I just inherited an old laptop from my college's computer lab. In my house, I have my desktop computer in my room connected with a wireless connection. I'd rather not buy a wireless card for the laptop, so is there any way y'all know about to connect a laptop to a desktop to get Internet? I have ethernet jacks in both computers that are unused at present, so it'd be ideal if I could just connect them from that.

It also has no CD drive so I won't be able to put Linux on it until I get it connected.

Any ideas would be great. Thanks.

Edit: Because it's old, I'd also like to be able to connect the laptop to the desktop via XDMCP or VNC too... in case that changes anything.

Ok, 1 free ethernet on either machine is great.

If none of the 2 ethernet cards are autosense (to adapt to the type of cable it is connected to) you will need a socalled cross-ethernetcable, in short: crosscable.

Then just directly connect the two machines with the cable, and set the pc with internet connection up to do internet sharing;
give the eth0 (onboard ethernet card) the address 192.168.x.y where x is from 0 to 254 and y is from 1 to 254 - this will be your private network.

the laptop you should just set the ethernet up to have address 192.168.x.(y+1) or so (instead of y+1, just don't take y, 0 or 255, all other values are ok.

Then on the pc you turn on 'internet sharing', on the laptop, you give the ethernet address of the pc as gateway, and it should be ok.