I was looking into other operating systems for my old laptop just to surf the web and what not. But WinXP is too much for the old thing and Win2000 doesn't do anything for me cause I can't use IE7 (I <3 tabs). Above all though, I want to use a different OS (preferably a linux of sorts) and expand my knowledge with something besides windows. I'm not sure If FreeBSD has a GUI at all and if it does, I have NO idea how to install it with dependancies and all that jazz. Do you think that my laptop (Dell Latitude CPi A, 128MB RAM, 6GB HDD, PII) would be able to handle openSUSE i think 10 or something good enough for what i need it for? Also, what about any other operating system i didnt mention and/or hear of that could suite my needs?

Also, I tried Fedora, but im a linux n00b so i probably installed it wrong.

Right now, I have Fedora core 6 installed on an old Emachine Emonster 600, with 256M of ram. It detected all hardware on this machine, and seemed to have an extensive amount of hardware support. runs like a champ now. Everything setup correctly with about the same user intervention that windows needs.

I use FC6 in my current eMachine as well and have tried many flavors of *nix. Tust me if your just getting started FreeBSD is not the way to go. I would suggest either FC2 or 3 or Xbuntu as I like to run very light on older PC's to help the speed issue. Using X face desktop will help and so will running an older version of an OS (FC3 is only 2 years old)

K, so use fedora core 3? will it support my Linksys WP54GS wireless card?

and also, when downloading the CDs, which ones do i download, the SRPM (something like that) or the ones without it?

Also, whats the difference between KDE and GNOME?

Ok, I'm not sure on the linksys wireless card. ask that to the Fedora Forums as they can give you a direct answer. http://www.fedoraforum.org/

Gnome- one form of gui looks like this (FC6 version shown)
KDE is another form of GUI and looks like this

Xface is yet another GUI that is much more "lightweight" (less RAM used) and looks like this

Honestly theres alot of small differances but the look and feel are the main ones. I personally perfer Gnome and Xfce over KDE if you can install them all and try which one you like best.

Oh ok. I'll try out GNOME first. Which image do i download? the FC3-i386-SRPMS-disc1.iso or the FC3-i386-disc1.iso? I don't know the difference

Sorry I missed that part last time. Download the i386 ISO's. Let me know if you need info on Burning the ISO's

Nah, its alright, ive done it a million times. Thanks for the help, I'll let you know how the install went.

The install went all right, every works. The only thing is i can't get my resolution above 800x600 and I know my hardware supports up to 1024x780 (or somethign like that) and it has the right drivers and everything, it just won't get bigger. And images are choppy too and scrolling is painful. Any idea on this one?

And about the card, i read up about a program for this called ndiswrapper where i could use windows drivers in linux. Unfortunatly since i have no clue how to work linux, i can't make anything of the install instruction...its all greek to me. Here are the instructions, can you simplify what i have to do?

Before you start adding things that are supposed to help, try fixing the core problems first. You can manually edit your display config file to include the necessary resolution. I can't tell you what it is right off though because I am on my Windows box at the moment.... maybe if I think really hard....
You want to edit the xconfig file, but I can't remember where it is. If you drop to a terminal and type in (as su or root):
updatedb
then:
locate xconfig
You should be able to find it. There will be a section that looks like this:

Chances are that you are missing some display resolutions under the display portion. Maybe if you post what your configuration looks like, one of us will spot the problem. One of my systems does the exact same thing with CentOs.

ok, I did that, and it gave me the directory /usr/bin/selinuxconfig. I try clicking the file but nothing happens, is there something I'm supposed to do with it to get it to run or open? I'm sorry if my questions are dumb, i have no idea what im doing.

And wow, the man himself replied to my petty post, I'm honored.

selinuxconfig is not the same thing... the file should be called xconfig, and should be in the (I think) X11 path somewhere. I'll be on my other machine tomorrow, and I can look and see where the file should be.

You can't just click on a file in Linux and expect something to happen. You will have to open it with something like vi or gedit.... I'll help you with that once I can help you find the right file.


I'm not sure if I should be flattered or insulted? I'll be the first to admit that I an be a rude twit to those members that deserve it, but I try to help wherever and whenever I can.

not to throw this too far off from it's current track, but I don't really know why so many people think FreeBSD is not for beginners. I am no Unix genius and FreeBSD has been the first *nix OS that I have succesfully installed, configured, and used without any help. Even installing both the Gnome and KDE GUI's.

The same reason some people can pick up a foreign language with ease while others can't (myself included). For some people, it just naturally makes sense. I wouldn't recommend starting out with BSD either.

@TheYoda: My bad... you want to look for this file instead: /etc/X11/xorg.conf

Do you have that one?

Yes, I have that file, I opened it and I found the mentioned section and added in the resolution and now its working great. Thanks a lot!!

After I connected to the internet once, I now get an error message before my desktop loads, but after I log in. It says "Could not look up internet address for localhost.localdomain. This will prevent GNOME from operating correctly. It may be possible to correct the problem by adding localhost.localdomain to the file ect/hosts." I just click 'Log in Anyway' and everything seems to work fine. NOTE: I'm not connected to the internet when I get this message.

