question about linux

[Liquid_Scope_99]

Hello all i have a few friends that just wont buy knew computers lol.

Well they asked since that 98 and mi is not supported and there mostly like 350mgz processors and 128 ram.
What version of linux whould be good for a comp like that thanks in advance

[luciusad2004]

I'm no expert but from what I've head, Gentoo and Arch both run pretty well on lower end hardware. You could probably pair one of those distributions w/ a lightweight window manager like, fluxbox. But like I said, I'm not expert, lets see what the real experts say in a few posts.

[aintnothang]

DamnSmallLinux!

[Liquid_Scope_99]

hey thanks guys is this where i ge it jsut checking lol www.damnsmalllinux.org thanks again hopefully i can learn it price is right though

[xmastree]

I found puppy linux slightly better than dsl.

http://www.puppylinux.org/

[XcOM]

any distro would do really, not select one with the least ammount of bloat, xubuntu is good for lower end machines with good hardware support,

fedora is quote good but you really need to fight to install any thiung thats no open

[Liquid_Scope_99]

thanks guys may try couple diffrent ones hopefully that is semi easy lol thanks again

[Xpirate]

I agree with XcOM. Xubuntu is good for low end machines. I used Red Hat 6.2 on some really, really old hardware (Pentium 133 with 32 MB) and it worked just fine. I'm not sure if you can still find pre-Fedora Red Hat 6.2 on the web anymore.

[XcOM]

i have them on CD, fedora core 2!

[Liquid_Scope_99]

thanks all i downloaded dsl and burnt it to cd when i moved it over it said that warning abour some files attached may no work if you continue move but i made cd and it dosent do anything when i try to get it to boot better read some more about making it a bootable cd thanks again for the help all any comments welcome

[nevermind1534]

Did you use a program, such as nero burning rom, to coy the files from the .ISO file to the CD? If you did, it should work.

[Liquid_Scope_99]

hello thanks nevermind1534 no ididnt i just made a normal cd but i will try that +rep also +rep that are tring to guide a new one to linux thanks again guys

[nevermind1534]

What program were you using, and where did you get the iso file from? I tried it yesterday in VMWare, and it worked fine.

[XcOM]

download something like isoburn (Free for XP/Vista), install it and just double click on the ISO for DSL, it will ask what drive to burn to and what speed, click go,

It does the rest for you.

[aintnothang]

isoburn is pretty awesome.

[xmastree]

Making a bootable linux CD (http://www.cginternet.net/ubuntu/burn/)

[Cymae]

As a side note, perhaps you might like to try an older distro of Ubuntu or something. it's better for non-expert users...

[XcOM]

i would say earlier ubuntus are better for older hardware as they require less oomph to run, but have a harder learning curve, newer ubuntus generaly have become more automated, a bit more like windows so to speak.

[Cymae]

or see if you can dig up an old LindowsOS distro :D

[Liquid_Scope_99]

hello all i got DamnSmallLinux! to boot and run but when i rebooted it want work anymore got the iso cd made correctly thanks guys .trie dto use Xubuntu to boot showed a flash screen like the loading windows screen then went to blank screen woth mouse cursor thanks guy i wll try to keep at it tommorrrow lol work tommorrow

[XcOM]

or see if you can dig up an old LindowsOS distro :D

i think i have one of them in my cd wallet

[PartyLikeARockstar]

Vector Linux is good too, I am surprised to not see it mentioned.

[Liquid_Scope_99]

I got DSL to work but not Xubuntu i couldnt get it to work but havent had the chance to work with it latley

[XcOM]

sometimes if your installing on limikted hardware you will need what is normally called a alternitive install cd, this isn't a live cd but will install using a very light installer, usualy annaconda

[Liquid_Scope_99]

hey thanks XcOM +rep

[Omega]

i would say earlier ubuntus are better for older hardware as they require less oomph to run, but have a harder learning curve, newer ubuntus generaly have become more automated, a bit more like windows so to speak.

I can attest to this. I'm running Kubuntu Hardy (soon to be on KDE4.1.2, too) on my laptop and if my wireless card wasn't such a strange make/model it would have been completely brainless.

[XcOM]

generally i find it easier to install NDIS wrapper and install windows drivers than try to install linux versions

[Omega]

generally i find it easier to install NDIS wrapper and install windows drivers than try to install linux versions

for sure

(unlock/add all repositories you will need first)
First find out what kind of chipset you have by doing


lspci

then install the driver, assuming you don't need to blacklist a non-working driver (like I had to with my Marvell mrv8k chip)
Then you wanna do this:


sudo apt-get install ndiswrapper
sudo apt-get install ndiswrapper-utils-1.9 (or whatever the utilities one is)
sudo apt-get install wicd
mkdir drivers
cd drivers
wget [driver location]
(untar only if it's a tarball... which it probably is)
tar -xvf [tarball name]
sudo ndiswrapper -i [driver.inf]
sudo ndiswrapper -m
cd ..
rm -rf ./drivers

What that does is it installs NDISwrapper, a util for installing windows wifi drivers, then you get the utils, meaning you can use ndiswrapper now, then it installs wicd, a good wifi/network manager program, mkdir drivers creates the folder /drivers under your home folder (which you operate under), wget is web get and will download a .zip or .tar file with the drivers in it, tar -xvf [tarball name] untar's or unzips your .tar or .zip, sudo ndiswrapper -i [driver.inf] installs the desired driver file as an administrator, sudo ndiswrapper -m rebuilds something or another to make it work, cd .. changes you back to your home directory and rm -rf ./driver deletes the folder /driver and all in it.

To check if your ndiswrapper install worked, type
sudo ndiswrapper -l and it should show installed drivers and "device present"

[XcOM]

or if your using ubuntu just find ndiswrapper and common in synaptic package manager and it does it all for you and adds a new menu entry to load windows drivers, even with fedora is easy as hell, load the RPM data and the same applies

[Omega]

or if your using ubuntu just find ndiswrapper and common in synaptic package manager and it does it all for you and adds a new menu entry to load windows drivers, even with fedora is easy as hell, load the RPM data and the same applies

if you really want to you could just throw in a sudo apt-get install ndisgtk to the list of commands I wrote up, like so:



sudo apt-get install ndiswrapper
sudo apt-get install ndiswrapper-utils-1.9
sudo apt-get install ndisgtk
wget [driver location]
tar -xvf [tarball name]
sudo ndisgtk


then ndisgtk will pop up (graphical interface for ndiswrapper) and you tell it where the driver.inf file is, and it installs it.

i know the command line might be scary for some but it's a hell of a lot easier to sudo apt-get install things if you know what you want than it is to go into Adept or whatever your distro's package manager is. goes by so much quicker.

You also don't have to sudo before each command if you don't want to, only the first one, and you should stay logged in as sudo for 10 minutes on ubuntu distros. I sudo for each command only out of habit (older distros I used either required that you su root first or sudo before everything)

[XcOM]

terminal is your friend