Tag Archives: old laptop

What is the BEST version of Linux for an old laptop that had Windows 98 and was upgraded to XP?

Posted on March 2, 2013 | 7 Comments

What is the BEST version of Linux for an old laptop that had Windows 98 and was upgraded to Windows XP? I have a 3.7 GB hard drive, with about 600 MB free. What version of Linux should I use and where do I download it?
Thanks everyone. I have finally decided. I ordered 3 CDs of UBUNTU, 1 CD of KUBUNTU, and 1 CD of EDUBUNTU. They will be at my home in 6-10 weeks. Then, I will use them as Live CDs, then pick the best one, and install it onto my laptop.

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How can I install Ubuntu Linux from the hard drive?

Posted on November 27, 2012 | 4 Comments

Given a 6-year-old laptop. Its CD-ROM doesn’t work and it is not willing to boot from pen drive. (It can read pen drives, of course.)
Is there any solution to install Ubuntu by eg. extracting and running the .iso from the laptop’s hard drive. Or are other softwares needed to do this?
Please explain step by step what and how I should do if there’s a solution to this. (I really hope there is.)
Thanks very much, Al. You’ve given the savviest answer so far. But the big problem is that there is a very shattered win2k OS on the laptop and it doesn’t recognize the network, neither can it log onto the net. And it doesn’t have a floppy disk drive either. I am completely shot with this situation. The good news might be that there are 2 partitions on the HDD. I am now thinking about formatting C: and then installing a hard-drive-installable OS from that I had previously put on drive D:.
Any ideas?

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Linux Live CD Needed?

Posted on August 17, 2012 | 2 Comments

Okay, I know pretty much nothing about linux, but for ventrilo and the open source control panel for ventrilo to work, I need linux. My probelm is I have an old laptop (BIOS date is 1999) that I’m going to run linux on and it only has 127 mb of ram. I need a Linux distribution that is i386 that I can run as a LiveCD to do this.

Thank-you!
By the way, I tried Ubuntu and it won’t work on my old laptop (doesn’t meet 2000 bios cutoff) and SLAX doesn’t work either.

If I need to, I can wipe my hard drive of Windows XP Pro and put the linux os on there instead, but I need to know if its a good, reliable linux os that I can use with the internet before I loose everything.

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What and how do I install Linux on my old Gateway solo 2500 laptop?

Posted on April 14, 2012 | 1 Comment

I have an old laptop, it has no cds with it besides a “boot directory” floppy disk. When I turn on the laptop to boot from whatever is on that floppy, it say “loading windows 95″ then it says “no operating system found”. So I’m guessing I better try a different OS on the old lappy. So, I want to install linux, not just a live run version, full install, but 1.) What version of Linux would install onto the computer and 2.) How would I partition my hard drive if I can’t get into windows? All I’m at when i turn on the computer is the bios settings. BTW, only reason I’m doing this is to win a bet with a friend. I wouldn’t trade my Dell XPS for anything.

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How can I turn a PII Laptop into a linux net admin tool?

Posted on May 16, 2011 | 2 Comments

I need to find a linux distribution for my old old laptop. Here’s the specs:
- PII 333 MHz Processor
- 96 MB RAM
- 3.3 GB Hard Drive
- No integrated NIC
- USB Ethernet Dongle (Linksys USB200M)
- 24X CDROM
- USB Port

I’m wanting to convert the laptop into a network admin tool. I’d like to use it to accomplish the following tasks:
- Monitor network nodes (PING, SNMP, Latency Tests)
- Network Connectivity and Routing Tests (Telnet, Dig, NSLOOKUP, etc)
- Packet Captures and packet analysis
- Web browsing
- Linux command practices
- GUI interface

So I’m looking for a distribution that will work with my specs and provide as much network tools and functionality as possible.

But wait, there’s more =P

I plan to leave the laptop up and running for long periods of time so I don’t want to use a “live cd” distribution… or rather, I need it to run off of the hard drive.

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