[ale] Trying to make the switch to Linux

[John Marasco]

Michael Hartman wrote:

> All,
> I've got an older Dell Latitude laptop that has NT 4.0 on it.  I'm 
> sick of the instability and memory errors.  I went out and bought SuSE 
> Linux Personal 8.2 yesterday at Best Buy.  Before installing it I've 
> got a couple of basic questions (This is primarily my wife's computer 
> now and she's pissed her email keeps getting messed up):
> ---How do I ensure that my laptop is Pentium, thus eligible for the 
> software?  I tried checking the properties tab and it just says x86 
> Family ....., AT/ATCompatible ....  At first I thought this meant it 
> was a 486...but upon checking my current laptop which is pentium III, 
> I discovered that they said nearly the same thing.
> ---The disks have openoffice.org on it too...I will be able to use my 
> older excel files still, right?
> ---Will I be able to hook my laptop into my d-link wireless network at 
> home still (di-713P with dwl-650 cards?)
> ---Will I be able to still print to my HP OfficeJet 720?
>  
> If this isn't the right place to post this, let me know.  Linux.com 
> said I should reag out to my local groups pre-installing.
>  
> Thanks for your help!
> Michael

If it's not a Pentium, you wouldn't have the disk space or memory to run 
NT 4.0 happily.  I don't think you need to worry about this but...

Select the Start Button and then the Run menu choice and type winmsd at 
the prompt and press enter.  I'm not running NT 4.0 but you should be 
able to find the processor type in there.  You may find a line that 
looks like this:

Processor                                          x86 Family 15 Model 2 
Stepping 7 GenuineIntel ~2657 Mhz

If the speed (~2657 Mhz) is over 75 then it's a Pentium.

I recently did an FTP install of SuSE 8.2 on a Latitude CSx H without 
any issues.  I was very impressed in how easy a Linux install has become 
since I did my first (RH) 5 years ago or so.  The first install was a 
cable modem router and I never had a lick of trouble with it in all that 
time but I never actually *used* Linux until now so I'm sort of new to 
Linux and sort of not.

The wireless configuration was a separate issue and it took a little 
research.  I'll tell you what I did and try to help as I can but I have 
a LinkSys wireless card with a Netgear router.  Linksys has Linux 
drivers at their web site.  You might look to see if D-Link does too 
before getting started.  I got my wireless to work without using the 
Linksys drivers but I wish I had checked before doing the install.

Open Office is very cool and I'm surprised at how much functionality is 
there.  I don't recall that it did a good job with my old WP files.  
Then again I didn't realize it read Word files so you might want to 
ignore this comment.

I don't know about the printer but I can access my network shares 
(Win2000, Win98 and SuSE 8.1 Samba) without any problems.

I had to use the APM power management on my machine and that required a 
kernel switch in my BootLoader (Grub I think) to disable ACPI before it 
would work.  Once I turned off ACPI the APM power management tools came 
right up and I've been using them without any trouble.

If anything I thought the install came with too much stuff.  It took me 
a while to figure out what was what but eventually you will find that 
there are tools to do everything that Windows does and some.

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