__/ [ Paul Welsh ] on Friday 12 May 2006 01:32 \__
> Didn't think this would be my conclusion but I guess it's horses for
> courses. I've an old 300 Mhz, 160 odd Mb RAM, 30 Gb HDD Celeron
> desktop I want to setup as a spare. I've a Netgear DG834G wireless
> ADSL router and a Netgear WG311 wireless network card.
>
> Bottom line is that Ubuntu 5.10 doesn't detect the card out of the box
> and neither does the mini install of SUSE 10.1. I'll try Mandriva and
> MEPIS but I don't hold out much hope. When I say they don't detect it,
> I mean that they don't even recognise a network card is present.
Mandriva would be a good bet. I migrated my friend to GNU/Linux a few
months ago and, while Ubuntu 5.10 did not automagically detect LAN (via a
Windows router), Mandriva 2006 did this 'out of the box'. Also try
PCLinuxOS < http://www.pclinuxos.com/ >, which is a relative of Mandriva
(a Mandrake 9.2 derivative to be precise). I heard good things about it,
in the context of Wireless networking.
Additionally, see arachnid's advice and _do_ use the tool that he referred
to. It could be a two-minute job to initiate Wi-Fi on these 2
distributions that you have already tried. Once you have set it up, it's
good to go for many years. Linux will never collapse as often as W2K,
which judging by friends, is extremely unreliable and requires wiping at
least once a year (won't boot/viral infestation).
> I've spent hours on this to no avail.
>
> Now, it could be that the card is faulty or incompatible with my PC
> hardware. However, I'm coming to the conclusion that I may as well
> just stick W2K on it and use the drivers that came with it. MS will
> release security patches for W2K and IE6 SP1 until 2010 which is quite
> long enough for this old box and longer than for most Linux distros.
> W2K doesn't require the same spec as XP - the min. memory is 64 Mb
> apparently. Yes, I know it will run slowly, but the popular Linux
> distros are at least as demanding in terms of system resources. It's
> sufficiently robust and it's familiar.
Sounds like a fine system, but don't go for KDE, which I believe is the
only desktop environment to come with Mandriva, for instance. SuSE 10.1 is
more GNOME-inclined nowadays. Ubuntu likewise. Try the latest beta of
Ubuntu 6 perhaps... they will ship to your house for free and the new
stable version will be ready within a few weeks.
https://shipit.ubuntu.com/
The network is worth fixing manually if you can afford a few minutes of
tinkering and reading of HOWTO's (Google is your friend).
> As I say, I didn't think this would be the conclusion I'd come to but
> there it is. A case of the old hardware standing in the way of going
> down the Linux route with this one.
Another thing to consider is purchasing of a different (possible external)
network adapter. It is the route that many people choose to take when they
find themselves stranded with a Winmodem.
Look at the bright side: your next computer will probably be intended for
Linux (many of them have it pre-installed), so rather than trying to
convert a Windows machine (with Windows-centric peripherals/hardware), you
will get something that works fully with Linux, or else get the money
back. *smile*
Hope it helps,
Roy
--
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