Putting Linux on a Laptop

[3iMaJ]

I'm going to put linux on one of my laptops essentially to run matlab. Does anyone have any recommendations on what distribution of linux I should get?

The computer is a Toshiba 3.2 ghz with 512 mb of ram and 75gb hd.

Thanks.

 

[theinfamousbob]

I'm sure all of the Linux people will get their word in shortly (I'm a Mac/Windows guy) but from what I've used Ubuntu is a great and easy way to get involved with Linux. Give a Live CD a spin; you can boot from it and not have to install. Good test drive.

SIDENOTE: Get some more RAM. Your computer will love you for it, and it's cheap enough.

 

[3iMaJ]

Yeah its an older laptop that I recently resurrected from the dead. Matlab doesn't currently enjoy the multicore technology, it likes one big fast processor which is why I want to bring the laptop over to linux.

I'm going to look into new ram though, have to figure out if it can handle it first though.

 

[Styx]

Matlab 2007a was the 1st be mult-threaded and thus "like" more then one core/cpu.

As to distro go for Ubuntu simplest way in all fairness. Since they have a corporate backing alot of dev goes into making it very user-friendly and support alot out of the box.

At the end of the day all distro's are basically the same (the 2.6.# kernel dev change helped this alot) and since now are all pretty much internet-based and updated regually this also help's

which leave the differences very small between distro's limited to the likes of package-management (rpm,deb,tgz...), init scripts, customs apps for config...

I can jack into any linux box and do GNU/Linux stuff because they are all the same, specific distro package management and such will take a bit of poking to figure out simply because they are all GNU/Linux

 

[3iMaJ]

I took your advice and went with Ubuntu. I like it so far, it takes a little getting used to but seems nice.

Thanks

 

[Hero999]

SIDENOTE: Get some more RAM. Your computer will love you for it, and it's cheap enough.

Unless he's going to do video editing, re-encoding compiling huge programs then I'd disagree. I only have 256MB of RAM and Mandriva runs reasonably quick on my machine.

 

[theinfamousbob]

Unless he's going to do video editing, re-encoding compiling huge programs then I'd disagree. I only have 256MB of RAM and Mandriva runs reasonably quick on my machine.

Doesn't matlab love RAM though? Plus, there are performance increases with more RAM; cheaper than buying a new processor...

 

[3iMaJ]

Matlab loves ram. If I could put 16 gb in (and afford it) I would. Although my understanding is the new version has some better memory management features, but I've yet to try it.

Edit:

And yes I work on very large problems, which is why I'm having this issue in the first place. I would love to be able to simulate a semi-practical radar system, but I have to settle for small because my computer simply doesn't have the computational power/memory. But I'd settle for even just marginally larger.

For example a matrix (data cube) that I'd like to work with in matlab would be 1000x700x350 of complex entries. At current the best I can do is about 600x400x200 of complex entries.

I can write it where it calculates the parts of the data cube that the program needs on the fly but that slows the processing down tremendously.

 

[UTMonkey]

How olds the laptop? if you have a laptop with SATA and the newer video adapters you could have a problem with around 70% of the distros. that 70% definitely could be made to work - but only with a bit of tinkering (I don't know how much you know about Linux).

If it's a new laptop try OpenSuSe 10.3

Mark

 

[Styx]

How olds the laptop? if you have a laptop with SATA and the newer video adapters you could have a problem with around 70% of the distros. that 70% definitely could be made to work - but only with a bit of tinkering (I don't know how much you know about Linux).

If it's a new laptop try OpenSuSe 10.3

Mark

I don't think so

 

[3iMaJ]

Well I went with Ubuntu on one laptop and Mandriva on another. So far I think I prefer Mandriva, but maybe simply because it looks prettier. Both work well though, and quite easy to install.

 

[tunedwolf]

I think I would go with Knoppix...

rgds