I unfortunately don't have the laptop model with me right now, nor the model of the wireless card - two really good pieces of information that I should have gotten before I posted. I apologize. As for what I mean by old - the laptop is 7 or more years old, I'd hazard a guess. How can I tell between RH and RHEL? As for what I want to do with the laptop - two things. The number one thing I want to do is to be able to take it to the library, connect to their wi-fi, and use a web browser to browse web sites, read email, etc. The second thing I want to do is to be able to install a version of tcl and supplimental libraries and write some code. I don't envision that to be a big deal - the compiles will be a limited number, and the interpreter runs normally with minimal impact on the system. So, if I can get the wi-fi stuff to work, I should be pretty well set. -- <URL: http://wiki.tcl.tk/ > Even if explicitly stated to the contrary, nothing in this posting should be construed as representing my employer's opinions. <URL: mailto:lvirden@xxxxxxxxx > <URL: http://www.purl.org/NET/lvirden/ > -----Original Message----- From: redhat-list-bounces@xxxxxxxxxx [mailto:redhat-list-bounces@xxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of m.roth2006@xxxxxxx Sent: Tuesday, March 18, 2008 10:26 AM To: General Red Hat Linux discussion list Subject: Re: Novice question about laptops and wireless Larry, >Date: Tue, 18 Mar 2008 08:56:39 -0400 >From: "Virden, Larry W." <lvirden@xxxxxxx> > >I've inherited a really old Dell laptop, on which is Please define "old". installed a really >old version of Redhat - I believe it is redhat 4. The Do you mean RH 4, or RHEL 4? The latter is not exactly "ancient" (given that we run it at work, and our rack-mounted boxes are not quite a couple of years old.) >slowness of the >machine, the limited amount of disk space, etc. probably has me locked >into staying at this version. Linux runs on *everything*, including old, small machines. Please note that you can get a release that is explicitly x386, meaning that you could, theoretically, run it on an 80386, which is what Linus started writing it for, back around '91.... I was running RH9 quite happily for years on a K6 233 MHZ system. The only real question is what do you want to *do* on the box? Large compiles, or d/b's, will be slow. Ordinary usage - office software, browsing, email, shouldn't be slower than, say, XP on the same box. (We will *not* talk about Vista <g>) In fact, sometimes newer runs faster.... > >The laptop does have a wireless card. I've never used a linux Do you know what make? If it's an Atheros chipset, you want to look at madwifi.org. <snip> mark -- redhat-list mailing list unsubscribe mailto:redhat-list-request@xxxxxxxxxx?subject=unsubscribe https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/redhat-list -- redhat-list mailing list unsubscribe mailto:redhat-list-request@xxxxxxxxxx?subject=unsubscribe https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/redhat-list
