[clue-tech] Debian on my thinkpad r41

[Ken MacFerrin]

Collins Richey wrote:
> Just finished putting up debian testing on my r41. Yes, Dave, you were
> right: the power supply I ordered came in the Monday after
> Installfest!
> 
> A few comments and questions:
> 
> 1. As usual, the Debian net install process is simple, quick, and
> flawless. Of course you wind up with Gnome, but a quick apt-get xfce4
> fixes that, although Gnome does have its uses. I don't think I'll
> bother with KDE on this box (only 256M).

This doesn't actually answer any of your questions, but I just recently
did a PXE boot network install of Xubuntu on an old Compaq Armada m300
ultraportable laptop (no floppy or cd, 600Mhz, 192M ram, 6 GB HDD) along
with a Linksys WPC55AG wifi PC card and to my surprise almost everything
worked automagically.   I would highly recommend it.  Wifi setup was as
simple as installing the wpasupplicant and linux-restricted-modules
packages and then using the Network Settings gui to add the ssid and wep
keys.  Running Xfce4 the desktop is actually very usable and feels
almost snappy.

The last time I did this using Debian 3.1 I had to custom compile the
kernel modules to get wifi going and spend hours tweaking to get the
same polished desktop feel as Xubuntu has out of the box.  I really
enjoy pure Debian, but for a laptop install the *ubuntu folks have me sold.

Just food for thought..
-Ken