Recently I was asked to help revive a Windows 95-era laptop by installing Linux on it. Windows 95 didn't seem to have functional USB support on the laptop, and modern web browsers like Firefox weren't easily available for it.

My first attempt was to try Xubuntu Linux, which seemed to still be too resource intensive for this 96Mg RAM, 150Mhz processor laptop.

My second attempt, Puppy Linux seems to be working rather well. Except for some files I needed to copy by hand, the install went very smoothly, and the system does indeed run with low requirements, idling well below the 96 Megs of memory the system has.

Today I'm working on breathing some new Linux life into a old Windows 95 laptop. The specs are extremely low end by todays standards: 150 Mhz processor, 3 Gig hard drive and 96 Megs of RAMs.

I tried the Xubuntu alternate install CD first. I let it run overnight, and in the morning, it reported it was only 66% done! So slow.

Kurt has just installed Kubuntu Edgy on his laptop to replace Mandriva, so that gave me a chance to compare Kubuntu to Ubuntu.
I have Ubuntu on my laptop now, an almost identical model to his.

Having seen both Ubuntu and Kubuntu, I definitely prefer Ubuntu at this point. Read on for details.

As part of my switch from Mandriva to Ubuntu, I had the opportunity today to contribute some improvements back to both operating systems.

Having just used Mandriva on this laptop, I knew it was possible for the sound to keep working after a suspend/resume cycle, but it quit working after the Ubuntu switch.

Since Mandriva's solution was made available under an open source license, I was able to review it adapt to work with Ubuntu, and Ubuntu can easily and legally accept this solution, if they choose.

I've been a satisfied Mandriva User since 9.2 was released some years ago. Currently, Mandriva 2006 works rather well on my ThinkPad T20 laptop. Recently I became interested in Ubuntu as well, evaluated both Mandriva 2007 and Ubuntu Edgy as possible upgrade paths.

I installed them both on test machines and have following observations about how they compared.

Firewire are USB 2 offer high speed ways to connect to devices, making them ideal ways to connect to external hard drives or digital video cameras.

For Linux Laptops, the Zonet ZUC2700 FireWire/USB2 PCMCIA card is recommended for laptops. In Mark's testing with Mandriva 2006, the card Just Worked by plugging it in, no special drivers or configuration were required. It includes a port plug in an additional power adapter. It's not needed for low-power applications like flash card readers, or when the external drive supplies it's own power, but may be need for an external drive that depends on USB for power. No power supply is included, but ZoNet support reports that the kind that should be used with it is: "a 5v, center positive, DC power adapter".

General buying advice for wireless cards

For best security and forward compatibility, choose a wireless card that supports the WPA2 standard.

However, when connecting to public "wi-fi hotspots", typically no encryption at all is used, and a cheaper card may work for that.

Besides WPA, there is an older standard called WEP that provides some encryption, but is no longer considered secure.

The following recommendations are for WEP cards, which are lower cost and may still be of interest to some home users, as well as those primarily using the cards at public wi-fi hotspots.

Here are some notes from running Linux on the Dell Latitude CPX H500GT laptop. (First, note that this laptop may be identified as "PPX" on the back, but is named with "H500GT" in the boot screen and BIOS.)

Having maintained this laptop for a couple years, I can't recommend it. We're on the fourth keyboard, the CD sometimes falls out of the bay, the trackpad causes the mouse to drift, and the suspend feature has been unreliable. If you are looking for a cheap laptop to run Linux on, I highly recommend IBM Thinkpads. I'm look forward to replacing this one soon!