Great Debian experience, part 2

[Steve Litt <slitt@troubleshooters.com>]

Hi all,

Last night I took a 2GB RAM, 2006 Compaq laptop, and used the
Debian 7.4.0 to put Wheezy on it. It went almost as smoothly as the
first one, but...

* Half way thru the install for 64 bit it told me there were no suitable
  kernels. Even though the laptop identifies as a 64 bit 2 core under
  System Rescue CD, I re-installed using the 32 bit network install, got
  a choice of several kernels, and chose a 686 pae kernel. It worked
  perfectly.

* Iceweasel didn't play Youtube videos right away. I had to install
  nonfree flash to get it to play. I'm not sure, but I might have had
  to reboot. Anyway, it was pretty straightforward. 

* Skype was much easier to install because the OS was 32 bit

* No matter what I did, I just couldn't get the Broadcom wifi to work.
  So I installed lshw, performed lshw, and there was no mention of
  wifi. Then I remembered I'd removed the laptop's Broadcom wifi card a
  year ago, and hadn't replaced it. Time for a wifi dongle. :-)

This laptop is now surprisingly peppy, considering it's 7 years old and
has only 2GB of RAM.

Thanks,

SteveT

Steve Litt                *  http://www.troubleshooters.com/
Troubleshooting Training  *  Human Performance