Novice question about laptops and wireless

[Steve Phillips]

Virden, Larry W. wrote:
> I unfortunately don't have the laptop model with me right now, nor the
> model of the wireless card - two really good pieces of information that
> I should have gotten before I posted. I apologize. 
> 
> As for what I mean by old - the laptop is 7 or more years old, I'd
> hazard a guess.
> 
> How can I tell between RH and RHEL?

cat /etc/redhat-release should tell you.

FWIW, redhat 4 (if i recall correctly) was one of the first releases 
back in the early 90's, it is unlikely you have this version, but if you 
do, it would be a really good idea to update it to something either from 
the fedora project or from one of the redhat derivatives (or go with 
ubuntu or something newer at least :-) )

As someone else pointed out, you should have no problem running a 
reasonably cut back version of any flavour of linux on the hardware you 
have, just dont expect to be able to enable all the flashy whizzbang 
effects like rotating desktops and earthquake squiggles around windows.

The advantage of doing such an update means that it will probably auto 
detect your wifi card, install the right drivers and setup a nice wee 
'would you like to connect to one of the 329874982374 wifi access points 
i just found' applet to make your life easier, as well as having an 
updated web browser and a nice shiny new tcl for you to whack scripts 
out in :-)


HTH.

-- 
Steve.