Now, how do I work this ndiswrapper thing? Cause I can't make anything of the instructions and I don't know of any programs in Linux except terminal and firefox and openoffice.org...thats it. So teach me like im 10 years old, .

Again, all help is appreciated greatly.


Flattered, lol, there was no sarcasm in that whatsoever. I just found it awesome that the big cheese himself is helping me.

I'm just a little cheese...

Anywhoo, have you tried using yum manager to install ndiswrapper? (I think fedora uses Yum)..

Something like (as root, from the terminal):
yum install ndiswrapper

Your speeking greek, I have NO idea what yum is. The install said that the files i downloaded are sources for something.

What does that mean?!

And than it says:

And than it gets into the whole thing with windows drivers and the link to that is here. I'm reading through this and I think I might go cry myself to sleep right now cause it makes NO sense whatsoever and I feel SO dumb cause I don't even get it a little...

Yum is an installation manager.. providing that the system has an internet connection, you drop to the terminal and type in what I wrote above. Other than that, you need to untar the file.... I can help better tomorrow when I am back on my 'nix box.

hoping to get *nix back up on my box soon. Trying out a new distro.

Ok...I didnt get it. I figured out how to untar it and the programs 'make' and stuff ran but there were errors. I don't know if you can help me at this point. I'm gunna ask at the forums there to see if anyone can help me out.

I've learned something: the terminal is the heart of the system and you do EVERYTHING from there!

I can probably help you; I am just a bit swamped at the moment.

Basically, the instructions say thus:
You untar the program. This is the equivalent of extracting the files from a .zip folder. Then you switch to the directory where you extracet (untarred) the files. When they say tar -zxvf ndiswrapper-version.tar.gz, the version part is simply the version number. You could say tar -zxvf ndiswrapper-* and it would be the same thing.

If you were getting errors, it was probably because you were getting some dependency problems. What I would suggest is using yum. If you drop into a terminal and type yum install ndiswrapper, what happens?

Yes, the terminal is pretty important, but most distros ship with enough gui stuff that you shouldn't often have to use the terminal (unless you have problems)

yeah. i untarred it and got it to switch to the folder with the cd ndiswrapper-1.42, so it said in the terminal [root@localhost ndiswrapper-1.42]# and than i type in what i needed to. I typed in what the instructions said to and on the last input ('make' and 'make install') i get errors.

The yum installer you said requires internet, but thats what I'm tryin to get so that doesn't work lol.

I tried installing an older version of the rpm and it had all the dependancies but it was looking for an older version of vmlinuz because the program was originally designed for FC1, so I'm at a loss and I shut my laptop off for the night, I'm out of it for today. it's so exhausting.

Oh, how I wish one of you could just like go to my house and help me hands on, it would be so much easier, but that's not gunna happen, so we have to live with what we got. Though I guess if all else fails eventually the telephone would start to look like a good idea. But lets wait and see first...

If your not opposed to spending a few dollars I would suggest some reading materials. My personal favorites are

"Linux Phrasebook" $15 B&N- Covers the commands and terminal in depth
"The Fedora Core 3 Bible" was $50 at BAM- Covers FC3 all over and should be available at a discount now that FC3 is not the latest FC release
and
"Linux For Dummies" $30 at most booksellers- believe it or not its actually useful

or better yet your public library may have them

I was thinking about that, and I should cause that would help so much, lol. I don't think it's so much me screwing up linux, its more that either the program isn't compatible with FC3 or whatever my hardware configuration is. I'll get the linux for dummies or the FC3 bible anyway...at the library cause I don't have 80 bucks to spend lol.

I was going to suggest that you physically plug your system into a router so that you can download the applications that you need. It is much easier to use yum or an rpm manager than to try and handle everything yourself.

Ok, I ran yum and it downloaded some files than it said "No Match for arguement ndiswrapper. Nothing to do." And than it went back to the prompt. So that didn't work.

I'm stuck with this. I have an RPM of ndiswrapper, but it needs to kernel-module-ndiswrapper source. The only one I could find was for FC1 and when I try to install it, it doesn't work. So I either need an RPM of the most recent with everything in it OR I need to find kernel-module-ndiswrapper for FC3.

I only have a minute, but did you try searching RPM Find for the dependancies that you need?
http://rpmfind.net/

Yes, I have and they have only the ones for FC1.

I searched ndiswrapper and they have an installer for livna. I downloaded it, but I also found that I need to download livna and I read on the page how I can do that with FC3. So when I get the chance, I'm going to install it with the instruction I found on this site for configuring ndiswrapper.

never mind...that was for 64bit...

but this should have what you are looking for

http://dries.ulyssis.org/rpm/packages/kern...apper/info.html

How do I go about downloading it or whatever, I don't see a link.

Ok, i found the right RPM for FC3 (or at least it says so) and its still looking a '/boot/vmlinux2.whatever'. Would an update from the up2date program fix this? I don't think I can do that because I tried updating it and all the files downloaded and the program stopped responding and now when I try to run it again (under my user, or root) I get an error about the headers and it closes.

