I was told to use slackware once...where can I get it? Also, can I download it on one computer (this one), put it on cds, and then install it on another one (my laptop)? And what kind of comp do I need...as in how good? My laptop is pretty old...Thanks!

google.... first hit...

How old is your laptop?

I've run Slack on a Pentium 66 (I think), and it worked fine. You might have trouble getting the graphics working on it, though (or you might not, it depends on the support in X).

On low end hardware it's probably better to stick to something efficient graphically - so command-line Linux would be fine, but I wouldn't fancy trying to run X on it!

Yeah, anything lower than P66 shouldn't run X!

It's a Toshiba Satellite 2775XDVD (i think that number's right...it was one on the bottom of the comp anyway). Anyway, I'm currently running an old version of Mandrake Linux on it and Windows 2000 Pro. It was my brother's for a long time, and he put a lot of use into it (as in it's been through a lot), and it's only around because he's good at fixing things. The charger is duct taped together. Anyway, it says it's go 64 MB RAM but it's actually got 62. I think I have 8 GB on my linux partition...my Windows partition is 6 GB and it's full. Will it work on the linux partition after i get rid of Mandrake? Thanks!

Your laptop doesn't sound very old to me. I thought you meant OLD, like with 4 MB of RAM and a 200 MB hard disk!

You shouldn't have many problems getting Slackware to work on it. Slackware is lighter than Mandrake, so it should be a little snappier, and it should work fine on the same partition. You probably first ought to remove everything except your home directory (if you care to keep that) to avoid possible software conflicts.

I have never used Windows 3.1. I've either used DOS, Windows 95, 98, 2000, NT, or XP. What's it like? My school is new, and it doesn't have any obsolete computers (they all use XP Professional) except in my science teacher's room, but those computers all run Windows 95 or higher or an old version of Mac OS.

I don't remember it too well, as I think I was 6 when we got rid of our comp with it. Think windows without a task bar or start button where you run everything from an interface like you get when you open "My Computer". Everything was run like that, through Windows Explorer. If I remember correctly you could have it start up by having a few folders open, which basically ended up being like icons on your desktop. In order to open anything else, though, you had to find your way through the folders to get to what you needed. I don't remember anything about it but the GUI because I was little and didn't know about much else.

I remember win 3.1 well... with retrospective disgust. We had an ancient p75Mhz, and it was a peice of @#$%^&*(){}|:"<>? get my drift? so we could not put anything better on it...

We had a 50MHz 486DX-based computer that ran OS/2 Warp and Win 3.0/3.1 on it. It was pretty unstable as an errant mouse click could lock up the system for good. I was so happy when we finally got a modern computer (500 MHz AMD K6-2 with Win 98SE). I liked that machine even though 98SE wasn't nearly as good as the Linux I run now. It was a real cheapie box with 64M RAM, 10G HD, integrated graphics, a straight CD-ROM and an ancient 800x600 14" CRT attached. It ran pretty well, only the CD drive and the HD broke. I eventually put an Ethernet card in it and learned how horrible Win98 networking was, especially since I had just gotten this laptop (2.2G P4-M, 512M RAM, wireless, came with XP Pro).

Run progman.exe for awhile. It's a good indicator. It's basically the entire old Win3.1 GUI. I remember that Packard Hells used to ship with some shell that ran on top of progman [a shell on top of a shell on top of dos...ugh] but I can't recall its name, and it's best to be forgotten.

Also imagine your OS not shipping with a socket layer. No fancy native socket layer for you!

I remember using good old Trumpet Winsock for the longest time over a 9600 baud modem on a P90...then imagine how fast I felt like I was flying when we got the 28.8k serial modem!

You were lucky to get 9600. Our home phone line peaks at 700 bits/sec. :-(

I know how you feel. My phone line peaks at 4 KB/s. When we got cable, I was going to be happy if we got 56kb/s.

T1 :P

My neighbor has a network that's wireless. Sometimes my computer tunes it in. Sometimes it dosn't. Downloads of ~2 Mbps

haha, I can get access to an OC-48 line sometimes :-) It's NOT at my house of course...

