Linux on an Old Computer

I have an old laptop computer that I purchased in 1999 (Mobile Pentium II 366 MHz, 128 MB RAM, 6 GB hard drive) running Windows 98.  The computer is barely usable anymore because it is so old and slow.  I decided to try to install Linux on it.  I did some research and concluded that Puppy Linux was a good choice.  It is small, mostly runs out of RAM, and supposed to be easy to install.

Basically the installation process consists of downloading a CD image file, burning it to a CD and then booting the computer from the CD drive.  I was up and running within a half hour.  You can load the install directly on to the hard drive once you boot from the CD if you want to (I haven't tried that yet).  When you shut down you can save all your settings to the hard drive so the next time you boot from CD you don't have to reconfigure everything.

Getting the network up and running was a bit of a challenge.  This computer did not have a native network port (neither wireless or wired) so I bought a USB to Ethernet adapter a while ago (Linksys USB200M).   It seemed like the operating system recognized it and configured it, but when I went to set auto DHCP it did not get an IP address that made sense on my network.  Also it had the default gateway set wrong.  I'm not exactly sure where it was getting its IP address from, but I couldn't get it to route to the internet.  I also couldn't get it to use my router as its default gateway.  I tried static IP addresses and gateway settings, but couldn't get it to work. I unplugged the network cable, plugged it in to a different computer where it worked, but not until I unplugged the cable in different locations a couple of times.  Then I plugged it back in to this computer and it worked here.  I really don't have an explanation of why this made it work.

The web browser that comes with it is called SeaMonkey (appears to be some variant of Firefox).  It is a piece of junk and barely usable at the screen resolution that this laptop has to run on (max is 800x600).  It is also very slow.  I'm not sure if it will speed up if I run it from the hard drive.  It's only marginally better for browsing than Windows 98 boot.  Overall it is much faster though.  I think this will extend the life of this computer if I can find a better web browser.