Question Internet not working on Puppy Linux ?

[hmunster123]

I installed Puppy Linux on an older HP laptop (ten years old or so). I was running Windows on it and the internet worked fine. The Puppy Linux software installed with no problems but I can't get online with it.
I am running this on my own laptop, but I'm a teacher at a school. Not sure if anything is blocking it. Any advice? Thanks.

 

[Ralston18]

More information needed.

Explain more about what you are doing or trying to do, what happens or does not happen, any error messages, etc..

Who is the network/router administrator? You will need help from that person.

 

[TerryLaze]

It probably doesn't "see" the ethernet device, you would have to install drivers for the ethernet, or the wifi if you are using that.

 

[Grobe]

A ten yr old laptop isn't that old, so unless this is a very-very cheap little thing - I'd rather suggested another Linux distro, something like Linux Mint - with Mate desktop.

The Puppy (actually is a collection of various distros under an umbrella, sort of) may be very light in resource usage, but also may not support as broad range of HW as other distros - especially if you're using a 32 bit distro.

Btw: do you happens to know the exact iso image you installed Puppy from ?

And - what excact model number for your laptop ?

 

[hmunster123]

Thanks, I will answer questions next week. I only work at that school on Mondays and Tuesdays. My laptop is 64 bit, is that the problem? Also how do I find drivers for the wireless?

 

[hmunster123]

I'm back, laptop is an HP Compaq 6710B 64 Bit. I played around with it some more but never got online. Furthermore, I entered my static IP address manually, it said "successful" but still would not go online. It says I have Ethos installed.

I used F96 CE to install the software

I am using Wi-Fi

Any advice appreciated.

 

[cruisetung]

Your wifi is only wi-fi 3 802.11g. Your laptop & wifi is just too old, I would say just forget about using existing built-in wifi.

https://www.techradar.com/reviews/p...ops-and-netbooks/hp-compaq-6710b-28663/review

Look for and buy an adapter on the list if you really want to use wifi with your laptop. But be warned that even if you buy the correct one, it might still won't work because the distro you use probably won't come with the drivers.

https://github.com/morrownr/USB-WiF...are_supported_with_Linux_in-kernel_drivers.md

If you insist to use wifi and don't want to worry about wifi driver, then get a cheap wifi extender, which allows you connect a short ethernet cable to it and then connect it wirelessly to a wifi router.

 

[hmunster123]

Oh ok, no wonder it would not work, thanks. I still need to use this at work, so should I just forget about Linux for now? Can I upgrade the laptop? I just can't afford to buy another laptop right now.

I am still confused about one thing, why was the Wi-Fi working fine when I had Windows on the laptop, and now it won't work at all?

 

[cruisetung]

Don't know where you are located. That laptop is just too old.

It probably only has 2GB DDR2 memory?

No reason and probably no way to upgrade.

Any second hand laptop after Intel 6/7th gen will be better off for your usage.

The fact is that Linux's wifi driver support sucks. Linux desktop market share is less than 5% in the past. Most vendors just won't spend any money developing drivers for Linux.

Or get a second hand Chromebook if all you need is online activities.

==

Well, Linux market share nowadays is not getting better.

Desktop Operating System Market Share Worldwide | Statcounter Global Stats

This graph shows the market share of desktop operating systems worldwide based on over 5 billion monthly page views.

gs.statcounter.com

 

[Grobe]

I am still confused about one thing, why was the Wi-Fi working fine when I had Windows on the laptop, and now it won't work at all?

How long time since you connected to a wifi network last time?

The answer to your question - this is the most common core issues (given that you actually have a network router that support older WiFi standards):

• Manufacturer of WiFi card don't care about making a driver for Linux.
• You run a lightweight Linux distro. There is a theoretical possibility that the particular distro have stripped away some drivers for WiFi cards deemed unsafe to use.

I was not able to search the internet to find what exact WiFi card you have installed (afaik. there is a lot of variants of that model with different WiFi cards).

Please run this command to list network cards installed on your laptop:

lspci | grep -E -i --color 'network|ethernet'

Copy that text from terminal and paste here, use code tags.

 

[hmunster123]

Okay thanks, I will let you know what network card it is next week. What are code tags?

I was using internet right before I installed Puppy Linux