Best Computer for Debian

[frankish]

Is it bad to have a computer that is "made for Windows 2000" or 98 to install Debian? My computer is a Dell and about 4 years old. I did install Debian one time and got the graphics card and display to work but there was no sound! Is Debian poor at supporting hardware on these kinds of computers?

[cheetahman]

Nope you can install Debian on any computer which one do you want to install on it

[techieMoe]

Is it bad to have a computer that is "made for Windows 2000" or 98 to install Debian? My computer is a Dell and about 4 years old. I did install Debian one time and got the graphics card and display to work but there was no sound! Is Debian poor at supporting hardware on these kinds of computers?

There could be a number of things wrong. What kind of sound device does it have? What chipset? Was the sound muted? What types of sounds were you trying to play (CDs, MP3s, etc)?

[Vergil83]

Is it bad to have a computer that is "made for Windows 2000" or 98 to install Debian? My computer is a Dell and about 4 years old. I did install Debian one time and got the graphics card and display to work but there was no sound! Is Debian poor at supporting hardware on these kinds of computers?

I think it would be fine. Hardware support is much better, IMHO with the new Debian release Sarge (just released in June). However, it may take a little more work than other distros.

[bryansmith]

I have installed Debian on my laptop and have had no problems thus far with hardware. Mind you, I have upgraded to Sid but from what I can remember, Sarge was pretty good at hardware detection too.

Bryan

[ericrun]

It can really vary. I have Debian Sarge running at home. I have no sound (I think because the chip is was too new at the time), and I'm running VGA graphics without acceleration on a computer built in February. I hope that moving to etch after the new year will fix that.

I setup a 3 year old Compaq at work with the same disks as what I used at home, and I do have sound in KDE, but not in other window managers. I'm still trying to figure that out.

I'd say that the older your machine is, the more likely you will have zero problems with new hardware. The newer something is, the less likely that the driver hackers have had to put something together.

[carspidey]

I am new on linuxi was reading a lot tonite... i wanted to get firefox in my laptop.... i downloaded the file into the desktop.. i am trying to install it from the terminal...

so i unpackaged it...: tar -zxf (file name)

after this.. how do i install it in my computer

[pavlo_7]

I am new on linuxi was reading a lot tonite... i wanted to get firefox in my laptop.... i downloaded the file into the desktop.. i am trying to install it from the terminal...

so i unpackaged it...: tar -zxf (file name)

after this.. how do i install it in my computer

open terminal
cd /home/pavlo/Desktop/firefox-installer (change pavlo to your user name)
./firefox-installer
procede from there by clicking on Forward button

[Vergil83]

if you are using debian just do

apt-get update
apt-get install mozilla-firefox

[masinick]

I have a Dell Dimension 4100 with a 40 GB Western Digital disk, a Intel Corp. 82815 815 Chipset Host Bridge and Memory Controller Hub, a Realtek RTL-8139 network card, a Creative Labs SB Live! EMU10k1 sound card, an Intel Corp. 82801BA IDE U100 IDE disk interface, nVidia Riva TNT2 Model 64 32 MB graphics card, DELL OEM P991 monitor, Sony and Samsung CD/RW and DVD/ROM drives. All components nearly always work with both Linux and BSD distributions. On rare occasions, something messes up, but it's usually either because of a kernel that doesn't have certain features compiled in or because there is a quality issue with a test release. I have rarely seen problems in released versions, and not even that often in test versions. Dell makes popular hardware, so developers and testers tend to write drivers for its components fairly early in the game. I would be 99.5% certain that your hardware will work, more so if you happen to have a 4100 like I do. I run Debian, Fedora Core, and Mandriva releases continually and have for nearly five years on this box, no problems.