Slackware on an old laptop

[sKaD]

I'm installing Slackware on an old laptop of mine, it's an Compaq Armada 7800 and I'm really wanting to run in the X invoronment (gnome) and also wanting to access my wireless network, I have a Belkin card attatched in the pcmcia (i think that's what it's called) port.

What should I really look out for and where should I go for instructions setting up my wireless card to access the wireless network w/ internet access.

Sorry, I'm new, but I'm willing to read more on my own than just keep bugging, but a point in the right direction would be awesome.

Thanks

[lakerdonald]

what type of card is it? Also, what kind of video card is it?

[genesus]

you shouldn't have any trouble at all getting slackware to work on an older model laptop...I have a few running it far below resonable specs with a great deal of speed. One suggestion though, you may want to stay away from gnome...fluxbox comes with the install, has fully customizeable menu and options, runs themes etc. You will notice a much smoother and faster running of the xserver. Goodluck with slack

[lakerdonald]

another good lightweight WM is Enlightenment.

[genesus]

yeah but it doesn't come with slack...so you got packages, libs, etc to dl

[MasonM]

I'm curious how this worked out.

I'm running Slack on an older Armada M700, Mobile PII @400MHz, 256Mb RAM.

Not exactly top of the line, but it works well. Unless his machine is really starved for RAM, he can use any WM he wants. KDE even runs well on mine without any lag at all.

[lt2hieu2004]

Depend on your wireless card chipset, you could use a lot of different drivers. If I'm correct, most Belkin wireless card use Athereos chipset so you could use Madwifi (http://madwifi.sf.net) or NDISWrapper (http://ndiswrapper.sf.net).

If your video card doesn't work straight away after installing Slackware, just run xorgconf (or xf86conf) to configure your video card. I have to do this everytime with my video card.