[coover]

Old laptop 500 MHz Pentium III CPU, Maximum 256 MB RAM

What Distro should I install on this machine?

I wish it to be able to wirelessly connect with a WPA-PSK (TKIP) secured network.

I tried to boot the machine from an Ubuntu 8.04 Alpha 2 CD as a test, but it ran extremely slow (as it does now with Win XP SP).

[prunejuice]

If you want to stick with the Ubuntu family, try Xubuntu or Fluxbuntu.

KDE is the thing that is dragging you down, and both these distros use lighter weight window managers.

[coover]

Thanks, Prunejuice. I'll try one or both on a live CD to see what happens. I just ran a Live CD for DSL and the machine ran quickly, but i'm not so sure I want to run a bare-bones distro.

And I'm wondering about a driver for a wireless adapter. I have two that I can use, a Netgear WG511T and an Airlink AWLC3026T, but I've been checking both the Netgear and Airlink websites for drivers, but there doesn't appear to be any. I assume that some may be found on the internet, but my search has failed to find any. And even if i do, will I be able to connect to my WPA network? What about WEP?

[prunejuice]

You may have some luck with NDISwrapper for your wireless.

[zchenyu]

Originally Posted by prunejuice

You may have some luck with NDISwrapper for your wireless.

Yes, you could try ndiswrapper but note that it is still buggy. I would suggest Googling a Linux driver for your particular wireless card model.

[veribaka]

If everything fails, like it did for me, try to use a different network manager from the repositories.

[RobLinux]

Originally Posted by coover

Thanks, Prunejuice. I'll try one or both on a live CD to see what happens. I just ran a Live CD for DSL and the machine ran quickly, but i'm not so sure I want to run a bare-bones distro.

You have to make some tradeoff. Either :

Have a machine with more RAM (and preferably faster CPU) lets your run KDE or GNOME
Run software that's not expecting 1GHz CPU + 512MB RAM eg) XFCE, fluxbox
Run in textmode and ditch graphics
Use KDE or GNOME and tune your installation to minimise memory consumption, and then be patient

[veribaka]

Maybe Xubuntu is for you, very very light distro.

[coover]

I really do appreciate all your replies. As far as adding memory to this machine ... it can't be done. The machine was designed to run 512 MB, with two memory slots, but any chip added to the 2nd slot causes blue screen problems.

I got the machine used with Win 98 on it ... don't want the security problems of Win 98, so decided to try Linux. Next try will be Xubuntu

[tomdkat]

Originally Posted by coover

I really do appreciate all your replies. As far as adding memory to this machine ... it can't be done. The machine was designed to run 512 MB, with two memory slots, but any chip added to the 2nd slot causes blue screen problems.

Do you have additional RAM right now for the laptop? If so, I would put it in and boot from the live CD and at the boot options screen, choose the "memtest" memory checker. Have it check for memory errors. If there are no errors, the RAM might run fine with Linux.

Peace...

[monckywrench]

Live CDs often run slow on older machines. I'd install Xubuntu to hard disk and see how it performs. BTW you can also install other window managers and switch between them to see what you prefer.

[veribaka]

Under Xubuntu you can install other distro's desktops from the web, to see how they handle.