Found a used laptop for 25 bucks--wooohoo

I went for an afternoon ride and saw a large garage sale on the corner.
Started looking around ,found a whole box of old seagate scsi drives 5gb a piece, and I thought I would take them home and throw them in some old boxes I have lying around. As I pick up the box I see a real nice dell Inspiron 1100 sitting on the shelf with a tag for 25 bucks. So I figure it has to be toast. I ask the guy about it says his college age kid got a new one and this has been in the garage since last season. His son told him the HD was bad and that it would not boot(hit the power and got nothing) Took a chance , bought it and took it home plugged her in and threw a copy of Mandriva linux on it and now I am watching dvds on my 19 in screen......

So that is the story of my absolutley wonderful Sunday

once again WOOOOHOOO

 

Nice find, but why defile the machine with Mandriva?

uke

 

Its the only one without scratches I could find.

Got any suggestions for a laptop distro ?
Small 14gb drive but a p4 2.1 ghz with a dvd rom

Mandriva is one i started with that seemed to always install and detect all the hardware w/o complaint...Not so for suse, or ubuntu-- and several other distros. rolleyes

 

Certainly. What is your skill level?

Arch will run sweet on that. Notably faster than Mandriva and infinitely smaller.

I ask your skill level because with Arch, even though its bleeding edge, isn't the easiest to install.

First you install the base, then the kernel, then you update it to the latest version. Then install Xorg, and your favorite Desktop Environment. Broadband is a must.

Its pretty much cake after that, but initially, you gotta make a new xorg.conf for your vid card, and you have to setup your networking via config file too.

Its not too bad, and there are tricks of the trade to make it much easier. If you are interested, of course.

www.archlinux.org and Im on MSN if you need a walkthrough.

 

Yup yup looked at Arch awhile back due to one of your posted pics. Then got scared off as you said kinda intense setup.

I am fairly comfortable with the command line..but definetly still not a pro.Hence my sticking close to those pretty GUI setups ( used window for years --so I am detoxing but its gonna take awhile. ) Short of Arch (mabye in a month or so--Lots more reading to do) any suggestions for a less intense distro--looked at Sabayon but every time I tried to install b4 (desktop not lap) it gets about half way then screws up(different dvds)......mabye it just did not like my desktop hardware setup......

 

Sabayon is pretty hardware intensive too. Not so much for older machines at all.

As for Arch...got webspace? Here is a little trick I picked up along the way.

Copy your xorg.conf file, fstab file to the the web space. These require the most configuration, and it they are working now...they are gonna be interchangeable with other distros, provided its not an ancient version.

So that saves a TON of text config work right there.

This is what i do to install Arch.

1. Pop in Cd and boot to it
2. Configure the rc.conf and hosts file for networking, not much more than typing 1-2 lines.
3. Install Base.
4. Install kernel of choice.
5. Update system to latest release (you type pacman -Syu and and let it finish)
6. Install Nvidia drivers (pacman -s nvidia)
7. Install Xorg (pacman -s xorg)
8. Copy my pre-configured xorg.conf file using wget, then drop it in the correct directory.
8. Install KDE (pacman -s KDE)
9. Edit rc.conf to add KDM to my Daemon array. (nano /etc/rc.conf) (self explanatory when you see it)
10. Reboot, log in via KDM, and boot to a KDE desktop.

Done

The rest is all gui mode, just like in mandriva. Once I got the system down, takes me 5 minutes tops to format and clean install.

 

http://www.sellshome.com/snapshot3.png

Thats actually KDEmod. Its just as easy to install, it just requires a little more configuration prior to installing it.

Takes a little tweaking to look like this, but its all gui work, nothing major.

Arch is one of the fastest Linux distros out there. Mandriva is one of the slowest

 

Wow with it put like that I think even I could do it.

What the heck i have tues and wed off so I will give it a shot then---Look for my " I am stuck" posts.....


Thanks for the Info

 

Petaluna, you should have found a Mac for 25$!!!

Just joking, great find! I would have bought it for parts, you got lucky and it works. Have fun with it with whatever os you wind up with.

E

 

PM me your messenger account, if you use it. I also run AIM and Yahoo.

I'll help if Im around. Arch is only hard to install the first time, if nobody is there to help your trhough it. The saving files trick (xorg.conf and fstab) makes things incredibly easier.

 

Whats the spec CPU ect,just wondered how much of a bargain it was

 

@rikky

That would be a p4 2.1 ghz with 512 mb memory


Just found a distro of dream linux multimedia2.2 and it seems to like it (3/4 way thru install.... I change distros when the mood suits me .... so nothings written in stone....

 

Amazing find! Good one...enjoy.

Cheers

LS

 

Yeh Run and keep running,if he asks you sold it

 

@Rikky

Yea thats what I thought, so I went to my local PD and had them run the serial number thru the database and no hits.....whew

I think it was more of a case of the son and father having too much money(expensive area of town to live--(most houses start at 850,000)
big houses big yards lots of toys etc) and not having alot of computer savy.
I got a bill of sale so i should be good....


just used it to post this with Dream linux--fast

Laters