Good puppy

I had an old Dell Inspiron 3500 sitting around in the basement collecting dust. Since my kids have been using my wife's computer, I figured having another system around would be a good thing.

Since the Inspiron is pretty dated (1999?), running Windows XP would have been a challenge. So, I decided to go the Linux route. I have some experience with Linux, but I'm not an expert by any stretch. So, this was as much a test of what was easy to get going as anything else.

I was looking for something I could download, install and get running before the end of the weekend. So, I downloaded two very small Linuxes that are designed for running from CD or USB memory and tried them.

The first was Damn Small Linux (DSL). It booted up quickly and looked very nice, but I could not figure out how to make the old Netgear MA521 wireless network adapter to work.

So, I tried Puppy. It also booted up quickly. I spent a few hours getting used to it and got the wireless adapter to work without too much hassle. The big challenge was the sound card. Dell used to use some pretty strange sound cards back in the day and getting this one to work took some doing.

After all of that, I've got a spare system that is adequate for web surfing and general light use. Best of all, the price was right - free.