[birbear]

Any help from my FRiends would be appreciated.

[birbear]

Ping to you, since you're an OSS stud!

[martin_fierro]

Try creating a live Linux bootable CD from an ISO file (Knoppix or Ubuntu come to mind) and start the laptop up with that.

They probably won't automatically configure your Linksys card as readily as XP does, but the live CD lets you play around with Linux's settings without installing it on your HD.

[Senator Bedfellow]

Everything you ever wanted to know, and then some:

http://hpl.hp.com/personal/Jean_Tourrilhes/Linux/Wireless.html

[isthisnickcool]

You might try knoppix.net and run from the CD....

[Senator Bedfellow]

Also, what model Linksys card is it?

[Fiddlstix]

BTTT

[steve86]

Once in a while you will find a wireless card that isn't supported (or properly supported) by open source drivers. I have one like that. In that case, you can go to a commercial vendor like linuxant.com and purchase a driver.

If you are starting the whole thing from scratch, it is best to select the wireless card according to what's supported in the O.S. distribution you're going to use.

I have Mandriva 10.1 with KDE 3.4 on a Pentium II 400 Mhz laptop and it isn't bad at all for browsing (Firefox and Opera). In fact, some days I don't bother turning on the desktop even though the processor is supposedly six times as fast. KDE 3.4 helped a lot compared to earlier versions.

With an older laptop, however, you would quickly run out of patience trying to run OpenOffice, etc.

[zeugma]

The best way to check out how well your hardware plays with Linux (hint-most stuff does these days), is to download and burn a copy of Knoppix. Once you have the CD, boot the sucker off the knoppix disk, and play with the programs. One word of warning: If you don't have a lot of ram, knoppix is going to be dog slow. That's because it builds a ramdisk to temporarily store files and data. Knoppix won't touch your existing hard disk unless you specifically tell it to.

[ASOC]

I loaded an ISO of Chubby Puppy LINUX and it seems to run fine on my box. You can burn this to a CD with ISOBurn.

Puppy seems to run fine on most everything I have around the house, including some older Packard Bell boxes.

Koppix is fine as well.

If you are having trouble with LINUX, try looking up and reading a HOW TO for the app or action you are trying to get to run.

Learning can be fun.

[MadIvan]

I have just done something very similar. I highly recommend this distribution:

Ubuntu Linux Before you do ANYTHING, download the "Live CD" version, boot from the CD and see how well it runs. This will allow you to see all the hardware compatibility.

If it doesn't find the wireless card right away, don't worry - use the product from these people -

Linuxant

Their Driverloader product will help you set it up.

Should you require any further assistance, I'll be happy to share my knowledge.

I should point out that putting Linux on my laptop (it's an HP Compaq nx7000), revitalised its performance.

Regards, Ivan

[Seven_0]

I just downloaded DSL (Damn Small Linux) 50MB. Sure is faster than Knoppix on my system. I am trying to figure out how to boot from my USB flashdrive.

[AmericaUnited]

Don't go the Linux route! Just add another 256MB of memory and your problems will go away. This ram is cheap! ~$50

Also, consider not loading all of the services and extraneous junk that comes standard with WindowsXP.

[FLAMING DEATH]

This card reportedly works out-of-the-box with SimplyMepis 3.3... http://www.mepis.org/node/5624

If you're making the switch from Windows, you can save yourself a lot of time and troble by getting Mepis. For a full featured distro, it's really user friendly. I'm running version 2004 right now on this ancient laptop of mine, had it for over a year and am very satisfied with it.

[Halfmanhalfamazing]

Your card AFAIK uses broadcom hardware, which isn't supported.

I'd recommend a distro which comes "out of the box" with NDISwrapper, which enables windows drivers to work on linux.

To my knowledge, Ubuntu comes with NDIS in it, as well as Suse.