At this point, unless someone has a miracle cure, I'm throwing in the whitle towel.

I give up on linux...

I Windows!!!

It sounds like you have something else fuxored. I wish you wouldn't give up just yet though. Wireless access in Linux is difficult. But if you can get by with a direct connection, you can still be productive and get used to Linux. It takes some time.

Alright...tomorrows another day and I'll have my router tomorrow so I won't have to unplug my desktop everytime i want to hardwire the laptop (I have one line going into my room, so I have a router to split the connection to the desktop and the laptop and to anything else I have plugged in) and that'll make things much easier.

Hmmm....I wonder...Could I just put the laptop harddrive in my desktop, run it in VMware and have someone remotely on my computer looking at the situation I have?

Well however we manage this, It'll have to wait until sunday night (EST) cause im busy all weekend. I may be able to stop in in between but no sit down and work time till Sunday.

Thanks for the support and help groovicus, BlackSpider, and Jeodude, its much appreciated.

This has become as much my quest for answers as yours Yoda. I share a similar laptop and the same wireless card and im switching it to Linux soon.

So I broke out the Dummies book to find answers. Here is a site that may help

http://www.hpl.hp.com/personal/Jean_Tourrilhes/Linux/ = Wireless LAN Resources for Linux

Well, what do you think of Ubuntu?

I'm more familiar with Xandros, and Ubuntu. Both of which are Debian based. If you are willing to try a Debian based distro, I would be able to help. Mepis, Linspire, Freespire, Debian, Knoppix, etc... Well, I would not recommend Knoppix. It is a bit of a hassle to install.

Instead of YUM, there is Synaptic (well, Apt-get to be literal).

Synaptic Screenshots.
http://www.nongnu.org/synaptic/action.html

Or Xandros Networks.
http://www.xandros.com/products/home/xn/xn_screenshots.html

Just use the find feature, type in Wireless, or NDiswrapper, and install the software.

With Debian/APT, all of the other mess you need to download, is automatically downloaded. VERY little hassle.

I swear by the Debian APT system, over YUM or whatever.

Here are the instructions for that page.

http://dries.ulyssis.org/rpm/

Do you know how to add a repository to yum? If not, that's OK, you can download the file itself as well. I would prefer someone new to linux stick with the package manager until they get more aquainted with the workings of it. That site is a good repository for all the FC releases and has some really nice RPM's on it. Especially for people who want to use outdated, unsupported versions, like FC3, it's a gold mine! I found it a while back because I was playing with FC on an old 466Mhz computer with a whoppin 128 Mb of ram.

Monster_user:

I don't have that, and for the other one, I don't want to pay for it. This is only for my personal knowledge and I highly prefer it to be free, especially since I don't know how it works.

BlackSpyder:
I looked at that and one of the sites doesn't work anymore and the other site had drivers that don't support my card.

Jeodude:
I think I'm gunna wanna stay away from ndiswrapper for now until I figure things out. I'll keep that place in mind though, thanks.

Ok, so here's what I came upon. I have an old WPC11 PCMCIA card and linksys has offical drivers for it. I downloaded the drivers onto the system and untarred it, and followed the instruction. I'm at a point in the installation where it asks me for the kernel source directory. The default as set by the program is /usr/src/linux and I hit enter to continue and it says thet source tree is incomplete or missing and the configuration fails. Can anyone help me out with this one?

I'll have a screen shot up in a few minutes with what it says and the instructions.

You will have to compile the kernel.
http://www.mjmwired.net/resources/mjm-kernel-fc3.html

Stop at the line that says,...
[root@charon linux-2.6.11.5]# make oldconfig

You want to keep the old config. You don't want to change it. That will cause problems with the drivers.

Oh ok thank you

This sucks though cause I put FC on an old HDD just to get everything working and i was going to the mirror it to the bigger one, BUT the bigger one decided to die on me today and the smaller on is only 3GBs. It says I need about 400MB free, but I don't... So what I might do is I might buy a 20GB harddrive or something and image the current drive on to that and than do the update and compiling and all that fun stuff. Also though, the new harddrive will be faster than this one (the 3GB one is about 12 years old )

Until I get the new one, I'll put it on my desktop mirror it to a spare 40GB I have and run it through VMware or something...or I'll just have to wait..

Maybe you could try Puppy Linux, or D.S.L? They don't take up more than a couple hundred megabytes. They don't look too pretty though. IMHO.

Well my B-days in about a month so I'm gunna get an 80GB or so laptop harddrive and I'll image over the linux to the drive, compile the kernel, load the linksys drivers and ill be on my merry way

Thanks again to all who helped, its much appreciated.

I'll update you once I get the harddrive.

Just bump, Thursday is my birthday and I'm getting a new harddrive for my laptop! :-D

I'll probably partition it 20 and 20 (its a 40GB) and have XP and linux on each partition (respectivley).

Regards,
TheYoda