tried to do the newest DEBIAN network install but became stuck after a short while, because DEBIAN could not recognize the network card.

Is there any known flavour of LINUX which can do this?

It is evident that I could do a CD install and afterwards postinstall the INTEL driver, but being a Newbie, I want to do a plain vanilla network install
without any commandline magic...

Thank you in advance for your contribution to my problem.

That is an old network card, although it is still supported in current kernels.

If you feel like a little commandline magic, that card uses the e100 kernelmodule.

do a If that comes back empty, try

many thanks Lone_Wolf. That means the driver is available,
if I do a full CD installation, it is only lacking
in the minimum system available for the network install.
So let's toast...

Guess you could try the OpenSuse network install disk. They seem to support a lot of intel cards.


I agree with lonewolf that you may not be sure if your card is configured or being loaded. We can't tell your level of knowledge. You may be correct in your diag.

thank you for your answer Jefro. Being somewhat lazy I took
another PC and tried again the DEBIAN network install.
This time no problem with the network device and I really
got some hope using the nice install conversation.

Unfortunately , after having successsfully partitioned
my drives the way he suggested, he could not use both
of the drives: 'could not flush cache of device....'

Really a surprise, that the SW is not able to mount the partitions
that were successfully prepared by the same SW only minutes ago.

I shall stop wasting more time with DEBIAN and go for the OPEN SUSE
network install as proposed by you.

I don't think I meant to say "stop wasting your time". I meant that you have many choices available to use. Like any mechanic you need a full toolbox of tricks. One trick is to sometimes not fight the hard fight when an easy road exists. All I can say is try a different distro. It may fail also.

In my header I forgot to place the 'I'. So it should read 'I stop...' , which
means, that I didn't intend to criticize DEBIAN in general. After having been in the IT business
for a long time I assume that with a bigger effort on time DEBIAN like most OS's can be
successfully installed.

Every year I am doing the test, which flavour of LINUX can be installed with a small effort on time
on an relatively old computer configuration and provide me with a GUI whose appearance and handling
appear acceptable to me.

The two hours of testing time already spent this year, but the next is only 3 months away, so stay tuned and
thank you for your hint referring to OPEN SUSE,jfefro.