Linux on an old laptop.

Winters

I am getting increasingly annoyed at Windows here giving me alerts that im running out of memory here so im now seriously looking at installing Linux on this laptop. But i will be tied to some problems with hardware possibly.

The laptop is an old PII 266 and had 64mb ram, there is no CD drive in the laptop but do have a docking station with floppy and cd drive. At the moment I have windows 2000 on it and its running allright unless you open a few programs. It runs on a wireless network through a USRobotics Turbo 802.11g pc card, so any linux I install must be able to run on the wifi card.

I will format the hard drive into a linux drive and will be using linux as my main os on the laptop. What I need to know is what Linux OS will run on the laptop [and run better / less memory hungry then win2k] and will it support the USR wireless card.

Any linux reccomendations? And renemer it needs to be able to run on the wifi.

voxpop

Mandrake is a good distro for the beginner or fedora(Redhat) - either of these should detect most, if not all of you hardware. There is only one problem 802.11g cards will not work with linux, this is because the people who developed the g standard wont release the drivers under gpl . 802.11b cards will work fine.

maxheadroom

Originally posted by Angry_Penguin
There is only one problem 802.11g cards will not work with linux, this is because the people who developed the g standard wont release the drivers under gpl . 802.11b cards will work fine.

Do a little research before posting this kind of rubbish please? There's always the option of using ndiswrapper or Linuxant Driver Loader (propreitary, you'll need to pay a licence fee) to load the windows driver.

So, in conclusion, your 54G card may or may not have native linux drivers, but if it doesn't, you'll probably be able to use the windows drivers anyway.

EDIT: A quick google seems to reveal that the madwifi driver will work for your card, but to be sure, you'd need to start linux and check the output of lspci

tuxy

Originally posted by Angry_Penguin
Mandrake is a good distro for the beginner or fedora(Redhat)

are you sure these distros will work good with 64mb of ram
maybe with some tweaking?
i dont realy know much about those two distros

maxheadroom

Originally posted by tuxx
are you sure these distros will work good with 64mb of ram
maybe with some tweaking?
i dont realy know much about those two distros

Good point - they're both memory hungry distros.

from http://fedora.redhat.com/docs/release-notes/
Memory Requirements

This section lists the memory required to install Fedora Core 2.

* Minimum for text-mode: 128MB
* Minimum for graphical: 256MB
* Recommended for graphical: 512MB

from http://www.mandrakelinux.com/en/10.0/features/#14
Memory: at least 64 MB is required (32 MB for text-install); 128 MB or more is recommended.

Something like slackware or gentoo might be better suited (although gentoo would take forever to set up onm that system...)

Winters

Reason I am looking at installing Linux on this laptop is as Linux is generally less memory hungry then Windows. I would have actually expected it to be easier to get Linux installed on this but it seems most of the major releases are infact as memory hungry as 2000.

Seeing as though I am still very much a linux noobie I dont want something too hard to install/use. Also the laptop will be used by poeople who will probably never have used linux I want it easy enough to use and similar to Windows. The Slackware linux looks interesting and I might give that a download unless someone can reccomend on better.

Also thanks for finding the Linux 802.11g drivers/utilities. If I couldnt get them working I will be scrapping the idea of installing linux alltogether as I need the wireless connection on the laptop.

I might also put it on another laptop [PII 200mhz/32mb ram] that I already have Windows2000 running on if I can find on that will support that. Again I will need a GUI linux for that.

RicardoSmith

I tried running Mandrake 9 and Red Hat on 9 with the GUI on a P3/500 with 64mb and it was painfully slow. Definately you'd need more ram to run with one of the newer GUI. Theres smaller distros you can use that are less intensive. But as I'm a newbie myself I wouldn't know how to install them. I saw on one of the Linux magazines this month they had a distro called tiny/small Linux or something like that. That was about 50mb and had a limited GUI.

It seems such a same not to be able to use these older machine. The alternative is Windows 98se which works fine on an older box but going back to it after XP I find it a bit prone to locking up and crashing. W2K I find is too slow on an older box if its less than 400mhz and has 256mb of ram.

tuxy

i setup slackware on a pc with 64 mb ram before and with a light weight windows manager its not too slow
only problem is if you want to get slackware up and running good be prepared for alot of reading

fragile

You should have a look at Vector Linux, it is a bloat free, easy to install, configure and maintain Slackware based system:

http://www.vectorlinux.com/

Also, you should have a look for your laptop model on the Linux on Laptops site:

http://www.linux-laptop.net/

For the wireless card I would recommend trying out ndiswrapper, it is incredibly easy to setup.

Best of luck with it

Winters

The laptop with the Wifi card is actually a 366mhz PII. My mistake. Its a Toshiba Portégé 7020 CT which seems to be able to handle linux allright. Im just worried about the wireless, but that can be hopefully sorted out as outlined above.

The second laptop is the Toshiba Portégé 7010 CT (Impossible to find on the net) which is a 300mhz PII with 32mb ram.

I do want to install a linux which will be easy to setup and will run through GUI and go through as little command as possible. I would prefer to go with the popular linux such as Mandrake or Redhat as they would be easy enough to setup etc. I also need one that will at least support WIFI/PCIMCA and also paly mp3s from network where possible.

fragile

You should give Morphix a try, its a bootable Linux CD tha can run entirely from the CD. There is a light version available with xfce as the window manager. It can also very easily be installed to your drive giving you a full Debian based system.

At least ut will give you an idea of how well X with a lightweight window manager runs on your system before you go installing.

For more information or to download an ISO see:

http://www.morphix.org

For installing linux on the 7020 see the guides here:

http://agnes.dida.physik.uni-essen.de/~anja/linux/portege7020.html

Sarunas

Whatever distro you get running (I would recommend slackware, gentoo or debian. They aren't newbie distros. But when you get used to them, they starts to rock). Run a light weighted window manager, ie. Fluxbox or icewm. I really like fluxbox...

On 366 mhz 64mb system, linux should run fine. Just make sure to to create a swap partition (say 128mb +).

I once attempted installing mandrake 9.1 on pentium 150mhz, 24mb ram, 2 gb. Took a long time to boot... My patience ran out after an hour. That was it with mdk. Next day I installed slackware 9 (without GUI). It took around 2 minutes to boot, vim would open in a few seconds, links pretty much the same. Compiling speeds were very sslloooooooowwwww. (I wasnt expecting it to be *that* slow)

Now the box sits hapilly in my wardrobe collecting up dust with freebsd on it.

Pay a visit to tldp for howtos. They have wireless howto.

If others will be using the laptop, you should enable GUI login screen (say xdm or gdm). Try out gdm first, if its slow switch to xdm.

Best of luck with Linux.

tomk

The definitive list of WiFi gear and corresponding chipsets is here , and states that your card uses the TI chipset, generally referred to as ACX100. The madwifi project does not cover this card, so pop over to the acx100 site instead. Also, google for acx100 and you'll find some other useful stuff.

All of this is subject to confirmation by doing what maxheadroom suggested i.e. putting the card in a linux machine and checking the output of lspci. Manufacturers have an annoying habit of changing the chipsets without telling anyone, because they assume that we will all be using the supplied drivers. This is where morphix or knoppix will be useful - they won't have the necessary drivers included, but they will allow you to verify your chipset before going ahead with the install.

I've just setup 11g WiFi on my Dell laptop, but I had the luxury of choosing my card based on what was available for Linux - I went with the 3Com model, because the Prism chipset is very well supported, and the driver is now included in the Linux kernel.