What programs work on linux
 

I'm about to in stall linux on my laptop; redhat 6.2 zoot. I have never used linux so I was wondering what programs will work on it-will some programs that worked on windows work on linux or do they have to be made for linux. I also have a wireless card on my laptop is there some way to install it if the cd, which i believe was made for windows, does not work.

Any information about linux will be real helpful.

Thank You for all of your help.

Re: What programs work on linux
 

welcome to LQ!!! :)


redhat 6.2 is so old that it's not maintained anymore... you should really consider using a modern distro instead... why don't you try something like mandriva, suse, or fedora?? you will probably save yourself a lot of headaches by picking-up a modern distro...

Quote:

I have never used linux so I was wondering what programs will work on it-will some programs that worked on windows work on linux or do they have to be made for linux.

programs that are multi-platform (such as firefox, openoffice.org, etc.) will work fine on linux... of course there's a lot of software that is windows-only, in which case you could try different approaches to get it to run on linux, for example:

http://www.winehq.com/

http://www.codeweavers.com/

http://www.win4lin.com/

Quote:

I also have a wireless card on my laptop is there some way to install it if the cd, which i believe was made for windows, does not work.

if your wireless card isn't supported by the linux kernel, you can try getting it to work with the windows drivers by using ndiswrapper:

http://ndiswrapper.sourceforge.net/

just my :twocents:...

> I have never used linux so I was wondering what programs will
> work on it-will some programs that worked on windows work on
> linux or do they have to be made for linux.

There's tons of linux programs (maybe more than window - don't
really know). You're welcomed to surf around in

www.websamba.com/Linux_Docs_Links
-> softwares

Sheng-Chieh

Re: What programs work on linux
 

you can get drivers for Linux for most products, try the card makers website first and searching this forum with the search button, or http://www.google.com/linux is amazing for finding out things

Take a look at the Linux equivalents for Windows programs.

Most up to date software and drivers (including just about every wireless driver) will not work with such an ancient release as RH 6.2, though. As win32sux said, you really need to go for something more recent

I'm looking at RH 6.2 because I'm not sure what will work on a 300mhz laptop with only 32mb of memory. RH 6.2 looked like it work work good. I tried Suse but I think it need 64mb of memory. Any orther O/S ideas are welcomed. Everything looks good to me.

Re: Re: What programs work on linux
 

Just to avoid confusion here, by "multi-platform", win32sux means that there are Linux versions of those programs and not that your Windows versions will work under Linux.

> I'm looking at RH 6.2 because I'm not sure what will work on a
> 300mhz laptop with only 32mb of memory. RH 6.2 looked like it
> work work good. I tried Suse but I think it need 64mb of memory.
> Any orther O/S ideas are welcomed.

There are linux distros that specialize in slow or reduced
hardware space. Namely,

Damm Small linux
Beatrix
Puppy linux
Vector linux
slackware
others?

I never used one of them. But I would try one of them first
before using an obsolete RH6.2. All the softwares will be
ancient on RH6.2.

Sheng-Chieh

personal opion i would go with fedora core 4, mandriva, or ubuntu. i dont think ull have much of an issue ona 300mhz. all hardware is different so noone can tell for sure. i welcome you to the fun side of operating systems. most of the distros u find u can download off net. ubuntu will send you the cds for install but the rest whatever you decide you can find either on the lq download link on your right hand side of this page or at the distros site. good luck and happy downloading

300 Mhz is fine even for modern distros, but 32MB RAM is very small. Try the ones suggested by shengchieh or get more RAM , pref more RAM as you'll struggle with some programs...

Whats the make and model of the laptop?

Check this website:


Linux on Laptops

Linux on laptops website will give you an idea on what distros people have installed on your make and model of laptop.(look for installs with recently released/supported disto. ie. slack 10, suse 9.2,etc...)

I'm not sure what 300MHz means. I am used to P4-P3-P2-P1.
Damn Small Linux has done very well on all my older machines. Its not the prettiest distro, but it includes all the necessities and not a whole lot of bloat.

My .02.

Regards,
Blair

FYI, Pn means the architecture of the CPU chip. nnnMHz means how fast the CPU chip runs (aka cycles per sec). Note that a given arch eg P4 will usually be issued as several versions running at different (clock) speeds...

im sorry ur right i didnt see that he said 32 meg of ram. altho linux can run on less than 128 i would suggest getting to that much atleast i have on this pc a p2 400mhz and 256 ram and it runs kinda on slow side.

Boxerboy. You have a P2 400MHz running on the slow side?
I have a very similar setup running Slackware 10.0 and Fluxbox as the wm and it runs very nice.
KDE and Gnome are a little slow.
I like Fluxbox and Dillo as my browser.

Regards,
Blair

its pretty slow and hangs the pc begins thinking and i start having to fource stuff quit. im not real sure the speed of hd.its an old worn out pc that i got from some guy that didnt need it anymore. since it does run slow the only thing i use it for is programming for most part. this pc im on has a p2 450 and 512 ram it runs everything great.

Try Slack 10 or Vector, DSL, and run a lighter wm Fluxbox-XFCE-etc....I think my Gateway is P2 450Mhz 192MBRam. Its one of my favorite machines for surfing the net.
My .02.