lets just get the internet thing working shall we ?

ill have to dig up that tp link thing later

Speaking of which,.. TL-WN722N right here.
Intel wifi also works out of the box, across all laptops I had so far.

Broadcom,hmm tough luck with drivers. :/

https://wiki.debian.org/WiFi

Looking at your specs, you might want to upgrade to more RAM which should help with the sluggishness. See if prices on your memory have dropped to make it reasonable to upgrade it.

I did that with a laptop and found the memory was on clearance. It helped out a great deal since I only had the original minimum RAM requirements installed by the factory.

actually it was windows 7 that was sluggish on that machine
xubuntu was hilariously snappy on just the live dvd

parole is a shite video player though and it face plants if i fast forward ( though that might be the weedy specs its a bloody netbook in specs after all probably not even that )

Ah ok. That explains it. 2 Gb for Windows 7 just barely gets the job down, IMO. xubuntu must be much lower in requirements for memory.

I believe debian testing is actually not supposed to break.

Debian unstable, however, does completely break from time to time. (I know because I used to run it on my old desktop for many years.)

A kernel backport will indeed work, as the kernel doesn't depend on any of the other software in the system, and Linus Torvalds has a strict "do not break userspace" policy when it comes to kernel development. (He has even "yelled" (as much as can be conveyed via e-mail) at developers for breaking this policy.)

One other thing:

If you can find a Linux Live CD on which your internet works, you can chroot into the live system and, from there, install the packages you need.

(Was the Internet working in the installer?)

Yeah, I believed that too for quite a long time, but then KDE4 to 5 transition broke whole desktop irreversably on the package dep. level. Few weeks later GCC5 transition again broke stuff. The only thing people on Debian IRC were doing was issuing warnings to those who already had a problem.

So Debian Testing is just that. Testing.

Typical Gentoo install has better chances to recover than Debian Testing, because if something happens, there is no easy way to go back.

Debian Stable rolls pretty good and migrating to newer version is also painless. There are backports for open graphics stack, so no real reason to not to prefer it for stable reliable desktop.

So, do you find your to link?

Another option would be getting a crossed lan cable and connect your notebook to modem directly. It usually do the trick

OK, I did some tests on a Celeron laptop, with an Intel graphics adapter, and a Broadcom BCM4312 wireless chip, testing both Mint 17.3 (MATE and Cinnamon editions) and Lubuntu.

At first, the Broadcom wireless was not working, due to the lack of driver, however it was recognised in Lubuntu's "Additional Driver" section, and Mint's "Driver Manager".

The TP-Link Mini Wireless N USB adapter I tried worked without any problems and was recognised immediately.

It would appear that the missing element for the Broadcom wireless device was a package called "BCMWL-kernel-source" since once I had a working Internet connection, thanks to the TP-Link adapter, I was able to go to the various driver installation sections in both distros and install the required Broadcom driver. After that, the TP-Link adapter could be safely removed since the laptop was operating just fine using the Broadcom wireless.

For your information, the driver install application for Lubuntu is located under "Preferences -> Additional Drivers".

For Mint, should you wish to try that, I simply went to "All Programs -> Driver Manager".

Hope my investigations help you get up and running fairly soon! :-)

EDIT: And it would seem that Mint might possibly be the better choice for you, since when I double-checked what was on my Mint DVD, it would seem that the required Broadcom driver source was actually included on the DVD. If you get a Mint distro, and want to check before installing, mount the DVD on another OS, and look under "pool/main/b" -- there should be a package labelled "bcmwl-kernel-source_xxx".

well i got it to work
(finding the bloody tp link was more work then getting it to work) xubuntu immediately reconigsed it
i am now considering what to do with it

should i stay with xubuntu its working but i dont care for its UI
go to kubuntu ( the one i orginally wanted )
or give lubuntu a go ?

hmm decisions decisions

in the end i will either go for mint or reinstall windows 7 to see how many old games things thing can run no doubt
(to be honest i think mint is my best option )

I added a little addition to my post regarding Mint and the Broadcom driver. See my post above.

EDIT: Oh, forgot to mention it, but I think Kubuntu might be a little heavy for your machine.

well thats settled then mint it is
i dont mind usb wifi sticks but this machine only has 2 usb ports

xubuntu so far runs fine better then windows 7 but this is a different hd
the original 80 gig hd was rather sluggish

One question: What is wrong with my first post in this topic? In particular, why is it "low rated"?

Have you had the opportunity to try out Mint yet? Just curious to know how well it's working on your machine.