The Old Laptop

[Jonathan Hutchins]

kubuntu is frustratingly slow on this thing.  Even running from CD, DSL is 
faster.

I haven't been able to get my wg111t USB Wireless Adapter to work.  It "just 
worked" in Mandriva without any tweaking, just straight forward install.

Searching the net, it seems a lot of people have had this problem with 
debian-branch distros.  There is some confusion on what version of 
ndiswrapper-utils should be installed, and of course manual compiles seem to 
work better, but I'm thinking that the ancient USB chipset in this box may be 
the culprit.  Unplugging the dongle after loading ndiswrapper causes the 
system to lock up.

There is no sign of a sound system being detected; even lspci doesn't show 
anything.  Sure wish I'd copied the configuration from the Mandrake 9.1 
install!  That eliminates use as a garage jukebox.

Given that I can buy a brand-new laptop from Micro Center for less than $500, 
there's only a certain amount of head banging that's worth doing for a laptop 
with no battery.