Pre-install Qs for Compaq laptop

[aahhaa]

Hi All!

I've tried a bunch of distros on my old Compaq laptop.
It's a 17XL570 Presario; Intel PIII 800Mhz with 256 megs RAM & 20 G HD with half its space empty. Under the old ME OS, everything works fine.

myQs:

1. The biggest hangup I have is needing rural dialup ability, no distro has yet 'just found' this modem.

2. I tried all 3 flavors of Ubuntu via Live CDs (may hold the guinness record for download duration).

Ubuntu seems to take forever to load and then the mouse stutters and freezes- it seems too much for this old machine.

Kubuntu loads very nicely, and things open with reasonable speed. The same is true of Xubuntu.

I don't understand why this would be the case; does Gnome take up that much more RAM?

3. My main desired user programs are Open Office, Firefox & Thunderbird, and Audacity. I understand these can be downloaded, but are there other reasons to pick one over the other.

4. Other distros say there is a known ACPI problem, but Kubuntu doesn't say this. Does that mean the prob is covered?

5. Is uninstall handled as clearly as the great install options?

thanks!

[aahhaa]

Re: Pre-install Qs for Compaq laptop

well, was hoping for a little help by now...

Should at least be online by now; I have installed a DlinkG630 card and puzzled around until I found the Knetwork Manager & the Network Settings.

Network Settings shows an 'enabled wireless network device' on ath0; it has a green checkmark but the text itself looks grayed out. Any changes seem to require root access, which I can't do as a LiveCD session ?

The Zeroconf Service Discovery panel looks like it would seek a connection, but when I attempt to activate it, I get a warning which says Enabling browsing by opening a port will allow 'remote attqackers ' to access my computer as the avahi user'.

This is absolute gibberish to a new user. The link to the wiki is down and there are no help files on the CD about this.

By comparison, in less time than it took to type this, the Mandriva LiveCD had the dlink card online.

Hope somebody has an idea what to do next to get the machine online- I look stupid dragging 2 computers to the coffeeshop!

[aahhaa]

Re: Pre-install Qs for Compaq laptop

just to prove a point, since my last post, I closed down the Kubuntu disc, loaded the Mandriva One, and answered a couple plain English questions to set up the connection, and logged back in here on this Compaq.

In terms of a\user interface, I'd say its very clear in the important step of getting online...

[marshallbanana]

Re: Pre-install Qs for Compaq laptop

3. My main desired user programs are Open Office, Firefox & Thunderbird, and Audacity. I understand these can be downloaded, but are there other reasons to pick one over the other.

Open Office is there by default. Firefox & Thunderbird are not in kubuntu by default because they are based on gtk (gnome), however they are very commonly installed by users, there are substitutes but at least for firefox its wealth of plugins is generally the reason people still use it.

5. Is uninstall handled as clearly as the great install options?

Simply put, no. The only real way to do uninstalls is just to reformat the partition.

Given that you have had success using mandriva with your dlink card you could always install kubuntu to try it out as trying to get it to work will be much easier with an actual install rather than from the livecd. If it doesn't work out then just install mandriva over it.

For 2: I'm pretty sure there should be no reason gnome should be slower. But KDE is better anyway (you'll get very unbiased opinions on gnome vs kde on this forum :P )

[aahhaa]

Re: Pre-install Qs for Compaq laptop

MB- thanks for the getback!

Got a correction to make; there was some ACPI error message that flew by...

is there any way to halt an install long enough to read these messages?

That ACPI turns out to be power management;
can I still fool around with Kubuntu without endangering the laptop ?
Can whatever it is prob'ly be fixed within Kubuntu once installed?

and which K-program actually runs wireless connections? (duh)

thanks again!