Wow...and I thought *my* dial-up was slow at 1-10 KB/s!

when i had dialup, the local number got ~ 20kbps and the IBM global network (my dad works at ibm) got upwards of 30kbps.

I've got 26.4K on a U-M connection...

That's pretty darn fast. Does your dad get free or discounted hardware? That would be cool.

When we got our very first computer, an IBM PS/1 with a 12MHz 286, 512K RAM, and a then-revolutionary 30M HD, we had Internet on it via dial-up. It was Prodigy and the modem was a 300/1200/2400 bit/sec. It was s-l-o-w. I hate using dial-up at my parents' house as it peaks at about 43333 bps and is spotty at best. My cable clocks about 600KB/sec transfer rate and is wonderful. Yes, it costs almost $60 a month, but it's worth it.

Here's my experience (although others' may vary):

1. Ugly, 2-D window controls and graphics (no fancy shadows or 3D effects)

2. No tooltips, IIRC (unless programs implemented them themselves) Toolbars were fairly rare.

3. Stuck with 640x480 resolution and only 16 colors, with horrible-looking dithering. [Theoretically, you could do more with better hardware. I didn't have better hardware. :-) ]

4. Windows didn't update while dragging a scroll bar until mouse was released

5. Outlines when resizing/moving windows (most hardware wasn't powerful enough to draw the entire window while it was moving)

6. DOS programs run in a window were slooooowww (I usually used full-screen instead)

7. Usually, if you had an hourglass mouse cursor you couldn't do anything (not even use other programs) until it went away

We got up to 1024 x 768 in Win 3.1, but that was shortly before we "upgraded" to Win 95. When my dad first changed the res to that high, I was thinking "woah! that's high-res!".

Good times...

I bet that would have been cool. For some reason, 1024x768 on modern computers doesn't look all that hi-res anymore. Maybe it's just me, or maybe GUI elements have actually gotten bigger?

I had actually never seen a computer with more than 800x600 until I got this laptop in late 2002. Our old one had an ancient 14" monitor that only went up to 800x600. My laptop's 1280x1024. My dad had bought an HP desktop the year before, but kept the resolution screwed down to 800x600 so the icons looked bigger. I laugh about it whenever I have to use it. I turned it to 1280x1024- it looks a little weird as it's really meant to be run at 1024x768.

My next purchase should be an LCD of 19+ inches running at 1600x1200 as I would like more "real estate" on my screen. I think by the time I can afford one, they should be below $300 and not $500 or $600 for that high-res of a unit. The 1280x1024 19" monitors don't look that impressive to me.

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8. No drag & drop between programs (at least, not that I remember)

9. Instead of a Start menu, there was Program Manager. You had to sort program icons into "groups" (smaller windows inside the Program Manager window), and you couldn't put groups inside groups. (Although I later found a freeware shell that resembled Windows 95's taskbar more closely, although it was more of a pain to add/remove programs from the "start" menu.)

10. No taskbar. Instead, minimized programs because icons on the desktop (which were easy to lose), including Program Manager. The clock was a separate program, which had its own window. The only way to switch between applications when the screen was full was either Alt+Tab or minimize windows one by one until you could see the desktop.

11. No "task tray." Just desktop icons of minimized programs. This usually resulted in a lot of clutter if you ran a lot of "background" programs.

12. There were no "shortcuts." The only icons allowed on the desktop were those of minimized windows of currently running programs. You could only add programs to Program Manager. Pretty much no exceptions there.

13. Windows didn't have a close button, but they had a window menu button that you could double-click to close the windows.

all I remember is that pretty blue loading screen with the little flag :)

I was just fascinated by the dos command prompt... i would hold the enter button and watch the C:\> prompts cascade down the screen.

Same here...sometimes, when I was REALLY young, I would type random things at the command prompt just to see what would happen and then be annoyed that it didn't respond to commands like "you idiot". Man, was I stupid...

There was a time when I didn't understand the point of the BASIC REM statement. I wondered why the computer didn't just anything when I wrote a program with REM statements giving the computer instructions in English.

(Even though I was looking at a book with all the BASIC statements and how to use them, I think I was a bit too young to read all of it and actually understand it.)

That sounds like Win3.x to me.