About six months ago, I gave two of our grandchildren a HP Compaq Evo computer. Into it, I installed another distro. Coupled with an RALink USB wifi thingy to a Thomson router, I managed to connect them to the net and they were quite happily connected to their favourite sites like Friv.
Later, I took a copy of PCLinuxOS 2010.12 KDE down and tried it as a live CD. However, I couldn't remember the password that I used to gain access to the Thomson router. So, I left them using the M**** distro. However, it had to be manually connected to the wifi link each time. I couldn't get a distro of that age to autoconnect.
Today, when we took the two grandchildren home again after a brief holiday with us, I took down a live CD for PCLinuxOS 2011 LXDE. After a few further fruitless attempts to connect the live CD to the wifi router, I connected my own laptop with PCLinuxOS 2011.6 KDE via ethernet cable directly to the Thomson. When I checked the Thomson manual on line, it gave me the settings for the router (including the password from December 2010).
I tried these on the EVO with live LXDE and hey presto, I was connected. With that connection in place, I installed LXDE in place of the old distro on the EVO's hard drive.
Wonderful - now when they fire up the machine, PCLinuxOS LXDE boots up and autoconnects to the wifi.
Result, two happy grandchildren (ages 8 and 6). "Thanks Grandad"
Jim
