Lenovo netbook won't run. . . anything
 

Yeah, pretty much. So far, my netbook (Lenovo S110) has been a nightmare to get Linux on :(
Everything I've wanted to put on it just doesn't seem to gel.
I've tried:

Tiny Core (display isn't supported)
Puppy (also the graphics card--the only one that worked didn't support my wifi :()
Slitaz (doesn't support my wifi card)
Fuduntu (slow, display doesn't work properly either)
Linux Mint Debian Edition (works OOTB, but slow as hell. . .well duh it's a netbook of course)
Lubuntu (can't even get the livecd to run, it boots into command line)

For everything but Lubuntu (which I just tried this morning) I've poked around in the forums and tried to find solutions, but nothing materialized. The closest I got to a solution in Puppy was too complex for what I'm capable of :P

I know this is a long shot but. . . can anyone recommend anything at all? I'm kinda tired of downloading iso after iso trying to find something that works. My internet connection isn't fast and I don't have enough time to learn anything very complicated--I just wish I could find something that works :(

My other laptop never had that much trouble with even the nore obscure Linux distributions. . . guess I learned my lesson, I really do need to shop with Linux in mind U-_-

What wifi card and display adapter are you using?

I'm using OpenSUSE on my Lenovo T420s with core i5 integrated graphics and intel wifi, everything worked perfectly out of the box.

I'm jealous :(
Wifi card--realtek (RTL8188 according to the website)
graphics--just a generic intel card, I believe. It simply says "Intel integrated graphics"

According to this article, it appears to be Linux-compatible, but one GB Ram would be marginal for the comtemporary Ubuntu desktop environment.

I have had good luck running SalixOS on my Dell Mini9. I'd suggest one of the lighter weight spins. I'm partial to Fluxbox, and their Fluxbox version is very nice--they adapted Fluxbox to include by default links to various system configuration tools. KDE is almost certainly too heavy.

I've got 2GB ram, but I'm not really worried about it--whatever distribution I use, I'd swap out the DE for xmonad or icewm or something like that. The heaviest I've ever used was E17, which is still pretty light.

I've tried Salix before, but iirc getting the wifi card to be supported required installing another kernel or compiling a driver. . . which is kind of out of my league :))) I'll try it if there's absolutely nothing else though :(

I do have Mint/XFCE running on that Dell now (An on-line version upgrade of Salix went awry and I needed something quick); you give one of the lighter-weight Mints a look.

Here's a Salix article on Realtek. It might help.

http://www.salixos.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=13396

My portables are all Dell all Broadcom wireless.

o_O rather more work than I was willing to put in just for a netbook, but thanks. The thread I found was MUCH more complicated :))) I'll bookmark it for future reference.

LMDE was sluggish on my netbook, so I'd imagine the ones running atop an Ubuntu base wouldn't fare much better :) (Am personally not much of a fan of the Ubuntu/Mint/Debian family in any case XD)

...though if another Debian distribution will work on my hardware, I'm alright with it. I'm open to pretty much any recommendation, actually, since I've had so little luck myself U^_^

Why not try Debian? I know persons who are running it on Raspberry Pis. You'd likely need to install a lighter DE when you were done. I use Fluxbox (but I'm Fluxbox fanboy). I have E17 on my Mint desktop and it's pretty lightweight, and I'm coming to quite like it.

It's worth trying - OpenSUSE worked out of the box on my Asus EEE PC 1000H as well. With the XFCE DE the memory usage is pretty low, 2 GB should be more than enough (that's all I have in that Asus and it works fine).

This might be what you need
http://www.wireless-driver.com/realt...iver-software/

I'm going to second the move to pure Debian. That's how I switched from Ubuntu - I was running Ubuntu on an iBook G4 a few years ago, and found it painfully slow. Debian on the same iBook then and now, runs reasonably well, cosidering it's a 1.0GHz processor. ANd XFCE runs quite well, so if you want a light DE instead of a bare minimum WM, go with XFCE.

DOes the RealTek wifi card need some firmware maybe and that's why it's not working? I Know Broadcom Wificards do as do RealTek ethernet adapters on my past 3 laptops.