Welcome to the Linux Foundation Forum!
Best Linux OS To Use
eggmas
Posts: 3
I have an old laptop with Win 95 OS on it. It has a Pentium 2 chip and somewhere around 196 RAM. I am passing it on to a friend to use strictly as an e-mail checker and document creator in locations with WiFi networks. The network card that has been suggested to use is a D-link which runs about $30. The card requires at least Win 2000 OS to run. It has been suggested to me that I go to a Linux OS instead and just use Google docs on G-mail to minimize the amount of memory that is being used for programs. Which Linux OS would work best to do this. I think my friend suggested either VectorLinux or PuppyLinux might work. Thnx for your help.
James D
0
Comments
-
AntiX, slitaz and puppy are three distros that could handle a laptop with that small amount of memory. I have an old Thinkpad that had AntiX running on it, that laptop had a P2 and at the most, a half a gig of memory. Just some suggestions.0
-
Hey Rainer and GoinEasy,
Thnx for the thoughts. Not sure I am skilled enough to deal w/ the CrunchBang idiosyncracies and my system going Crunch, Bang, but maybe the other options will work. Of AntiX, Slitaz and Puppy, which one do you think is best to make sure it is compatible w/ the D-Link ethernet/wifi card? Thnx again for your help.
James D0 -
Before giving an opinion on the D-Link card we wold have to know what wifi chip it is using. There are many D-Link cards and not all have the same wifi chip. Since you don't already have the D-Link card, is there a way of you doing some investigating and find out what wifi chip it uses?0
-
Once the determination is made regarding the compatibility of the Dlink card, wicd should be installed on whichever distro you choose. Allow it to do the heavy lifting when it comes to accessing the network. It's good app.
Regards,
~Eric0 -
If you're thinking of mainly using the laptop against cloud services (Gmail, Google Docs, etc), you might also want to consider the distribution Jolicloud. It's quite polished and works out-of-the-box with most wireless cards - and I can't really imagine it being too hard on old computers, since the whole distribution is just built around the Chromium web browser. The interface is sort of like a laptop version of iPhone/Android; it's quite integrated with cloud services like e.g. Dropbox, and uses web pages as installable "apps".
If you're looking to use a different distribution, I second Eric's suggestion of installing wicd. It's a quite neat network manager, and has a tendency to "just work" on almost every network configuration - assuming, of course, that the correct drivers have been installed. Go here to check which driver supports your wireless network card.0 -
James,
I like antiX because it is very lightwieght and uses very little memory. You can also try puppy linux and some of the other. As a matter of fact, find a lightweight OS that uses the xfce desktop enviroment. It is very easy for new comers.
As for as knowing if your d-link cards works for the OS, make sure to use the latest kernels. The latest ones or 2.6.38 and 2.6.37.3. It is said that all hardware just works. Look on www.distrowatch.com, it will list all linux OSes and the kernel that they run on. Check out this compatibility list to see if your d-link card is support.
http://www.linux-drivers.org/0 -
Thnx everybody for your suggestions. The only info I could gather on the D-Link card was that it is a Gold Series Range Booster G Notebook Adapter Wireless WNA -2330. Hope that helps in figuring out compatibility. Have a great one.
James D0 -
eggmas wrote:Thnx everybody for your suggestions. The only info I could gather on the D-Link card was that it is a Gold Series Range Booster G Notebook Adapter Wireless WNA -2330. Hope that helps in figuring out compatibility. Have a great one.
James D
According to various sites your card uses a Atheros 5K chipset, which is has been natively supported in the base linux kernel fusing the ath5k module or many years.0
Categories
- All Categories
- 50 LFX Mentorship
- 103 LFX Mentorship: Linux Kernel
- 575 Linux Foundation IT Professional Programs
- 304 Cloud Engineer IT Professional Program
- 125 Advanced Cloud Engineer IT Professional Program
- 53 DevOps Engineer IT Professional Program
- 60 Cloud Native Developer IT Professional Program
- 5 Express Training Courses
- 5 Express Courses - Discussion Forum
- 2K Training Courses
- 19 LFC110 Class Forum
- 7 LFC131 Class Forum
- 27 LFD102 Class Forum
- 157 LFD103 Class Forum
- 20 LFD121 Class Forum
- 1 LFD137 Class Forum
- 61 LFD201 Class Forum
- 1 LFD210 Class Forum
- LFD210-CN Class Forum
- 1 LFD213 Class Forum - Discontinued
- 128 LFD232 Class Forum
- LFD237 Class Forum
- 23 LFD254 Class Forum
- 611 LFD259 Class Forum
- 105 LFD272 Class Forum
- 1 LFD272-JP クラス フォーラム
- 1 LFD273 Class Forum
- 2 LFS145 Class Forum
- 24 LFS200 Class Forum
- 739 LFS201 Class Forum
- 1 LFS201-JP クラス フォーラム
- 10 LFS203 Class Forum
- 75 LFS207 Class Forum
- 300 LFS211 Class Forum
- 54 LFS216 Class Forum
- 47 LFS241 Class Forum
- 41 LFS242 Class Forum
- 37 LFS243 Class Forum
- 11 LFS244 Class Forum
- 36 LFS250 Class Forum
- 1 LFS250-JP クラス フォーラム
- LFS251 Class Forum
- 140 LFS253 Class Forum
- LFS254 Class Forum
- 1.1K LFS258 Class Forum
- 10 LFS258-JP クラス フォーラム
- 93 LFS260 Class Forum
- 132 LFS261 Class Forum
- 33 LFS262 Class Forum
- 80 LFS263 Class Forum
- 15 LFS264 Class Forum
- 11 LFS266 Class Forum
- 18 LFS267 Class Forum
- 17 LFS268 Class Forum
- 23 LFS269 Class Forum
- 203 LFS272 Class Forum
- 1 LFS272-JP クラス フォーラム
- LFS274 Class Forum
- LFS281 Class Forum
- 233 LFW211 Class Forum
- 172 LFW212 Class Forum
- 7 SKF100 Class Forum
- SKF200 Class Forum
- 902 Hardware
- 219 Drivers
- 74 I/O Devices
- 44 Monitors
- 115 Multimedia
- 209 Networking
- 101 Printers & Scanners
- 85 Storage
- 763 Linux Distributions
- 88 Debian
- 66 Fedora
- 15 Linux Mint
- 13 Mageia
- 24 openSUSE
- 142 Red Hat Enterprise
- 33 Slackware
- 13 SUSE Enterprise
- 357 Ubuntu
- 479 Linux System Administration
- 41 Cloud Computing
- 70 Command Line/Scripting
- Github systems admin projects
- 95 Linux Security
- 78 Network Management
- 108 System Management
- 49 Web Management
- 68 Mobile Computing
- 23 Android
- 30 Development
- 1.2K New to Linux
- 1.1K Getting Started with Linux
- 537 Off Topic
- 131 Introductions
- 217 Small Talk
- 21 Study Material
- 826 Programming and Development
- 278 Kernel Development
- 514 Software Development
- 928 Software
- 260 Applications
- 184 Command Line
- 3 Compiling/Installing
- 76 Games
- 316 Installation
- 62 All In Program
- 62 All In Forum
Upcoming Training
-
August 20, 2018
Kubernetes Administration (LFS458)
-
August 20, 2018
Linux System Administration (LFS301)
-
August 27, 2018
Open Source Virtualization (LFS462)
-
August 27, 2018
Linux Kernel Debugging and Security (LFD440)