STV Posted February 5, 2004 Share Posted February 5, 2004 Hello all, for the past few years I have continuously tried to install linux on my (now secondary) computer. I am a proud user of Windows and love it to death. However, I am curious and open minded enough to give linux a try, and since I had an extra laptop, with a broken screen, I decidied to take the screen off and just use an external monitor. I would really appreciate any help you could give, believe me when I say that I am tired of looking for resources over the internet. This is by no means a "switch" to linux. Please, no flames, I just want to learn what is so great about linux and what it is about. I must admit, I have not had stellar results when using linux and am about to give up if i cant get this computer working with the OS. Satellite 1805-S154 Specs: - Intel Celeron 900MHz - 13.3 TFT active-matrix display (supports 16M colors) - 128MB SDRAM - 10GB harddisk - if more information needed, just ask Problem: - The GUI displays nicely, but it gets slow when i want to move windows around. - winmodem; even i know that this may never work STV Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
markwolfe Veteran Posted February 5, 2004 Veteran Share Posted February 5, 2004 With 900MHz and 128MB RAM, your performance in KDE and Gnome will be a bit sluggish. Those two Desktop Environments (DEs) are very resource-hungry. Try IceWM (I think Mandy installs that as an option by default) at your login screen. It isn't as pretty, but less power hungry. As for the win-modem. Look to linmodems.org for instructions on how to verify the chipset in the modem (manufacturers will switch chipsets and have different internal revisions of equipment). It is the chipset (rather than the brand) that determines whether you modem will work or not. Give it some play time (set up an FTP server, or a web server on it) and get a feel for what the options are in Linux. Remember it is all free (as in free speech) and under constant improvement (daily, in cases!). You may find it is a fun OS to work with. If not, I am sure that others here can at least appreciate you giving it an honest spin. Best of luck, Mark Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
STV Posted February 5, 2004 Author Share Posted February 5, 2004 Windows XP, with al the UI dressing is reasonable fast on this computer. I remember trying to put windows 98 on that laptop a while back, the display was slow and crappy. once i installed the right video card driver, it worked fine. I believe that his is the problem. I do not have the resources to set up a server and am not interested in that right now, but maybe later. right now I just want to learn how to use linux in general. You may find it is a fun OS to work with. If not, I am sure that others here can at least appreciate you giving it an honest spin. I agree, and I hope that people dont think that I am some Windows snob (or something like). thanks for the reply, mark STV Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
markwolfe Veteran Posted February 5, 2004 Veteran Share Posted February 5, 2004 Ahhh... For some reason the video driver escaped my mind. :wacko: It shouldn't have, as I have an nVidia card, and that requires the official nVidia driver to work at its best... Does your laptop support 3D video (like openGL)? If so, you can do a glxinfo to get the system's setup for OpenGL. You can also run glxgears at a shell prompt. This will run a benchmark 3D test that should open a new window and have three gears spinning in there. It will output your FPS in the text window. Thi scan be used to compare different drivers & settings. Other than that, do you know what video chipset is being used? (since it is a laptop, I understand it is harder to open it up and look to verify) Just some thoughts... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Storm Posted February 5, 2004 Share Posted February 5, 2004 It should run perfect, ive had 9.1 on a 150mhz with 32mb ram :) so it should on that :cool: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
markwolfe Veteran Posted February 5, 2004 Veteran Share Posted February 5, 2004 It should run perfect, ive had 9.1 on a 150mhz with 32mb ram :) so it should on that :cool: Yeah... In runlevel 3, I suppose. :p Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JadeWolf324 Posted February 5, 2004 Share Posted February 5, 2004 setting run levels is my favorite thing in linux...u cant beat that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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