Laptops and Linux

CoolioG

This is my first post on this forum :laugh:

Anyways, I currently duel-boot Ubuntu and Windows Vista on my HP G50 Laptop (Intel Pentium Core 2 Duo 2.0ghz and 4gb of ram). Are there any distros that run better than Ubuntu for laptops? If so, are they easy to install so I can duel boot (easiness ranging from partitioning a drive and installing to a graphical interface inside Windows much like Wubu). Are they good for connecting to Wi-Fi networks? Do they come with a 64-bit version (If my laptop needs it)?

Goineasy9

I am currently using Fedora on my laptops, and they installed properly with Vista as a dual boot. I use EasyBCD as a bootloader because of the problems that originally came up with dual booting with Vista. But, that was my preference, since there are many folks that just use grub for the dual boot, and have no problems. I currently have a Win7/Fedora12 dual boot that uses grub, and I've had no problems with it.
As far as using something like Wubu, and running Linux from within Windows. I'd have to advise against it. Using Windows as a base leaves you open to the same viruses and malware. At least to my understanding, they can migrate down into your Windows base. Running Windows inside Linux with a virtual machine like VMware or Virtualbox or KVM is a safer environment. But, your looking for easy. So if you already have a dual boot running, you can always reinstall another Linux distro to take the place of Ubuntu just by using the already existing Ubuntu partitions. I know the Fedora install gives you the option of replacing the already existing Linux OS. Not that I'm encouraging you to install a bleeding edge distro and claiming it is easy, I'm just using it as an example.
Why not try playing with a host of Live CD's and see which distro works the best with your laptop, then, ask us how easy it is to install that distro into the Ubuntu space, and we can give you a better answer as to how easy it would be.

EJFreed22

When it comes to ease of use Ubuntu is close to the master.... but I have slackware dualbooted on my laptop and PC and I have never had an issue with it... it recognizes my windows partitions during installation and it mounts my windows partitionfor me within slack. But Ubuntu overall probably works better with your laptop I've only had to do slight configurations with slack.

mfillpot

CoolioG wrote:

This is my first post on this forum :laugh:

Anyways, I currently duel-boot Ubuntu and Windows Vista on my HP G50 Laptop (Intel Pentium Core 2 Duo 2.0ghz and 4gb of ram). Are there any distros that run better than Ubuntu for laptops? If so, are they easy to install so I can duel boot (easiness ranging from partitioning a drive and installing to a graphical interface inside Windows much like Wubu). Are they good for connecting to Wi-Fi networks? Do they come with a 64-bit version (If my laptop needs it)?

Ubuntu in my experience is the best for ease of use, it usually auto-configures everything on laptops (unless you have a proprietary wifi card). But as gioneasy9 suggested play around with various liveCD distros to find one that work perfectly out of the box on your computer and you can easily install it over your existing ubuntu partition(s).

As far as I know Ubuntu is the only one that has a built a utility like wubi for installation within a windows file system.

For most distros the only real gain you achieve from running 64-bit is the ability to use more than 3Gb of RAM. Generally the performance increase is not noticeable since most 32-bit distros utilize the smp module for auto-negotiation on multi-core systems.

In reference to evan's comment about running Slackware, it is my preferred distro but it is very manual, if you want something extremely user-friendly and auto-configured like Ubuntu or windows then I recommend against trying Slackware at this point in time.