Ubuntu on old toshiba laptop
 

Hi,
I recently installed openSuSE on my working laptop. I am very pleased with it and amazed by all the options.I have a second laptop, a Toshiba SatellitePro 4270, about 6 years old, celeron 500MHz, 192 MB RAM. I only use it for very basic tasks: listening to mp3s via an external harddrive and a connected amplifier plus speakers, a bit of websurfing, some file sharing between my two computers and maybe I can also set it up as a print server.

Since this machine is quite slow, I would like to install a lean Linux distribution. Do you think Ubuntu could serve my purposes? Is Ubuntu (the basics) as easy to learn as SuSE? Is it an appropriate distribution for a Linux noob like me?

Any comments appreciated.
Thanks

Tobias

i think ubuntu the best bet although i haven't used SuSE. i'm running kubuntu (ubuntu just with kde) on the first version of an imac 333mhz 192 ram 6vram i know slow, right? it starts up fast (faster Mac OS X 10.2) and runs Konqueror fine. i'm typing on it right now. it comes with everything u basiclly need openoffice,audioplayer,cd/dvdburning and lots bluetooh stuff/wireless(if ur laptop has wireless card) do u have anything that needs to be backuped, if not i say download kubuntu/burn/install and see how u like it.

i'm noob too.

Ubuntu is the best distro that I have used thus far. The distro might run a little slow on that laptop but Unbuntu is the fastest linux distor that I have ever used. Considering the installation and usage of redhat, fedora, suse, ect.

The best feature of debain based distros is apt-get which is like yum if you have ever used fedora. Apt-get makes installing packages a lot easier without worry of dependencies problems. Plus you will need to learn the sudo command because root is not enabled by default which is not a big deal.

So basically if you want to use a program that demands or needs root access you need to type sudo before it.

If interested in installing wine you need to do the following:
sudo apt-get install wine
then type your password.

If you want to use gedit to view /var/log/messages

Then you would type sudo gedit /var/log/message

If you are not in a hurry, I would wait for the Dapper official relese in april. I am using the alpha release and man am I impresed with the performance. The new GNOME hasa lot of performance tweaks, and the overhead on resources is really minimal. But if you think you will get into trouble with GNOME, then try XFCE4 window manager, it is really light on the resources, (the version of ubuntu, called Xubuntu) check out the Ubuntu website for the link.

Thanks for the feedback,
got ubuntu up and running already. Looks very neat in deed. Also the perfomance seems to be ok, I might check back on the xubuntu option, though. I read that it might be released as sibling like kubuntu once dapper is out.
My laptop is so old, it does not even have an ethernet card. I do have a Netgear W-Lan adaptor connected via PCMCIA, though. It seems to be recognised, since I get an entry in the device manager with vendor and device name. However in System-administration-networking, only my modem shows up. I guess the system is missing the driver for the WLan card. I read that the netgear MA521 adaptor (my wlan card) works with ndswrapper and windows realtec drivers. I that the way I should be heading to get my internet connection to work?

Thanks
Tobias

Maybe try restarting the network and see if it gets recognised - might save some work. By default on my Toshi Satpro 4600 with a Cisco 350 wireless card, the PCMCIA services come up *after* the network. I moved it in the init sequence.
Try "/etc/init.d/networking restart" from a console session. If it doesn't rectify it no harm done -you can always head off down the ndiswrapper path.

Not sure whether this should go here or make a new thread in the noob forum.
Anyway. I installed ubuntu yesterday on my old laptop, today I would like to connect to the internet with my netgear ma521 PCMCIA adapter. Typing in the command "sudo /etc/init.d/networking restart" as mentioned above results in "*reconfiguring network interfaces... [OK]" but still my adapter won't show up in system-administration-networking (only my modem).
I went to the ubuntu repository and installed the ndiswrapper-utils package. Upon typing in a console window "ndiswrapper -l" a message appears "no drivers installed". I downloaded the netgear drivers, as it is mentioned in another thread that they should work with ndiswrapper and my Wlan adapter.

Where do I go from here? Descritions on the web say I have to type "make install" but in what direcotry? and do I only need the .inf file of the driver package downloaded from netgear? Where do I copy that to?

Please help.

Tobias

I' ll just continue in this thread then. Following a nice description at ubuntuwiki https://wiki.ubuntu.com/WifiDocs/Driver/Ndiswrapper I managed to get the driver installed. The driver is listed when I type "ndiswrapper -l" and I can configure the device in system-administration-networking. It is setup as DHCP. At the top right of my screen, when I click on the two monitors and type in wlan0, it says that I have 100% connectivity (which is weird).
Pinging the router does not work, nor any internet connection. I am sure I typed in ESSID and password correctly. What else can be the problem?

Sounds like you made a finger check. You need to ensure WEP keys are in the correct format (text or hex) - things like that.
Do you get an IP ???. You can check the "Support" tab in Network Connections (the two monitors icon you mentioned), or issue "iwconfig" from a terminal session.
If all else fails, turn off security at the AP/router for a while, and see if you can connect.

Update: Use the command - after hibernating, my "Network Connections" no longer shows detail. Dunno why; networking is all black magic.