Which newbie-friendly distro has best wireless card support?

[VCSkier]

A friend of mine showed some interest in trying linux, but he couldn't get his wireless card working (it's a Dell external pci wireless card) on the Ubuntu live cd. He has no access to a wired connection, and I have no way of walking him through a setup process, so I want to recommend to him another distribution, that will be most likely to simply and easily support his wireless card, out of the box, right off of the live cd. Then, hopefully if he likes it, he will consider installing it. I was thinking MEPIS or PCLinuxOS, because I know they are both newbie friendly, and have pretty good communities, but most importantly, good hardware detection and wireless card support.

Is that true? And if so, which has the best and easiest wireless card support? Thanks.

[LaRoza]

I hear Feisty has good wireless support, but I don't use wireless, so I can't say.

[johnny4north]

Mint and Memphis have the best wireless support, i believe.

[jrusso2]

Best wireless support is in PCLinuxOS, Mint and Freespire, but if he has a unsupported card none will work

[abn91c]

I have a Dell Inspiron with a linksys wireless card, I have the best luck using live CD and conecting to my network with sabayon Linux, Mandriva spring 2007, PCLinux OS,and Sam Linux. You will need to do a possible manual configuration to enter the SSID and WEP/WPA keys etc

[deanlinkous]

I find hardware support to be about the same on any distro... The "easy" part would depend on the card and the distro tools...

[Stew2]

I have never gotten any of my wireless cards to work in any flavor of ubuntu. I haven't tried Mint though so I don't know about that one. First distro I got my wireless to work on was Puppy linux, it was a piece of cake although kind of spartan for a beginner. Nice and fast though. Second distro I got wireless to work on was PCLinuxOS, also very easy to set up with the included gui version of ndiswrapper. I would recommend PCLinuxOS, very nice clean distro and the least amount of headaches to set up for a beginner :D.

[ThinkBuntu]

Really odd, but I'm getting better reception in Ubuntu 6.06 (using an Atheros card, none the less) than I have in any distro. Give it a try!

[sw1995]

I use a linksys wireless-g card--I have tried both PcLinuxOS (I got it to work with ndiswrapper) and Fedora 7 and had little luck with either, however Feisty Fawn supports it out of the box beautifully. One way or the other, it has been my experience that if you find a distro you like, there is a plethora of information on the web to get your particular wireless card working--although I'm not so sure that fixes such as ndiswrapper are quite "newbie-friendly".

[Bachstelze]

How about you tell him to get a decent wireless adapter instead of his Broadcom crap so that every single free OS in the universe will detect it just fine ?

[deanlinkous]

:) nice response
I was going to say that but thought it was a bit much...

[init1]

A friend of mine showed some interest in trying linux, but he couldn't get his wireless card working (it's a Dell external pci wireless card) on the Ubuntu live cd. He has no access to a wired connection, and I have no way of walking him through a setup process, so I want to recommend to him another distribution, that will be most likely to simply and easily support his wireless card, out of the box, right off of the live cd. Then, hopefully if he likes it, he will consider installing it. I was thinking MEPIS or PCLinuxOS, because I know they are both newbie friendly, and have pretty good communities, but most importantly, good hardware detection and wireless card support.

Is that true? And if so, which has the best and easiest wireless card support? Thanks.
Mepis is easy (KDE) and is the only distro where I can get wireless support. I didn't have to do anything to get it, I recognized my card without any trouble.

[init1]

I have never gotten any of my wireless cards to work in any flavor of ubuntu. I haven't tried Mint though so I don't know about that one. First distro I got my wireless to work on was Puppy linux, it was a piece of cake although kind of spartan for a beginner. Nice and fast though. Second distro I got wireless to work on was PCLinuxOS, also very easy to set up with the included gui version of ndiswrapper. I would recommend PCLinuxOS, very nice clean distro and the least amount of headaches to set up for a beginner :D.
Try mepis. Worked for me.

[VCSkier]

I've tried both live cd's on my system, and done some additional reading, and it seems to me that MEPIS actually supports the most number of cards out of the box. Is this true? Also, it comes with relatively simple directions regarding how to setup the wireless. PCLOS does have a nice "wizard" type process at first launch of the live cd that helps make wireless setup easier, but I'm not convinced that PCLinusOS actually supports as many cards out of the box as MEPIS. So in short, next time I see this friend, I'm going to give him a MEPIS disk, and strongly recommend that he takes the time to look through the documentation so he can get his wireless running. Do you think this is the wisest choice?

I don't see him all that often, so if anyone else has any other opinions or suggestions, let me know. Thanks!

[Bachstelze]

MEPIS is horrible... All it does is installing you an awful lot of drivers in Ndiswrapper 'till it finds one that works. Horrible.

[botulismo]

Sometimes trying a different version of a distro seems to work better too. My adapter will only work on Edgy Eft (despite days of trying to compile drivers and having the compilation succeed and Linux still do nothing despite following various instructions to the letter) I tried this on Feisty, Dapper, Debian Etch, Elive, and eventually just put Edgy back on because nothing else would work.

[windfer]

for some reason only mandriva pclinuxos and ubuntu notice my card so i recomend those

[H.E. Pennypacker]

The best answer lies in detailed information regarding your friend's wireless card. Please provide more information about the card (e.g. the chipset), and someone will be able to tell you the best distro.

The most frequently mentioned distro probably is PCLinuxOS (which has an unbelievably generic name). But to be sure, your friend should go to its (PCLOS) website, and do a forum search there to see how lucky others have been.

[IceVapour]

Puppy Linux detected my wireless card (atheros based) without a problem. I use it without a hitch and get signal all through my house, which apparently doesn't happen on XP. This said, when I tried the Feisty Live CD, it worked a little better than Puppy.