Re: Getting started with old laptop
- From: Jim <james@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 25 Jun 2006 11:50:10 GMT
Dances With Crows wrote:
On Sat, 24 Jun 2006 14:09:55 -0600, Bryan Heit staggered into the Black
Sun and said:
Looking to get linux onto an old laptop of mine. I'm certain the
laptop will run linux - it runs several live-CD's quite well
(Dyne:Bolic, Knoppix) although not all video resolutions the laptop
can do [are] available through linux.
This is unlikely. It's more probable that the LiveCDs you tried didn't
configure X right.
I've had this on newer laptops as well - funnily enough, never on an NVidia chip. Problems have always occurred on ATI Radeon or Intel 915GM chipset video for me.
The laptop itself is a 5 year old Compaq [Presario] with a celeron
800MHz processor.
Oh, no. Compaq.
Heh, don't mind me, I never was a huge fan of Compaq portable gear - just not rugged enough for me.
How much RAM? More is better. What's the model# of this thing? Go to
http://tuxmobil.org/ and search for your laptop's model#; you should
find a bunch of installation reports. FWIW, I ran KDE on a 900MHz PIII
with 384M for years, and it was acceptable. That was on Gentoo though;
YDistroMV.
What I am wondering is what distribution(s) would be good for this
system?
If you have < 256M, forget KDE or GNOME. Damn Small Linux, Vector
Linux, or possibly XUbuntu (Ubuntu with XFCE instead of GNOME) are all
possibilities. If you're hardcore, you could do a base Debian install
and just install the WM/DE you want.
Of course, with Knoppix you can pick and choose any of 17 (at least) window managers at boot time. Take the multiuser option when you install it, and you can lock the choice down, simple matter then of dropping into the package manager and ripping the rest out.
Intended use: word processing, some minimal image manipulation, and
basic internet browsing. If it works well I'm planning on giving it
to my parents
AAAAIIIYEEEEE! The human factor will be the biggest headache here.
They *will* call you for tech support unless they've had previous
experience with Linux. You'll probably want to use Abiword instead of
OpenOffice if all you need is word processing.
I guess the two biggest hurdles [are] going to be support for the
PCMCIA wireless and 10/100 network cards.
99% of PCMCIA wired Ethernet cards are supported through pcmcia-cs and
the in-kernel PCMCIA modules. 802.11[bg] will be the big hassle. I
can't be that much help since my T42p has a built-in ipw2200 802.11[bg]
that's completely supported by Free modules. HTH anyway,
wireless has been made fairly painless with ndiswrapper, all you need is the Win32 driver :)
HTH a little more :)
--
When all else fails...
Use a hammer.
http://dotware.co.uk
Some people are like Slinkies
They serve no particular purpose
But they bring a smile to your face
When you push them down the stairs.
.
- Follow-Ups:
- Re: Getting started with old laptop
- From: Bryan Heit
- Re: Getting started with old laptop
- References:
- Getting started with old laptop
- From: Bryan Heit
- Re: Getting started with old laptop
- From: Dances With Crows
- Getting started with old laptop
- Prev by Date: Re: How to setup a windows sharing internet connection with Ubuntu.
- Next by Date: Re: Getting started with old laptop
- Previous by thread: Re: Getting started with old laptop
- Next by thread: Re: Getting started with old laptop
- Index(es):
Relevant Pages
|
