poltr1 | Tardis Mk III will be a Linux box....

Some time ago, I mentioned that I had dibs on an old Pentium III laptop at work. Earlier this week, we cleaned out two cubicles in preparation for new employees, and a lot of old and unused computer things were thrown out. One of the "things" was an old Gateway E4000 desktop, which I was using until last year, when the hard drive started to fail on it. I managed to vulch that machine, along with some mice, a power cord, a modem, and some phone and network cables. And Jeanne (our admin assistant) said that I could have the laptop.

And so, I took it home on Thursday night.

While cleaning out the carrying case, I came across a copy of Windows NT Workstation 4.0, Service Pack 5, and some old manuals. But that's not what I'm going to install on the laptop. Once I get a hard drive for it, I'm installing Ubuntu 7.10. I've already ran it from the laptop's CD-ROM, and it appears to work nicely. Especially the games. I'll just need to know how to install new hardware, when it comes time to do so -- floppy drive module, modem, network card, wireless network card, USB devices, etc.

For the Linux geeks out there -- and I really should make a filter -- how easy or difficult would it be to install these devices? I'm not expecting plug-and-play, which is one of Windows' main selling points (ease of use). Are drivers available?

Oh yeah. If you want to be included in my Linux filter, post a reply to this message. I'm already planning to include