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Ike
intermediate
Joined: 16 Oct 2007
Posts: 200
Location: Melbourne, Australia
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 Posted: Fri Nov 09, 2007 5:17 pm Post subject: I want Linux on my laptop |
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Hi all, just wont some help!!! I thinking about geting rid of Win XP and using Linux on my old Laptop. Just wondering what Linux OS I should use as theres heaps of versions. I have a Toshiba Sattelite 1800, It has a 800mhz Celeron with 384mb ram (I said it was old he he). I just hope Linux has the right drivers for it including my Belkin WiFi card.
Thanks
Ike (Darren)
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blade002
intermediate
Joined: 30 Sep 2007
Posts: 113
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| Posted: Fri Nov 09, 2007 7:27 pm Post subject: |
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My advice to you would be to go for Suse Linux 10.3  I currently use version 10.2 and although it takes a bit of getting used to, once you have it up and running things will be ok.
If you need any help with it once its installed let me know, and i will do the best i can to give you a hand so you can learn from my own mistakes. i started using it only about 6 months ago, but i have learn't quite a bit in that time. 
There are 2 versions of desktop you can choose from when you install it too. They are called Gnome & KDE. To be honest, i don't really know what the differences between the 2 are, other than KDE having more eye candy, but i use Gnome although for the life of me i cannot remember the reason why i chose it?. lol.
Here is a screenshot how mine looks at the moment. this is running under Gnome. The background picture i chose because it looks very Eric Schwartz in style ( me like )
And yeah i use big fonts and keep the icons reasonably large ( you can stretch the icons ) because i don't like to squint.
BTW - Linux will run in 128meg and requires only roughly 500mhz to run ( Unlike Vista  ), so your Celeron 800 and its 384meg will be fine, and from what i understand, Linux is quite friendly to old hardware. Plus once you enable "Desktop Effects" in Linux, you can some really nice things.
Be warned though Linux is "not" perfect and has faults of its own just like any OS, but i wish to stay away from Windows as much as i can despite the fact i am trying to get back into IT work, although i will doing a Course in Linux Administration as soon as i can get enough money saved.
Last edited by blade002 on Fri Nov 09, 2007 7:53 pm; edited 2 times in total |
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Ike
intermediate
Joined: 16 Oct 2007
Posts: 200
Location: Melbourne, Australia
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| Posted: Fri Nov 09, 2007 7:48 pm Post subject: |
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Cheers Blade. How is Linux for hardware support? I have a Belkin Wifi card for my laptop, I'm hoping there would be a driver for it. Do i have to buy this Linux version or is it free?
cheers
Ike
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tomz/TIDE
Moderator
Joined: 08 Jul 2007
Posts: 562
Location: nsw.Australia
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| Posted: Fri Nov 09, 2007 7:55 pm Post subject: I want Linux on my laptop |
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Ike, everything is free if you know where to look for it 
Anybody tried Linux Puppy? Thats pretty cool and you can try it without installing over your existing O/S. Just boot your PC up with the Puppy disk in the CD Rom drive.
tomz
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blade002
intermediate
Joined: 30 Sep 2007
Posts: 113
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| Posted: Fri Nov 09, 2007 8:03 pm Post subject: |
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| Ike wrote: |
Cheers Blade. How is Linux for hardware support? I have a Belkin Wifi card for my laptop, I'm hoping there would be a driver for it. Do i have to buy this Linux version or is it free?
cheers
Ike |
Linux for hardware support is a hit and miss affair. with some systems it works perfectly and there is no a drama in the world!. but then it can be a problem with some newer hardware and even some older hardware, but generally speaking its pretty good and its getting better. Actually the main gripe with most people who use Linux is driver support, and it has "always" been a bone of contention.
But like i said, its getting better, and as each new version of Linux comes out, it moves closer to its goal of being a lot better. I have heard good things about Suse Linux 10.3 and its support, which is why i would recommend it to you, plus after reading up on all the versions, it "does" seem to be the best one to be using.
