Hi!

My conclusions are quite different, but first, define what is the old
hardware, what does it mean?
I'd say 10 years old hardware is a rare example of good manufacturing,
and I quite frankly have problems to, for example, upgrade hardware
with much newer components than this - and with few exceptions we're
talking about second market here.
I usually buy 4-6 years old hardware from what used to be the top
shelf. I use them on a daily basis, they do what I want (for 10% of
the price I should pay for a new one). But let's say that 10 years is
giveaway level - no matter if this is a PC, laptop or whatever else -
I assume it has USB, PCI, PCIMCIA if mobile, and around 256 MB of ram
(even though half of it was kind of normal back then), 800MHz clock,
leaving plenty of opportunities to upgrade it... I think that D:B will
work on that.
If it's worse - taking different distro, dedicated for old stuff
should do the trick.

And yes, no wi-fi from D:B works in my place as well, and the problem
is the same as yours - lack of free drivers. I usually depend on
wireless connectivity. The answer is as simple, as taking the cable
and making it work. Wifi is just for ease of wandering around my
house...

Having binary blobs, or some not-so-free components inside Linux is
not that good, but oh, come on guys! There always is a solution!

Cheers,
Ł

2011/9/30 sayhi2guy@??? <sayhi2guy@???>:
> Hi
>
> Just a few thought son what I see as a conflict of goals in D:B's
> philosophy.  On one hand d:b is committed to totally free software, but
> D:B is also trying to be an OS to recycle old equipment (as in the
> famous $0 laptop).
>
> People who depend on other peoples old unwanted
> hardware cannot always choose what they want, especially whether the
> hardware has free drivers.  There is an English saying that 'beggars
> cannot be choosers.' As an example, both my computers are donated 'cast
> offs' and the usb wireless on one needs the ralink firmware that D:B
> does not include; I cannot just afford to go out and buy something else
> so I cannot use that PC with D:B.
>
> The goal of encouraging someone to
> only use hardware with free drivers is good, but not always practical:
> The irony is that this hinders the people who need the free software
> the most.
>
> Best wishes
> Guy
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