This is just a few notes to show you how I trialed Linux on my Libretto 110CT. I used the following distros:

• Zipslack (a cut down version of Slackware without X-Windows. It is called Zipslack because it is designed to be booted off a Zip disk)


• Damn Small Linux

Well anyway, I first of all tried Zipslack without too many problems using Loadlin and MS-DOS. Loadlin is a Linux bootloader for DOS, basically meaning that you can run Linux from within DOS without emulation. Booting Zipslack through Loadlin took a while, but it did seem to load kernel modules for my Netgear MA401 card. I didn’t persue Zipslack anymore, because it had no GUI by default, and I don’t know enough about Linux to install one.

Next I tried Damn Small Linux. This distro is suited to older machines such as the Libretto, and allows the user to boot it in many different ways. I can recall using the ‘Poorman’s method’, where you put DSL in a folder on your VFAT partition, then boot off a DSL floppy, which then loads DSL from the folder on the hard disk. It took a few goes to get it going, but I managed to eventually boot DSL, and have it up and running. On first impressions, it looked really good, but it came apparrent that it wasn’t going to run that well on the Libretto, mainly due to the lack of hardware graphics acceleration in the drivers, which made performance quite sluggish. Another problem (but not DSL’s fault), was that after booting DSL from the hard disk via the floppy, the floppy drive stopped working. This is because Linux ’sees’ a floppy disk drive via the BIOS, and then tries to load a kernel modules to access it directly. Because the Libretto PCMCIA floppy drive is non-standard, the kernel modules fail to load and for some reason Linux refuses to talk to the floppy via the BIOS. I have come across a kernel module on a website for the Libretto floppy disk drive, it’s just a matter of trying to install it.

All in all, unless I can try to find another, better distro, I have not had a very good experience with Linux on the Libretto, and I stick with Windows because it performs so much better on this hardware.