You can download it from here
http://en.opensuse.org/Released_Version
( although i had trouble getting the 10.2 DVD version back then because it just wouldn't connect to the ftp ) but if this does not work just download it through a Torrent, and YES its completely free as all versions of Linux appear to be.
Also download the GM version of Linux which just stands for "Gold Master" and just means it the final version. The other version RC, stands for "Release Candidate" which is like a pre-release that can still be used but may contain some bugs.
If you chose to get it from a torrent you will see something along the lines of "Suse Linux 10.3 GM.iso" or something to that equation. thats the one you want.
Last edited by blade002 on Fri Nov 09, 2007 8:08 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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blade002
intermediate
Joined: 30 Sep 2007
Posts: 113
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| Posted: Fri Nov 09, 2007 8:06 pm Post subject: Re: I want Linux on my laptop |
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| tomz/TIDE wrote: |
Ike, everything is free if you know where to look for it
Anybody tried Linux Puppy? Thats pretty cool and you can try it without installing over your existing O/S. Just boot your PC up with the Puppy disk in the CD Rom drive.
tomz |
Yeah your right there Tomz, and actually Suse Linux is the same if you download the LIVE CD version. You just boot from CD and it allow you to use Linux without actually installing it to the Hard Drive so you can see if you like it or not.
I totally forgot all about this, so thanks for bringing it up mate ... You might want to try this before you install it Ike just to get a feel for it. but its entirely up to you. |
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Ike
intermediate
Joined: 16 Oct 2007
Posts: 200
Location: Melbourne, Australia
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| Posted: Fri Nov 09, 2007 10:42 pm Post subject: |
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Installing Suse Linux 10.3 as I type. I just hope I can get My belkin Wireless G Notebook card to work on it. I've been reading I have to use a prog called ndiswrapper. But I have no idea how to use it. Hopefully Blade you could give me a hand with this one. By the way it's been nearly 40min and it's still installing.
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Ike
intermediate
Joined: 16 Oct 2007
Posts: 200
Location: Melbourne, Australia
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| Posted: Sat Nov 10, 2007 8:24 am Post subject: |
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| Ike wrote: |
| Installing Suse Linux 10.3 as I type. I just hope I can get My belkin Wireless G Notebook card to work on it. I've been reading I have to use a prog called ndiswrapper. But I have no idea how to use it. Hopefully Blade you could give me a hand with this one. By the way it's been nearly 40min and it's still installing. |
Everything's installed, one problem Konqueror does not let find my dvd drive so I can transfer files from. I can access the drive for Music and DVD Movies but thats it. Help Please!!!!!!1 
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Ike
intermediate
Joined: 16 Oct 2007
Posts: 200
Location: Melbourne, Australia
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| Posted: Sun Nov 11, 2007 2:37 pm Post subject: |
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| Ike wrote: |
| Ike wrote: |
| Installing Suse Linux 10.3 as I type. I just hope I can get My belkin Wireless G Notebook card to work on it. I've been reading I have to use a prog called ndiswrapper. But I have no idea how to use it. Hopefully Blade you could give me a hand with this one. By the way it's been nearly 40min and it's still installing. |
Everything's installed, one problem Konqueror does not let find my dvd drive so I can transfer files from. I can access the drive for Music and DVD Movies but thats it. Help Please!!!!!!1 |
Hey people i'm feeling I've made a bad mistake going to Linux. The only thing that works is me going online via ethernet cable. Can't even play cd's anymore. I'm going to try Mandriva OS and if that lets me down aswell, looks like it's back to WinXP for me. I'll keep you guys posted.
Ciao
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blade002
intermediate
Joined: 30 Sep 2007
Posts: 113
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| Posted: Sun Nov 11, 2007 6:06 pm Post subject: |
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| Ike wrote: |
| Ike wrote: |
| Ike wrote: |
| Installing Suse Linux 10.3 as I type. I just hope I can get My belkin Wireless G Notebook card to work on it. I've been reading I have to use a prog called ndiswrapper. But I have no idea how to use it. Hopefully Blade you could give me a hand with this one. By the way it's been nearly 40min and it's still installing. |
Everything's installed, one problem Konqueror does not let find my dvd drive so I can transfer files from. I can access the drive for Music and DVD Movies but thats it. Help Please!!!!!!1 |
Hey people i'm feeling I've made a bad mistake going to Linux. The only thing that works is me going online via ethernet cable. Can't even play cd's anymore. I'm going to try Mandriva OS and if that lets me down aswell, looks like it's back to WinXP for me. I'll keep you guys posted.
