I have A laptop with a smahsed screen. But i am soon to replace that soone hopefully. But even if i do get the screen up and running. What OS shall it run?
It has a Intel 200mhz and 128mb Ram.
I didn't want to put XP on it as it is not powerful enough. And with 98se it has major Driver issues. Even the drivers on Toshibas website it won't accept!
So i was wondering is there any linux distro designed to go on old hardware? Also, any ideas on how to install it without a Cd rom and Floppy? I can put it into another laptop with a cd rom. But i want it to work on the 3110CT's hardware.
Also, is there any good PIM software to use with a Pocket PC 2002? for linux that is.
I've used Debian on a 500 mhz machine, but not anything slower(not because it dosn't work, just because I don't have one). Even at 500 KDE runs really slow, so whatever myou install I'd recommend sticking with bash or another shell.
You'll be absolutely fine as you have a decent amount of ram.
The trick with any distribution you chose is to tweak the display manager. This is one part of Linux that doesn't have a Windows analogy as Windows only ever has one display manager. A display manager is a graphical interface - it sits in between the operating system and the user. Windows only has the one, but Linux has several.
The display managers usually used are KDE and Gnome. Both of these are not that good for older hardware like yours - they take up too many resources. I would suggest using IceWM as your display manager.
There's also something called a file manager that you can change. This is basically what appears on the screen when you click on a directory. In KDE this is Konqueror and in Gnome it is Epiphany. Again, both of these are not so good on older hardware, so I would suggest using Rox, which is very lightweight.
I would also recommend Mandriva 2006 (the latest Mandriva). I've tried several distributions on older hardware and this, using IceWM and Rox, makes the best use of it.
As for the install, I'm not quite sure what you mean. Do you mean that the laptop cannot boot from anything other than the harddrive? Does it have no external drives at all?
I t has no external Drives Whatso ever! Only a USB port. But i think the the machine is that old that it can't boot from USB. even if i do update the BIOS.
The way i installed 98 was simple. I popped the harddrive in a laptop that did have a floppy drive and cd rom. So i managed to copy the files over. And installed DOS. So that i could setup.exe to setup 98.
But for linux, is that possible? Install half the OS on the latop with a cd-rom. Then do the other half Back in the original laptop so it can install and register the proper hardware.
I see.
If you get into the BIOS then you'll be able to see if it can boot from usb. If it can, you can install from a usb key.
If you can't then you'll have to do what you did before and install via another laptop. This is perfectly possible in Linux; what you would do is a full install on one laptop and then, when you've transferred the harddrive to the other, use the many hardware configuration tools that are available as part of a normal Linux operating system.
I managed to install debian with the net install disc. So i get only the files i want off the internet, so not wasteing masses of cds etc... Anyway, I selected for a desktop system to be built. But in the end it gave me a comand shell console thingy.
Now i am a bit stumped on what to do, it asks me to log in, which i can do sucesfully. but what after that?
Also, i manage to boot up on PXE/LAN but the only version i got working was the CD driver version. Which in teh end couldn't load up the disc as it kept saying there was no disc inserted. :S Or with the Net install, couldn't get working as it couldn't connect well if it was automatic with DHCP or manually set up. So it looks like we have a few hardware incompatability with the OS.
I guess i could wait for Ubuntu Lite to be released.
Did you install IceWM? If so, what does typing "icewm" give you?