Re-purposing old computer junk

godnotgod said:

It's a lot different than Linux in days of yore. More highly polished, and easy to use, for the most part. The hardest part is in partitioning the drive, but auto partitioning is an option if you only want Linux on the drive. Try Linux Mint, XFCE desktop. Fast and stable and easy to use. Avoid Debian, as it is mainlly command line for purists.

Click to expand...

Ironically? Drive partitioning is Old Hat for me-- I learned PCs in 1981, where it was DOS 1.0 or nothing.

I expect I have forgotten more DOS than most modern folk have a clue of. There at the end? My DOS boot menus were complex, and 3 layers deep (and covered every contingency I had run into). Naturally, choice 1, was the default, and if you did nothing, that would go-- you only ever had to pick, if you needed a Special Boot Option. *sigh* Oh, the good old days of command line interface. How I do NOT miss them in the least!

The last time I tried, was about 6 months ago, and it was smooth enough-- except for the WiFi cards I had available-- none would work. Oh well.

I did try Mint, and several others? (forget-- they tend to blur into one). I don't think I tried XFCE. And I definitely didn't try Debian. I always opted for the "beginner" distros, so maybe that was my mistake?

None that I tried would enable wireless networking-- without FIRST going out to the interwebs to fetch something... and NONE would tell me what to fetch so I could use a different machine, and put it on a USB stick.

Frustration made me go, "jest fork it. STILL not ready for Prime Time, and likely never will"

What are the wi-fi devices you were trying to use?

DavidMcCann said:

What are the wi-fi devices you were trying to use?

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I no longer remember-- 6 months ago. The thing is, if I'd have had internet, I very likely could have got them working, as Linux seemed capable of fixing what ailed it.

But, at work (where I had the free time and motivation) there is only WiFi. And I simply lack the chops in Linux, to dig into the auto-correction feature, to ferret out what it was trying to do. It may as well have been in Greek.

I have put that box away, for now. Maybe I'll go dig it up next week, when I'm feeling less worn (allergy season has hit me hard, this year). I'll post a new thread, if I do, promise.



Thanks for the willingness to help, though. I bet it's something I did wrong, that is "duuh, obvious bro" to long-time users of Linux.

Edit: The networking card/chip seemed to be working, alas, nothing to connect it to.

Bob the Unbeliever said:

Ironically? Drive partitioning is Old Hat for me-- I learned PCs in 1981, where it was DOS 1.0 or nothing.

I expect I have forgotten more DOS than most modern folk have a clue of. There at the end? My DOS boot menus were complex, and 3 layers deep (and covered every contingency I had run into). Naturally, choice 1, was the default, and if you did nothing, that would go-- you only ever had to pick, if you needed a Special Boot Option. *sigh* Oh, the good old days of command line interface. How I do NOT miss them in the least!

The last time I tried, was about 6 months ago, and it was smooth enough-- except for the WiFi cards I had available-- none would work. Oh well.

I did try Mint, and several others? (forget-- they tend to blur into one). I don't think I tried XFCE. And I definitely didn't try Debian. I always opted for the "beginner" distros, so maybe that was my mistake?

None that I tried would enable wireless networking-- without FIRST going out to the interwebs to fetch something... and NONE would tell me what to fetch so I could use a different machine, and put it on a USB stick.

Frustration made me go, "jest fork it. STILL not ready for Prime Time, and likely never will"

Click to expand...

The EDUP line of USB WiFi adapters are pretty much plug and play with Linux, in my experience. No drivers needed and instant recognition of your SSID. Just enter your password and connect. Or, if you have a tower or desktop with an available PCI or PCIe slot, Netis internal wifi adapters come in 150 and 300mbps versions, PCI or PCIe, and should pretty much be plug and play with Linux.

godnotgod said:

The EDUP line of USB WiFi adapters are pretty much plug and play with Linux, in my experience. No drivers needed and instant recognition of your SSID. Just enter your password and connect. Or, if you have a tower or desktop with an available PCI or PCIe slot, Netis internal wifi adapters come in 150 and 300mbps versions, PCI or PCIe, and should pretty much be plug and play with Linux.

