Install Linux on an old laptop

[danceswithferrets]

I found that while I could connect using networkmanager (KDE3.5) on battery power I kept losing connection, even with powersaving unchecked. Could it be my card had an issue ? Works fine with wicd on mains or battery.
Love the quick and dirty hack for NFS, but what changed from 10.3 when NFS and wireless played nice ?
At the moment I'm running kwikdisk in the tray, and a user option in fstab, 2 clicks and it's mounted.

The more that linux drives me nuts, the more I grow to love it.

[TKS1125]

Most of the older dell laptops will run fine with suse 11.1, you will need to configure a few things but for the most part they run fine, here is how i test the older systems.
first run the install , while doing this when you get to the software click on detail and install the following.(providing you just want to test,)

install kaffiene as the multimedia player.
install win codecs 32 all
install dvdcss
install dvb
install libdvdnav 4
install libdvdread 4
and install flash player
if these are not available they can be installed when you do an update
for the most part on most of the dell's choosing the default settings will be fine. i install the libxine support systems on all of my machines because they work very well but you might try something else. these parameters seem to work well on the older systems. the oldest i run on is a gateway solo 1100 and it runs very fast with suse 11.0
some of the other folks on the forum run other programs and have had great results if this does not work someone will help. i usually can have a system up and running in a matter of a couple hours of time and i only use SUSE. i have had the best results with this distro. i hope this will help in some way.