[rescue] UNIX-like OS for a laptop

Steve Sandau ssandau at gwi.net
Mon Jul 9 11:37:40 CDT 2007


> 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.
> 

I have a couple of low-memory laptops that run OpenBSD nicely. In fact, 
wireless was easier to set up on OpenBSD than Linux, I thought. Granted, 
I am using a standard Cisco card.

The hardware page ( http://www.openbsd.org/i386.html ) says that both of 
those network cards are supported, too.

FWIW, I run OpenBSD 3.9 on a 500MHz Toshiba Portege with 128M of RAM, 
and it works fine with XFCE. I use it for email, browsing and lots of 
terminal sessions.

Steve



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