59 yr old - new kid on the block !!!!!!!

[meinhardt_jgbr]

Yeah, this is real!!

I've being playing with Linux since yr 2000, when I badly wanted to get rid of any Microsoft crap.

I wanted the freedom of Linux and had a hell of a hard work to load Linux for the first time on a brand new yr 2000, Sharp Actius A280 NoteBook (NoBo).

That was almost top of the line during yr 2000, but did not accept booting from CD, because Linux kernel did not have native support yet for PCMCIA cards. The NoBo, was a really slim and light weight machine, therefore, both floppy drive and CD-Rom were external.

After testing at least 7 different distros and different versions including, Red-Hat, Slackware, Gentoo, Conectiva, Debian, among others, I managed to get Mandrake 6.0 loaded from hdd, which was an alternative not suggested for newbies.

So, I've being playing with different Linux flavors since than.

My main working current NoBo is loaded with Kurumin 7.0r3 (Debian-etch) Brazilian distro, plus its new generation, Kurumin 8.04 NG (Kubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron kernel) under testing and Windows XP-Pro sp2 which I want to just delete as soon as I can.

I just was not able to do it yet because the wifi support on the linux distros used, is not good and reliable yet.

Sooner or later I will do it for sure!!!!!

Right now, I want to setup just another linuxbox, to add to my home-network as an alternative for the kids to use, or maybe for the grandchildren when they may stop-by.

I've being researching on the net, and found plenty of good referrals about VL, as being among the best for old and resource limited machines, so, I'm trying to load it on the very same old Sharp Actius A280 which is a PII-266 with just 64Mb of Ram and being forced to use an external monitor because the LCD is just gone!! I'm counting on the support of the Geeks and Gurus, on this tricky install which must be from ISO previously saved to HDD, either from a Windows98SE or a Linux pre-loaded and working system.

This Sharp Actius NoBo is working now with Win98SE and the latest version of Mandrake I was able to install on it, Mandrake 9.0, which is still using kernel 2.4.

So far, I've tried both VL alternatives, but was not successful yet. Will try once more. If not lucky, will try installing either VL 4.3 or 5.1 which I have already downloaded.

Any tips from other "new kids on the block" or old-timers are very welcome.

Thanks

[overthere]

Hi
Sounds like a fun project..64megs ram may be a limiting factor...I would try an older version of vector..
I just reinstalled damn small to my p166 with 64 meg and it is not so friendly but works, it works well on that box with 128..and is 2.4 kernal..I think puppy has a 2.6 kernal in dingo but it likes 128 also..it depends on if you want a graphical user interface naturally..I just attempted vl light on the p166..it did boot a gui but did not like the serial mouse or isa modem and was rather slowwww..cli may have worked but dsl likes the box and needs a home.
play was fun, hope your is also
cheers

[kfoster]

Hi,
  I've tried many distros too and settled on slack about 5 years ago. Slack 12.1 just came out and I finally said "hey, this is 2008, I shouldn't have to tweak every single thing to make things work." I had problems with trivial stuff that on even previous versions of slack I didn't have to mess with. So I tried Vector 5.8 SOHO friday and said to hell with slack.
Kirby

[kc1di]

Keep at it and ask many question in the forum you will find plenty of help.  V.L. is a good distro for older hardware but 64MB ram is pretty light.
good Luck and happy Vectoring

[meinhardt_jgbr]

Well, well, after a lot of sweating, I finally was able to install VL-5.1, from a Linus host, which given the limitations of just 64Mb of ram, is running reasonably. At least it is more reliable than the old M$ W98. Unfortunately it is not worth to add some ram, because of the price of old ram and also for the fact that this NoBo requires an external monitor once the lcd display "caputz".
At least it was another good experience, requiring to put the brain to work.