Holy crap! Was that a penguin?!

So, a few weeks back, I decided to dust off my 10-year-old Pentium 4 2.8Ghz desktop (the one with the Intel motherboard) and see if it still worked. Those reading this might read this and think "WHY?!", so here's my explanation. At another point in this PC's life, I downloaded Android x86 (A mobile Linux distro that is retro-fitted for Intel-compatible processors) and tried to install it because I had never had any luck installing Linux on the above machine before because both the GNOME and Unity interfaces in mainstream Ubuntu have what I would feel are the same requirements as Windows Vista or higher.

But anyway, that's beside the point. In retrospect, I thought that what would happen when I installed it would be that it would boot directly into the Android GUI that we're all familiar with on our phones and tablets. Needless to say, it did not. In fact, the only time I have ever had that luck is when I tried to install it at Sinclair whilst using a virtual machine, and even that gathered mixed results, because, while I would be able to boot said virtual machine, whenever I would go to enable my keyboard and mouse input, what would happen is it would cause the host operating system (Windows 7) to crash. Anyway, what really happened with the home PC is all I would get was a command line interface. 

At some point, I had also attempted to get DOS and/or Windows XP re-installed on it without any luck. Some months back, I had misplaced my orange recovery DVD that came with the computer and so I tried other workarounds, such as a eMachines DVD (for either DOS or XP Home, which, is the OS the desktop is licensed for), and I even tried FreeDOS (an open source DOS alternative that is supposed to be compatible with MS DOS-It doesn't run Windows 3.1, by the way).

So, a few months go by, and by now, my spare PC has been sitting in the basement for a while. Then my brother gives me a spare laptop with an SD card reader (Thanks, Matt!). and my interest in reviving the spare PC is renewed. So, once I finally get the laptop restored and set up how I like it, I take an Ubuntu image with the LXDE interface and "burn" it to a 2GB SD card. Once I get that done, I put it in my spare PC and boot it up, and the Lubuntu boots up without any hiccups whatsoever (SCORE!).

So, I figure that since the machine will not boot without a new OS, I go ahead and install the OS within the GUI itself (again, no problems; so this is good news). The only hiccup I get is unlike Ubuntu with Unity, Lubuntu will not automatically recognize my USB wireless NIC without any extra software. This leads me to believe that the only option I have is stringing some network cable(s) through the house. Well, today I did just and in the process I also installed some software to go with it. Maybe one of these days, I'll string some more Ethernet cable down to the basement or buy another wireless NIC so I can use this PC online permanently.

So, that pretty much sums up this experience. I even have some screenshots for you readers to enjoy as you peruse this article at your leisure. Enjoy!