So, I’m now accepting suggestions for operating systems for my Dell Laptop. It’s a 450ish Mhz CPiA laptop with (quite a lot) of memory (256Meg?). I’ve tried Ubuntu. Ubuntu:
– Out of the ‘box’ it failed to boot twice
– Fails to work with my network card (I’ve tried everything they suggest, with the exception of installing Raconfig, which wouldn’t build. I’ve installed RuTilt which is the other suggestion, which informs me it can’t get the Tx rate and then does nothing else).
– Has updated software on it and now won’t load at all
– Is therefore not likely to win any awards from me
I was thinking about Gentoo, but I think my machine may not be high enough spec for Gentoo. And I’m not sure I have the patience. With one unreliable pc, and one no-working-install laptop I’m kinda keen to get a working machine pretty quickly. Although it goes against my better nature, I’m currently downloading Redhat / Fedora 6. I am really keen not to end up back with Windows, I was moderately impressed by Ubuntu’s picking up and running with the windows network, but the fact it’s stone cold dead now, that doesn’t impress me.
So, we shall see. Anyone any other suggestions?
I’d say Gentoo, even on such a laptop. These days they only support a Stage 3 install anyway, so it’s pretty quick to get up to a machine you can use, at the desktop at least. I sorta liked Ubuntu when I tried it, but seemed to have inherited Debian’s fascination with the archaic.
(BTW, try Gnome these days. I astonished myself lately by preferring it to KDE now, and should be build quicker / run quicker / be smaller than KDE.)
Or even bring it round here. I seem to have the Gentoo-fu. (it always works for me. :-) ) and I’m running it happily on a 500Mhz machine with not much more memory than that. Although having said that I probably should put my money where my mouth is and try actually building X/Gnome on it…
… at the *console* I meant, in the first paragraph.
Well, at the moment the Laptop is back on Windows, this is a temporary measure, but one which works really well – in so far as it actually works with my wireless card without causing me pain and torment. Problem is, my experience with Ubuntu’s put me back off Linux, it still feels like the 14 year old boys have control – by which I mean it looks nice, but when you try and install anything you find that you need to find the dependancies for that app, but those dependencies have dependencies….
And I used to quite relish the challenge, but now I just want stuff to install without hastling me; and if it can’t do that (which it very noticably didn’t) then – well – hrm. I’m back to being a miserable old cow who hates all OSs….
Nah, you just want a Mac. :-)
I do, it’s true. I want a Mac. I do. A big, powerful Mac. However, Macs cost money, money which could be spent on eliminating my huge debts and getting me to move to Canada.
Well, after 3 days continual building my mini-itx box finished (slightly faster, slightly more memory than your laptop) building X and Gnome and Firefox, and is all working. Haha, three days! Except Firefox won’t let me load Google Browser Sync for some reason. Grr. Other than that, and the time it took to build, it all Just Worked. But Isn’t 1024×768 *small!*