by "wiffleballtony" (wiffleballtony)
Published 01/15/2017 at 23:36
by "wiffleballtony" (wiffleballtony)
Published 01/15/2017 at 23:36
No Tags
STARS: 3
I thought it was over. You thought it was over. But it wasnt.
I discovered another old Dell in my closet, a laptop this time. Having felt defeated by my previous attempts at getting a useable Linux machine working I figured this was my chance at redemption.
I know what you’re thinking, how many old dell’s can one person have in their closet? And also, why would you put yourself through an unnecessary waste of time? The answers are: two and because I’m an idiot.
Previously my fellow nerds of Oppo suggested Linux Mint, which I had already burned to a disc. The installation went smoothly and I was greeted with a very Windows esque GUI. Everything seemed fine except that I had no WiFi. That wasn’t all that surprising, since every single OS install I’ve done never picks up NIC drivers. I wasn’t worried.
However, this became a lot more complex than expected. I was able to locate a driver manager under administration, which instructed me to reinsert the install medium to pick up the drivers, which I did, and it did. It recommended that I install the Broadcom drivers, which was a trap, and then restart. The result of that was the entire disabling of the NIC somehow. No wifi, no ethernet nothing.
Off to Google I went to find a solution. I did find a solution and copied and pasted in some lines into the terminal. Lo and behold I had wifi, somehow.
Overjoyed, I went about downloading programs to browse the interest and such. Then, I got greedy, shall I try my luck at Steam Streaming? Steam installed fine however running it did nothing until I tried in the terminal, which showed a bunch of errors. More googling got it working!
I was shocked this really old machine was able to get a new lease on life
"RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht" (ramblininexile)
01/16/2017 at 00:03, STARS: 1
I think you mean
"TheRealBicycleBuck" (therealbicyclebuck)
01/16/2017 at 00:06, STARS: 0
I really need to do this. I have an old dell desktop and an ancient dell laptop. Both could be used for something.
"wiffleballtony" (wiffleballtony)
01/16/2017 at 10:13, STARS: 0
That’s the exact situation I was in. I put a second NIC in the desktop and loaded it with Smoothwall to act as a firewall. The laptop had no real purpose other than to get it functional again for poops and grins.
"TheRealBicycleBuck" (therealbicyclebuck)
01/16/2017 at 10:28, STARS: 0
I still have XP discs sitting around that go with the laptop, so I can get it running like new - security holes and all.
I tried to “modernize” the desktop computer with Win7. I thought it would do fine as a file & print server and maybe run as a Minecraft server for the kids. Despite being newer than the laptop, it runs like a lame dog with Win7. I tried running Ubuntu off a live disc, but wasn’t impressed. Maybe Mint installed on the main drive is the right answer.
Have you tried running Mint from a USB drive or as a live CD?
"wiffleballtony" (wiffleballtony)
01/16/2017 at 12:41, STARS: 0
I wouldn’t even bother with XP even with the security holes. If you do a clean install it’s impossible to get online without having a secondary machine to find the necessary drivers.
I didn’t bother with running Live or off a USB since I knew I wasn’t going to stay on 7.