Now that I have access to the list, I am pinging it.
Have you tried a bootable CD, like Knoppix? Tons of free ditros out there, and it’s a great way to get a feel for the OS without having to start your experience trying to make hardware work.
Linux Ping
(My wife keeps all my dirty pictures. In a lockbox.)
You mention that you have an old version of Redhat. The first step would be to get a current version of Fedora (or Ubuntu or other current distribution) and try that.
New device drivers get added all the time, and in general the newer the distribution, the more likely it will support your hardware.
Linux Mint was as easy an install I have ever done.
I am still a newbie and have had no problems.
I had a lot of trouble with and older toshiba and older redhat and linux for wireless - it was fussy about driver and the hardware. It didn't like a linksys pcmcia, but was ok with a Lucent card.
I had no trouble with the recent Ubuntu and a new HP.
Did anyone see the $99 Netbook at CVS??
I have a 13 year old neice and this thing might be a good birthday gift for her. They run Windows CE which is bad but they can open Word and PDF files and play Youtube videos (not in HD of course) and it has a webcam and mic.
So it can do all the basics. Definitely wouldn’t give this kid a more expensive computer. heh.
I am a newbie myself. I have a couple of bootable linux CD’s already burned. One of them is tiny ol’ PuppyLinux.
Might try suse, its free and dead easy
Basically insert cd and click ok a few times
Learning the nomenclature of Linux will take a long time. If you started on 'puting with DOS like I did you have to learn a whole new language and you keep comparing the Linux command with something in Windows/DOS to try to understand what you're doing.
It is a free application. It will let you run virtual machines on your windows computer. You can find "appliances" or virtual machines of all different flavors of linux online (again, for free), download them, run them in VMWare Player and decide which distribution is right for you.
You can run several virtual machines at once (depending on the resources of your host computer). You can network them together and treat them as if they were stand-alone machines, each with its own operating system.
I run Fedora 14 for 64 bit. I would go with Fedora over Red Hat except if you want to run Oracle. The downside with Fedora, they only now do Intel x86 for both 32 and 64 bit systems. They dropped PPC which bummed me out since I have quite a few PPC machines. Of course not I don’t have to keep updating them every 6 months to a year anymore.
The only thing with FC14 is I have not been able to get VMWare to run where as it worked with FC13. Other software like xine to play DVD’s is available at RPM Fusion but however, the site will not carry libdvdcss which is essential to play them.
I dual-boot Win 98SE & Puppy Linux (4.3.1) on a HP Vectra VL Series 7, 266mhz Pentium 2, 192mb PC100 RAM. (IIRC This system's around 12 years old.) I'm very pleased with the performance.
And for really old systems, there's always Damn Small Linux, which reportedly will run on a 486 w. 8mb RAM. It's only about a 50mb download.
I use Linux Mint on a HP VL400DT, Pentium 3 w. 512mb PC133 RAM. (No install, I just use the live CD.)
And Knoppix might be worth a look.
I use Fedora here at home on my personal machine. My family has a Ubuntu machine.
Fedora is not really meant for newcomers to Linux, though it will do whatever you want as it is a general purpose distro.
As far as wireless, I can't help you very much as I run a wired-to-router setup here. I used to have wireless working several versions ago, but haven't set it up in a while. I don't honestly know the current capabilities of Fedora and wireless. I think the ease of setting it up depends on your wireless chip brand.
The initial install will be quite simple. It's all menu-driven, and pretty self-explanatory. Once you boot up the first time, it will guide you through setting up the clock, initial user (not root), and passwords. Again, it's all menu-driven and self-explanatory.
Once it's installed, and you boot up and login the first time, You should have no trouble figuring it out. It's all GUI, and menu based. It'll probably be GNOME, but you can load up other window managers to try out. I use Xfce, and sometimes KDE. Some suit your style better than others.
One thing to keep in mind, though--Linux allows you greater freedom than Windows does. At least 6 different window managers, several web browsers, and multiple choices of software for just about any task you can think of. The point is to explore these options, use the ones you like, and ignore the ones you don't.
Now that I have access to the list, I am pinging it.
You couldn’t get Ubuntu to boot? Then there is something you are doing wrong. If you have correctly downloaded a free copy of ubuntu onto your cd, then you need ONLY to do a “warm boot” or turn off your computer with the ubuntu CD in the disk drive. Then when you get to the introductory screen of the computer’s boot or load phase (which is not ubuntu), press the function key f12 and you will be able to select the device to boot from; select your cd drive, accept that setting, and then it will take things from there.
You do not even have to install Ubuntu from the cd onto your hard drive. Ubuntu will run from the cd (more slowly, usually) but you can test drive it from there. It will auto detect your internet connnection and you can then get used to a regular, point, drop the menu, click, experience.
There are many other “distros” (distributions of Linux) that will allow test drives from CDs. But one thing at a time. If you cannot get Ubuntu to run from a cd, then it is not ubuntu that is the hang up. It is something you are or are not doing. I run Linux/Mint mostly (sometimes ubuntu) off old IBM laptops. Which are plenty cheap. It is a “disposable” computer. If I lose or damage it, gosh, no grief.
But don’t get distro-fever and go trying every distro out there until you can get what is known to work to work. Otherwise you will have a frustrating experience. But then that is just my opinion. Have at it.
Linux is easy to learn now point and click not the old command line like it used to be but if you choose to you can run it that way. A good link to look at www.distrowatch.com you can read about or download many Linux distros there.Myself I run NST sever edition which is Fedora core based because I like the stability.
There are many easy distros you could use I don’t like to say this one or that one is easiest because what runs on my machines may not on someone else’s but most distros are live now so you can try them out before you install.