On 11/21/05, Sam Kong <sam.s.kong / gmail.com> wrote:

> 2. I've never succeeded to make my laptops work perfectly on Linux.
> Sometimes, network card is not working, other times, USB is not
> recognized, or Sound card is not working. I've tried on 5 different
> laptops with different Linux but none was perfect. How do you overcome
> this problem? Well... if you use just a text-mode, this might not be a
> problem.

I've had flawless and simple laptop installs with Ubuntu.  It's a good
idea to try the live cd first to make sure the system works.

I've been able to get some not very Linux friendly laptops working
with Gentoo, but this is some degree more work.

Most *nix users do make heavy use of the command line, but usually via
some window manager.  The one I've come to enjoy is XFCE4, but there
are a ton of different ones out there.  So when you say text mode, I'm
not sure if you mean heavy reliance on command line apps or no WM at
all.   In the case of no WM at all, I don't imagine you'll have
trouble getting any distro to this level.

Even still, most distros have improved greatly as far as laptop support goes.
I've got ubuntu working on my Mac via the live CD and installed it on
a few Dell and Gateway laptops.  So... that I know works... others
probably will, too :)