No, it wasn't good advice
When I tried to install then current versions of a couple of different distros, they wouldn't work because they apparently didn't have drivers for the older hardware anymore. The WiFi card was also an older one pretty much contemporary with the laptop, that should not have demanded a newer distro.
I'm sure you mean well, and that's appreciated, but you're basically giving me the same advice that did not help to resolve the issue before. It shouldn't be a Sisyphean ordeal to simply get basic WiFi going on a laptop.
I did try opensuse.org and got no help there.
My larger point remains - I was trying to accomplish something that should be simple to do, put substantial effort in to solving the problem on my own without success, then got no real help from the Linux community. Am I complaining about the quality of free advice I got? No, not really. My point is that not being able to get the problem resolved mostly removed me from the community. The Linux community will not grow under those conditions, and I can guarantee most people would not have plugged away at the problem as much as I did. That's a large part of why the OS remains marginalized.
