Wireless problems and Linux recommendation

[thewhitehart]

Yes, I know this is a mac forum, but...

I have a friend who would like to set up a wireless network in his house. The installation of the belkin router went just fine, and my ibook can connect wirelessly.

I'm trying to set up a pc to connect wirelessly - this pc has less than 500 Mhz clock speed (unsure exactly) and 64 MB ram. This computer is running Windows 98, the original version, not the second edition. It is bloated as all heck and slower than slow. We bought a linksys WUSB54GC wireless USB adapter that said it needed 128 MB of ram and Windows 98 SE (I did not know the specs of the pc before buying the adapter, never thinking it was that old).

Could the adapter possibly run under 64 MB of ram? It wouldn't connect to the router, and I was assuming the lack of ram was causing it.

What if I installed linux on the pc? Has anyone had any experience with this particular adapter and linux? How well would Ubuntu run on a machine with 64 mb of ram? If it won't run well, what's a good linux distro for such an old computer? Will it be a pain getting the adapter to run with other linnux versions?

I have an old legal copy of Windows 98 SE, perhaps it's better to just install that and see if the adapter really needs SE...

 

[robbieduncan]

Non-SE Win98 does not really do USB. SE provides a basic level of USB functionality. I'd install SE and see how you go.

 

[thewhitehart]

Non-SE Win98 does not really do USB. SE provides a basic level of USB functionality. I'd install SE and see how you go.

Cool. I never knew what the major difference was. Do you think the 64 mb vs 128 mb ram requirement will make much of a difference? Reinstalling Win 98 SE sounds like a much better idea than putting linux on it. I've had great experience installing linux, but terrible experience configuring wireless networking with it.

 

[Bobdude161]

There's always Wireless PCI cards. They still require SE but I think you'll get more out of those. There might be some wireless cards that only require 64 mb but I'm not sure. go to your local store and look at the boxes.

As for linux, I had a question about this a couple of days ago. What they told me was Ubuntu requires at least 128 mb to run. There's xUbuntu for slower systems and there's also Gentoo, but you gotta be experienced in the ways of linux to set it up right for Gentoo.