Ubuntu, PCLinuxOS, SimplyMEPIS - 3 distros, 9 wireless stories

Stan Beer
Thursday, 15 November 2007 14:00

Opinion and Analysis

One of the reasons PC 4 was of particular interest to me is that it's a bog standard relatively new low cost whitebox with current components. It came pre-installed with Windows XP Home Media Center and cost around $600 about six months ago. I had a spare Netgear USB wireless card (MA 101) laying around when I bought the computer and it works seamlessly with Windows.

However, the MA 101 obviously doesn't work seamlessly with Ubuntu because, as far as Gutsy Gibbon was concerned, the card may as well have not existed. I'm pretty sure I could configure Gutsy Gibbon to work with this card manually because I did exactly that with Dapper Drake and the same card more than a year ago. Therefore, I was surprised and disappointed that the latest and best version of Ubuntu to date could not be made to work wirelessly out of the box with this configuration. Once again all I got on booting up was the vanilla Ubuntu Gnome interface and no wireless Internet connection.

After failing to provide wireless connectivity on the two previous boxes, MEPIS redeemed itself somewhat - although not completely - when I loaded it onto PC 4. Upon loading there was still no plug and play wireless connection. However, using the "Adjust the wireless connection" page from the MEPIS Wiki as a guide, I was able to use the KMenu to make a couple of minor adjustments and within about a minute I had a wireless connection and could surf the net. This hadn't worked on the previous two test computers so I was glad to be able to get a glimpse of what MEPIS is like to work with when its online capabilities are enabled. And it doesn't look too bad at all.

Now on to PCLOS. In short, I loaded the live CD, the system asked me all the usual questions, recognized the card, recognized the router, loaded the desktop and simply worked. I was able to go online immediately without any further configuration. Now that's what I call plug and play wireless!

So as the scorecard stands with regard to plug and play wireless connectivity, Ubuntu scored one hit (the Dell laptop) and two misses; MEPIS scored a half hit (I had to do some menu based manual configuring) and two misses; and PCLOS scored two out of the box hits and a near miss (it did recognize the card). To put it bluntly, on the three computers I tried, PCLOS absolutely mopped the floor with the other two distros. Incidentally - and this is purely a newly formed subjective opinion - the PCLOS GUI also kills the other two.

I have Ubuntu on my desktop and I'm more than happy with it. I am probably going to put Ubuntu on my Dell laptop as well because, given the Dell-Ubuntu connection, it works and it makes sense. However, the more I see of PCLOS the more I like it. This is one hell of a distro and I may well install it on my other two PCs and the new one I'm buying. PCLOS, from what I've seen so far (and that comes with a caveat), seems to have captured the essence of what is needed in a Linux distro - it looks good and it just works.