[geeks] UNIX-like OS for a laptop

Sheldon T. Hall shel at tandem.artell.net
Sun Jul 8 22:24:24 CDT 2007


Folks-

I have an old laptop on which I'd like to install something in the UNIX
constellation.  Solaris, one of the BSDs, some Linux distro, I don't much
care.  That is, I don't much care as long as it supports the Cardbus network
cards I have: a D-Link DWL-G630 WiFi card and a D-Link DFE-690TXD Ethernet
card.

Other potential issues ... it's a Taiwanese no-name laptop, P-III 600 or
something, and will only take 128 MB of RAM.

I don't care about having a high-zoot GUI; command line is fine, though it
ought to have an X Windows client.

Because I just happen to have the CDs lying around, I've tried FreeBSD 6.1,
which won't boot all the way, and Ubuntu Workstation, which is glacially
slow.  Ubuntu's installer hung on the first try, and crashed on the seconds
try, so I never got far enough along to know if it would support the D-Link
cards.

Clues sought.

Thanks.

-Shel



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