Baslinux mailing list

[James Miller <jamtat AT mailsnare.net>]

On Tue, 16 Sep 2003, LaBranche, Kevin wrote:

> I am looking for a way to install baslinux to an older laptop in such a way
> as to just have the ability to surf to one website on our company intranet.
> The laptop will be using a 10/100 mb CAT5 connection.  Is this possible in
> baslinux?
>
Sounds possible to me.  Steven is the expert here, so you should
definitely look for his responses to this query.  But here are my
observations on it.  First, the laptop will almost certainly be using a
pcmcia NIC.  Please clarify that.  If it does, you'll need to install some
additional packages.  Since this is the second time the issue of pcmcia
NIC's and BL has come up in as many days, I decided to take a look through
the BL archive, where a lengthy discussion took place on the matter some
months ago between Steven and I.  I think it's pretty well covered there.
Just go to the archive and search for "pcmcia help, more frequent
fsck'ing" (the subject line for the relevant thread).  While I claimed
yesterday (based on vague recollections) that only 2 packages are required
to get pcmcia NIC's going, I now see looking over the archive that there
are more like 3 or 4 packages.  In addition, some symlinking of some basic
system commands (e.g., cat, ifconfig) needs to be done, since the pcmcia
utilities that get installed expect these commands to be somewhere they're
not on a BL system (expects them to be in /sbin, if memory serves, whereas
in BL the are in the busybox directory).  So, that's a bit on getting
pcmcia NIC's going.  There are also issues of networking addressing, but
these are not really peculiar to BL: they work pretty much the same in BL
as in any other distro.

Now, for getting to that website.  You'll want a graphical browser for
this, I take it?  If not, it will be really simple.  BL comes with Links
preinstalled, which should work "out of the box" just fine.  That is, as
long as your company's site does not use java, frames or ssl.  If you want
a graphical browser, you'll first need to get a working X configuration.
That can be a bit tricky, but if you're not new to Linux, it's not much
more of a challenge than it is under other distros.  If you don't need
java, frames or ssl but want a graphical browser, I'd try Dillo.  It will
work really well on old hardware like yours.  If you need something more
advanced in a graphical broswer (i.e., something that will handle frames,
ssl and java)  it seems like the thing to use is Opera 6.03.  I believe
Steven has made this version available at one of his BL add-ons links.
Whether you might be able to use something yet more advanced than Opera
6.03 (it's an older version), like maybe Mozilla or Firebird, will depend
on your hardware.  Basically 486's top out with this older version of
Opera.  Older Pentiums with sufficient RAM (i.e., 64MB or more) could
handle Mozilla or Firebird.  I'll warn you in advance that those browsers
likely have additional dependencies that will need to be installed to get
them working.  Steven has installed Mozilla on one of his BL machines, so
he should be able to address the dependencies issue.

How you get the browser to fire up and head to the site is something that
will require more input to address.  Perhaps issuing startx, then
navigating with the cursor to the browser will suffice.

James