About a dillion years ago (ca. 2000 based on file dates) I succesfully installed RedHat [Gnu/]Linux on my Libretto 50 ultraportable notebook computer.
RedHat is no longer my distribution of choice… but it was a pain to get on there so it’s going to stay awhile.
Well, I took the L50 out of mothballs this weekend with the intention of getting it back into use. My plan was to put Damn Small Linux (DSL) on it but then I realized two things:
– RedHat 7.1 is okay. Why downgrade?
– DSL might not have mutt pre-installed and I might be on my own getting it built. Unacceptable.
So I decided to get RH7.1 another chance on this wonderful little notebook. The only problem remaining was that I never got a network card working in it.
So I tried my 3Com PCMCIA NIC. It worked on the first boot. Hmmm… maybe I only tried my Linksys WiFi card back in 2000.
Next thing: install FVWM. I was ready to install from source when I found an RPM. Worked great, with just a little taste of dependency hell. (I don’t miss RedHat but Gentoo is out of the question for this underpowered little darling–I refuse to put a source distro on it.)
FVWM… working!
Firefox… dependency hell… forget it for now.
mutt… already installed!
So today I brought the L50 to work. I didn’t get it to see the office network yet. Maybe later in the week.