Connecting old hardware to the internet

[86047]

I have a set up in my home with a dell desktop downstairs attached to the router with internet and printers and stuff. We have three laptops set up wirelessly, one of them an ibook G4, which is mine. I also have an old PC I want to run linux on and connect to the internet. Is there any way i can share a connection with my ibook? It may have been easier but there's one problem: The old pc has no ethernet port! ugh. Is there anyway to bridge the connection over usb or the modem port?

I'm not too worried about the printer sharing or anything on the old machine (yet), I'm more just worried about getting an internet connection.

Thanks a bunch.

 

[thewhitehart]

I really don't think so - internet sharing from the ibook can only be shared to computers using ethernet, firewire, or airport. You can share a connection originating from bluetooth, but you cannot share to bluetooth. Not that that matters on your old pc anyway.

Buy an ethernet card, you can get them for less than ten bucks, and pop it into the pc.

 

[ddekker]

old computers

I have played with my share of Windows linux and OS X, I can't say that its impossible to do it, I can tell you that the $5 you spend on a network card for the old computer is money well spent, getting wireless to run on a linux box I have done, but not a lot of fun...lol... what distro are you thinking of running? I have done quite a few different ones, Ubuntu seems to be the flavor of the hour for most... easy to install and does a good job of supporting most hardwares...

good luck..

DD

 

[86047]

I was thinking of running openSuSE probably under gnome
kind of a different thread topic but what are the advantages of kde vs gnome?

I was thinking openSuSE because supposedly it supports old hardware well, and doesn't take up much hard drive space for the installation (the pc only has a 6GB hard drive). Also, it is user friendly, and I have no idea how to code in linux, so I need something to set it up for me, without requireing linux command knowledge.

I have a copy of xubuntu in live cd, which uses XFCE (?). I may load it and see if I like it.

Also, which distro is better for wireless networking (most trivial to set up and maintain)? And where would I buy a network card for an old quantex, probably 166mhz or the next step up, maybe 256mb of ram? (been a while since I've used the machine so I don't know teh exact specs. It's been sitting around with Win98 installed and I want to put it to some use.)

thanks a bunch.

 

[thewhitehart]

You should definitely have 256 mb of ram for ubuntu. I was not skilled enough to set up wireless networking on an ubuntu box with a netgear usb wifi device. Compared to the windows world, linux is very picky about wireless cards - not linux's fault, but because the big wireless companies don't actively make drivers for linux.

I installed xubuntu once, and liked it. It ran very slow though on a pc with 64mb ram, so 256 should be no problem.

Funny, my first computer was a quantex.

 

[ddekker]

old hardware

I agree we are most likely in the wrong place, so I hope everyone will survive the post without tearing into us too much..lol.... I run ubuntu server and desktop on an old PC and serve around 10 websites on it... it has 256 meg of ram and It serves fine, the desktop is pretty darn sluggish I would recomend 384-512 if its fairly weak hardware... I have installed ubuntu and mepis on a P2 400 and they both ran great with 768meg of ram (old sticks I had laying around)... anyway my site thats listed below is served on a way old machine I had laying around, its all database driven (using wordpress) I have other sites on it using Drupal and Joomla, so its working good for serving..

DD

 

[86047]

nvm

first of all it's xubuntu not ubuntu
lower requirements
second of all i was completely wrong
i looked at the ram
and it's... drumroll please... 64mb
yech.
i'm throwing it out (like I want to run windows 98 w/ no internet)

 

[iMeowbot]

The old pc has no ethernet port! ugh. Is there anyway to bridge the connection over usb or the modem port?

So it's a desktop machine, does it have any free slots? Basic low-end Ethernet cards can be had for around $5 these days.