Firstly, welcome aboard. You'll be coming to the pub meets in Norwich??
Secondly, ouch! Have you got rid of Gnome yet?? Hopefully. But if not; On a machine of that speed, you'll want to be doing a...
sudo apt-get install xubuntu
...which installs all the relavent packages to make XFCE the Desktop Environment. Log out and click "Sessions" on GDM - select XFCE from the list. XFCE is a light-weight, resource friendly DE which should handle much much better on your laptop.
Other lightweight desktop environments you might like to try; fluxbox, IceWM.
(PS. Didn't know if you meant newb to Alug or newb to Linux in general!)
-Simon
Message: 12 Date: Fri, 06 Jan 2006 21:37:39 +0000 From: Dave Cooper dave@accuramatic.co.uk Subject: [ALUG] newb: Hello! (ubuntu connects) To: Alug main List main@lists.alug.org.uk Message-ID: 1136583460.6641.6.camel@localhost.localdomain Content-Type: text/plain
Hello Alug! I'm a newb who joined the list on 23rd Dec: it's taken this long to get ubuntu 5.10 on my (300mHz) laptop to connect, but here it is! All filtered through it's unheard-of-by-linux (NetVin430) pcmcia lan card too. Dave