desktoplinux.com — Do you have an old laptop sitting in a closet somewhere, taking up room and gathering dust? You might be able to get some surprisingly good service out of the old clunker -- if you know how to revive it by installing an appropriate Linux distro. This article says just what to do.
Aug 2, 2006 View in Crawl 4
dragAug 3, 2006
haha. The whole point of Linux for the vast majority of developers is having a Free software and open source operating system. Without the GPL there would be no Linux. The most fanatic pro-open source guys are the ones that have devoted their lives for Linux and work the hardest at it and contribute the most code. If you want to use closed source stuff using OpenSolaris. That's their whole thing. They LOVE stable internal ABI's and support closed source driver developers..Oh, wait.. OpenSolaris has s**t for hardware support. Go figure. Nevermind.But FreeBSD has no legal issues with closed source drivers, too! They care about stable internal ABIs... oh wait. It's hardware support sucks also, (although it's better then OpenSolaris) and even though their license doesn't have issues with closed source drivers FreeBSD will never ship with them.. Go figure. Nevermind.But there is OS X! They are closed source and love closed source drivers... Oh, wait... You have to purchase Apple-specific hardware (which they support very very well) and they don't support nearly as much stuff as either OpenSolaris, FreeBSD, or Linux.. Go figure Nevermind.As far as wireless stuff goes it's not a closed source vs open source thing. The Linux kernel developers dropped the ball on wireless devices. They figured they were just ethernet cards with no wires.. They are in fact very complex half hardware half software radio devices and the Linux kernel devs weren't prepared to support them.Since then they figured out were they screwed up and are rectifying the situation rapidly. BTW, WPA sucks also. I use a VPN, you should also if you actually care about wireless security.If your using Ubuntu or Debian there is a handy program called module-assistant. It's job is to help you compile and install 3rd party modules that Debian/Ubuntu have packaged in source packages.For instance to install the rt2500 modules (carefull make sure you remove custom-installed versions before you use distro packaged versions)sudo su -(make sure you have universe repositories installed in Ubuntu)apt-get install module-assistantm-a updatem-a preparem-a a-i rt2500Makes things a bit easier. If you run module-assistant with no arguements it will drop you into a ncurses dialog wizard thingy.
grapfxAug 3, 2006
I've installed Ubuntu in the past on an old Vaio laptop that had a dvd drive but could only handle 128 K of ram. Everything worked out of the box except the ethernet card, which I think would have worked if I wasn't such a linux newbie back then. This was the first Vaio with a dvd drive made and was built for Win Me. I have 3 old laptops I think I will install DSL and/or Ubuntu on. I think it's fun to try to get these old POS's running again.
doolittleAug 3, 2006
@geronimo Would it not be possible to make a WEP or open wireless secure with a vpn client? Or maybe tunneling ssh over it? Or both, using knockd to open up the firewall port for either?A good argument is, the WPA security makes a wireless connection as secure as ssh or a vpn client - that is why it's used over the internet.
jaymoonAug 3, 2006
Not knocking linux or anything, but seriously, if a laptop is your secondary computer, do you really need the latest and greatest laptop to run linux?You're not gaming, so what do you need all that for. I doubt you're converting video, or re-encoding DVDs while sitting in the park.More than likely you'd be checking email, surfing the web, or typing/coding.
lftravelAug 7, 2006
I recently took an old computer with Win98 and put Debian on it, first using Fluxbox, and then IceWM. It works great now. It was full of spyware when it was running Win98.
unitedstatiansAug 7, 2006
Which Indispensable OS is the Requisite to Awaken an Old Laptop?Hey I wanted to get some more use outah my old Laptop it was an investment I made in 1997.Here's what I've researched you will need an OS (Operating Systems) and windows manager (nothing to do with windows more to do with desktop theme) or user interface (UI) at the top of the list are the most popular essential OSes for installations on a Old laptop like mine. Enjoy my list. My laptop is a Compaq Armada 7330t, CPU pentium1 166mhz, 92 MB of RAM (upgraded from 16MB), HDD 3.0GBDebian (Knoppix 3.9 or below) (Download)Damn Small Linux v2.3 (Download)Windows 2000 (Link)Windows 98se (Link)FreeBSD 5.3 (Download)SUSE 9.1 (Download)Slackware 10.2 9 (Download)Puppy Linux 1.0.7 (Download)Vector Linux Standard: 5.1 (Download)Austrumi v1.1.0 (Download)Basic Linux (BL) (Download)Feather Linux (Download)PocketLinux (Download)