ignore them.;)

From your requirements, I think finding a tv card that will work with a laptop and Linux will be the most difficult part. There are some from Plextor that are supported, but they're a bit expensive in all honesty. You may be able to get some others working, but probably not without a fair amount of work.

For the wireless, just check before you buy a card (or check the built-in laptop one if that applies) and see if there are Linux drivers. If there aren't, you can most likely use ndiswrapper with the Windows drivers to get it working, but native drivers are definitely the best. I can't give too much specific advice on this since I bought a D-Link, which was not the best choice at the time. It's possible that's changed, but I don't know.

Anyway, hope this helps and good luck.

[Hayl]

please post non-help-related (i.e. want an opinion) post in /dev/random.

thank you.

[enshum]

I would suggest you try Suse 10.0. It has a very robust list of drivers. I have only loaded Suse on one laptop and it was 9.3 and it found the wireless card and set it up.

ed

[enshum]

You might also want to look into this material. Linux-Mobile-Guide

The Linux-Mobile-Guide is a guide for users of Linux and laptops, notebooks, PDAs and other mobile computers. This guide was former known as Linux-Laptop-HOWTO but was now extended to cover Linux and mobile computer devices in general (laptops, PDAs, mobile cell phones, digital cameras, calculators, wearables, ...) These devices are different from desktop/tower computers. They use certain hardware such as PCMCIA cards, infrared and BlueTooth ports, batteries, docking stations. Hardware parts cannot be changed as easily as in a desktops, e.g. the graphic card. Often their hardware is more limited (e.g. disk space, CPU speed).

Hardware support for Linux (and other operating systems) on mobile devices is sometimes more limited (e.g. graphic chips, internal modems). They often use specialized hardware, hence finding a driver can be more difficult. Many times they are used in changing environments, so there is a need for multiple configurations and additional security strategies. The Linux-Mobile-Guide explains installation methods for laptops and PDAs and configurations for different (network) environments, security issues for portable computers and much more. TuxMobil is the origin of the Linux-Mobile-Guide and provides always the latest issue available for download.

NEW v3.18 10 October 2005

* HTML - 181 files
* HTML TGZ app. 220KB

Translations

* Tito Rizzo has done the Italian translation of the predecessor of the Linux-Mobile-Guide, the Linux-Laptop-HOWTO

ed