im new and my laptops old- is this bad?
 

hey, im new to linux, i recently grew interest to the os after finding out about the ability to mod the xbox with it, and soon the ps2. So i decided it might be fun or atleast a learning experiance to try it out on my ol' skool toshiba satellite pro 460cdt. the 460's currently runnin '98 and i would like to be able to do all the functions it can do now (obviously) including a media player, word processor, bla bla bla. ive searched the web for two days now, and all it has done is brought up a ton more questions. im currently downloading mandriva 10.0, im pretty sure this isnt the version im looking for, comments and suggestions or even instructions would be greatly appreciated, thanks

What's its specs?

GenuineIntel Pentium(r) Processor 32 mb ram with a whole 1,047,000,000 bytes in the hard disk. I want to format it aswell, do i need to worry about toshiba drivers too?

That looks like almost a gigabyte hard drive -- that's enough for lighter distributions. Mandrake, I think, uses several cds so uses a lot of space. You should try Damn Small Linux -- it's a 50MB full desktop distribution. It's good for older machines.

im currently downloading that dist now, do you know of good reasources/programs for this os, im using it mostly for the internet and connecting it through my lan, the other two cpu's are running xp home sp1, do you forsee any problems with this setup

DSL is packaged-based, you can get a bunch of software through the MyDSL utility - games, utilities, server software, and all kinds of other stuff I can't think of now. I'm not really sure if it will work with your XP machines, but it probably will. The lan setup is mostly automatic with DSL.

ive got the live cd running on it now, and i cant beleive how much faster it is, does anyone know the best way to format the drive and install the software fully?

I see you are a bit past this point, but I found a page on installing Linux on Toshiba Techra series laptops and the intro says it should also cover your model. Might be worth a read.

well igot it running off of the hd, and i was really suprised at the speed that my trusty ol sattelite was capable of. but my excitement level dropped a little when I started to use the program. noo2linux is an understatement. WOW. im soooo clueless, not ever using anything other than MS products scince i threw out my commodor 64 12 years ago. funny tho, linux kind of (loosely) reminds me of that system, of course they're probobly nothing alike, but, besides that, the only thing i remember for sure is that one moon runner game and that it used RCA connections for tv's, it seems as if it could have been a dream. wow that takes me back, i hope im not dating myself too much. hey! does anyone remember coleco vision??? anyways, is it just me or is this thing really confusing to non programers, cuz, i dont have a clue, i've began reading some docs. about the program ,but they seem to only be confussing me more, so i downloaded ubuntu and im gonna try that out is there much of a differance between ubuntu and damn small? and is there any resources or programs/applications to help make my move from XP to linux a not so unpleasant experiance as possible

thanks in advance

Ubuntu is supposed to be pretty easy to use, but with your 32 Meg of memory and 1 gig hard drive, I would think you are going to have a real hard time with it. If you can load it up, it will most likely be much slower than DSL.

What in particular are you having problems with?

to be brutally honest with you its like greek to me, /dev/cdrom argh! i feel as if im learning a brand new language just to mess around on the net with my old laptop. im hoping dsl is very a very basic program, and i can find another distro with an easier to learn interface (i dont want to say more like windows or os\x, but to be honest thats kind of what i want untill i learn a lil more) or atleast somthing that teaches you along the way. i downloaded some litterature, and im gonna give that a shot. Previously the toshi had been runnin 98 se (slowly, so slow it was unbearable) but i always had room on it for winamp, a wmp, a couple of half hour tv shows 20-30 mp3's and about a 100 pics + documents webcam software, bla bla bla with a lil room left aswell, and it played all of them quite well, aslong as they were the only programs running! if you know of a good user freindly interface let me know, like i sed im new, but not a quiter.

Actually, you are kind of learning a new language. You are used to Windows and Linux isn't Windows. Each of the GUIs do things different. You may want to take a look at Mepis, it's a pretty friendly distro. You may have some issues with the speed, though. It's worth a shot. From what I remember, you can use it as a live CD and if you like it, you click the install icon and it installs for you. It's also really easy to use. Might be worth taking a look.