Click to expand...

Thanks. But. It's clear that Linux fails to recognize the really old hardware, which is what I have. Everything you list above? Pretty new. This pc was new back in 2001? I think. Maybe as new as 2002? I forget, but it's barely into the SATA age, and sports connectors for floppy drives, and has two old-style keyboard/mouse connectors on the back, etc.

The cards are first gen PCI cards, and no flavor of Linux would recognize them, and the makers websites don't support Linux either.

The problem was a Catch-22: Linux *seemed* to recognize the cards, but needed to get to the internet to fix what was missing in my distribution. And I always opted for the biggest the various websites offered.

But without working Wifi card, no internet, no drivers, no workee. Not even a generic driver (as is the case with windoze-- you can typically use an old generic driver to hobble along well enough to get the proper one, and these come built-in)

The contrast with how much effort and failure I had in several distros of Linux, and never getting to the internet, and therefore never getting the best graphics resolution up and running?

Compared to Win10, once I had disabled all the graphics bloat? Was the difference between a couple of hours (windows) and over 2 days of re-installs (linux). Now to be fair, I did not put in 2 full 8 hour days-- it was a case of start something, let it run while I went and did other things, come back, click the next thing in the sequence, etc.

Again, Win10 once started, was just let it do it's thing until it was done. Linux was a constant click-click-click fest, but with hours between clicks...

I blame the really old DELL box I was using, but hey, Linux seems deliberately obscure as was the original goal, if I remember right.

Bob the Unbeliever said:

Thanks. But. It's clear that Linux fails to recognize the really old hardware, which is what I have. Everything you list above? Pretty new. This pc was new back in 2001? I think. Maybe as new as 2002? I forget, but it's barely into the SATA age, and sports connectors for floppy drives, and has two old-style keyboard/mouse connectors on the back, etc.

The cards are first gen PCI cards, and no flavor of Linux would recognize them, and the makers websites don't support Linux either.

The problem was a Catch-22: Linux *seemed* to recognize the cards, but needed to get to the internet to fix what was missing in my distribution. And I always opted for the biggest the various websites offered.

But without working Wifi card, no internet, no drivers, no workee. Not even a generic driver (as is the case with windoze-- you can typically use an old generic driver to hobble along well enough to get the proper one, and these come built-in)

The contrast with how much effort and failure I had in several distros of Linux, and never getting to the internet, and therefore never getting the best graphics resolution up and running?

Compared to Win10, once I had disabled all the graphics bloat? Was the difference between a couple of hours (windows) and over 2 days of re-installs (linux). Now to be fair, I did not put in 2 full 8 hour days-- it was a case of start something, let it run while I went and did other things, come back, click the next thing in the sequence, etc.

Again, Win10 once started, was just let it do it's thing until it was done. Linux was a constant click-click-click fest, but with hours between clicks...

I blame the really old DELL box I was using, but hey, Linux seems deliberately obscure as was the original goal, if I remember right.

Click to expand...

Sorry you've had such negative experiences with Linux. However, there are a couple of extremely lean and lighting fast Linux distros that will most likely find your wifi adapter, because the ones I have in mind are specifically designed for older hardware. But first things first: Is you Dell computer 32 or 64 bit hardware?

Also, those other Linux distros you tried that did not work because no wifi drivers seemed available may be because you simply have to install them from the Linux repositories. Of course, you need to be online to do so, and if you just plug in your Ethernet cable to get online, you can fire up Synaptics Package Manager which is built into most of the Linux distros by default, and search for the driver for your wifi hardware by name. BTW, does your old Dell have a Broadcom wifi adapter built in?

In the meantime, take a look here for starters:

PuppyLinux: LegacyOS