Ciao |
Hey Ike, sorry for my absence, what seems to be the drama exactly, you can't play audio CD's you mean?, or it wont mount your CD drive?. I actually use Gnome so i do not use Konqueror, only Nautilus. Don't give up on Linux just yet!.
My advise to you would be to perhaps install Smart Update then. Here is a link to the instructions on how to do it.
http://www.suselinuxsupport.de/wikka.php?wakka=Installation
A couple of things though. Where is says "Automating for Gnome", don't bother. I never had to do this and it just looks like one big headache if you do.
Also when installing all your installation channels while smart is installing, don't accept ANY "3rd Party" Channels!. I tried it once and i had to do a complete reinstall. Its not really the fault of Linux this one, its just that there are a lot of non-legit updates going around, and they conflict your system.
Also under "Configuring Metadata", ignore where its says to change the "Base Url". I could not for the life of me figure out how to do this, and even the guys on the Linux forum were clueless on how to do this!. I spent a good 5 or 6 days!!!!!, trying to figure this out at one point!. In the end i gave up, but it still works anyway, so god know why they even tell you to do it in the first place?
Ok, well that's it for now. Install smart, get it all up and running, and then get back to me to tell me how you went!?. This program should automatically once you do an "update all" find the missing dependencies that you need
( dependencies are kind of like the equivalent of a program needing a Library in Amiga Workbench, or a DLL file in Windows for a particular program to access it and run ).
This will not resolve ALL your Linux issues, but it should fix most!.
Catchya buddy. |
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Ike
intermediate
Joined: 16 Oct 2007
Posts: 200
Location: Melbourne, Australia
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| Posted: Sun Nov 11, 2007 7:03 pm Post subject: |
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Hey Blade. I installed the KDE version. I hope I didn't make a mistake by doing that. I also installed Mandriva, it found my dvd drive and that worked fine but I had trouble installing VLC player and it ran pretty slow on my laptop so I'm installing openSuse again. Maybe the install didn't work properly.
who knows.
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blade002
intermediate
Joined: 30 Sep 2007
Posts: 113
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| Posted: Sun Nov 11, 2007 7:06 pm Post subject: |
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| Ike wrote: |
Hey Blade. I installed the KDE version. I hope I didn't make a mistake by doing that. I also installed Mandriva, it found my dvd drive and that worked fine but I had trouble installing VLC player and it ran pretty slow on my laptop so I'm installing openSuse again. Maybe the install didn't work properly.
who knows. |
Maybe install the Gnome desktop, to make it easier for me to help you. Since i don't know the KDE desktop all that well. We will sort through this |
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Ike
intermediate
Joined: 16 Oct 2007
Posts: 200
Location: Melbourne, Australia
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| Posted: Sun Nov 11, 2007 7:07 pm Post subject: |
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I'm on chat atm. I would install Gnome but I don't want to waste 650mb of dl again.
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blade002
intermediate
Joined: 30 Sep 2007
Posts: 113
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| Posted: Tue Nov 13, 2007 7:31 pm Post subject: |
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| Ike wrote: |
| I'm on chat atm. I would install Gnome but I don't want to waste 650mb of dl again. |
Gnome is already on the CD you downloaded. You are given the choice of either KDE or Gnome when you install it. There isn't a Gnome CD and KDE CD, they are both on the Suse Linux 10.3 installation. |
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Ike
intermediate
Joined: 16 Oct 2007
Posts: 200
Location: Melbourne, Australia
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| Posted: Wed Nov 14, 2007 8:46 am Post subject: |
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blade, The cd dosn't give me that option. Do you have a copy with the Gnome version? If so i'll fix you up with a blank cdr and bring it to the Convention.
Cheers
Ike
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