Hi everyone
After a while I have managed to get my laptop to boot from cd but now i don't know whether to put Ubuntu on it or suse. Its an old laptop with 256 ram hope fully i will upgrade it to 256 within a few months but I want to know which one would work best on it and which one you recommend for beginners to linux.

Many thanks
HLA91

The spec of your laptop is your limitation. 256mb of ram is ok, but it is still iffy. I don't think suse would run swiftly on that.

I'd go for ubuntu, or if you want to be doubly safe go for xbuntu. It's a lighter version of the former.

Yeah, 1) Suse is buggy 2)Its crippled in terms of media and 3) Runs about as slow as Vista

I recommend ubuntu. Pure Debian Stable would probably run best on 256 but ubuntu would be a safer bet as its 1cd, has a livecd mode and has easy instilaltion and maintainance

I installed Ubuntu and it looks good is there anything you would recommend I should download for it any special programs please I only have 256 ram so no big programs please.

umm most things will be inluded

main apps and thier windows equovilents

Internet Explorer -> Mozilla Firefox/Seamonkey
Outlook Express -> Evolution / Thunderbird
MSN Messenger -> Gaim/Pidgin
MS Office -> Openoffice.org
Photoshop -> GIMP
Media Player -> Rythmbox
Nero -> GnomeBaker

some of these apps may run slow on 256 meg so you may want to look at more lighweight versions. e.g use epiphany instead of Mozilla or use gnome-office instead of openoffice

hi,
I recently got a ubuntu cd from a friend of mine. can I use it as a live cd to practice some C / C++ programming . would someone help me out in this as to how to go about it ?

yes first thing is to connect to the internet and type into the console:

apt-get update

(wait)

apt-get install build-essential


this will install the C compiler and associated files

I just found out that my wireless usb pen/dongle is not compatible with Linux. Can anybody recommend a usb wireless device for me as at the moment I cannot get any updates, it must be usb though. Is there a "package" that I can download and transfer to my laptop which I can then run and it will perform all the necessary updates until I can get a new wireless pen?

Many thanks

Harry

Also I cannot install anything while I am not connected to the internet so that is quite annoying

usb wireless = no-no for linux

very limited driver support.