Another Linux laptop given away

Today, I gave a friend one of the old Dell Inspiron 4100’s that I picked up from my employer a while back. It’s a pretty good system: 1 GHz processor, 1 GB RAM, 20 GB HDD, 802.11b WiFi, 10/100 built-in NIC, 24x CD-ROM (can be replaced with 2nd battery). The laptop will help her a lot more than the recycler who usually gets our obsolete equipment.

She needed it for her daughter that is homeschooled and takes classes online. Our copy of Windows XP Professional was loaded so I had to wipe the hard drive before I gave it to her. Instead of giving her a blank system, I loaded PCLinuxOS 2007. I chose PCLinuxOS because it’s even easier than Kubuntu for someone that has never used Linux.

The system fit her needs perfectly. Firefox, Flash Player 9, OpenOffice.org and MP3 support is installed by default so I didn’t have to install them post-OS install. She couldn’t believe everything that was installed didn’t cost anything. I made sure to show her that OpenOffice.org will open and save Word, Excel and PowerPoint files. I also showed her how to use Synaptic to download updates, install software and how to use the Administration Center to configure the system.

I was impressed with how well PCLinuxOS ran. All of the hardware worked without any special configuration. The boot time was noticeablely shorter than Kubuntu on a similar system I had given to someone else. I noticed that it has an easy way to configure Active Directory login in the Administration Center. I’ll have to test that out in a VM at work to see how well it works.

I put a dollar in one of those change machines. Nothing changed. - George Carlin

19.Sep.07 Hardware, Linux