My unhappy adventures with Linux installation
- Thread starter PowerGod
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It isn't obvious why it is hanging. Driver support is sometimes lacking, most often there is a workaround, but I suspect you'll need support from the creator of the distro.
edit: and using a current distro (with the possible exception of very slim distros) might not be much fun, because they assume higher specs than XP, especially with the amount of memory and graphics card speed. XP can reasonably work with 64MB, most current distros won't.
edit: and using a current distro (with the possible exception of very slim distros) might not be much fun, because they assume higher specs than XP, especially with the amount of memory and graphics card speed. XP can reasonably work with 64MB, most current distros won't.
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Ziz
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Depending on the desktop environment.
I can have an up2date ubuntu, I just need to use XFCE or something even smaller.
PowerGod
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That's what I had in mind when I started all this mess, the scalability is one of the things I like the most, and one of the things that is lacking on Windows systems (in this case I can't have an updated Windows XP anymore)...Depending on the desktop environment.
I can have an up2date ubuntu, I just need to use XFCE or something even smaller.
Anyway I don't like very much Ubuntu, I'll leave it as a last choice
@Björn: I tried all those options but nothing changed
@Pickle: I accept donations
(actually I think I'll wait a bit before buying a new pc, so I can save for something more powerful)Note to myself: have to try "nouveau.modeset=0" no luck
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I have installed Debian on a really weird computer hardware with plop launched from PXE boot. So I am surprised that you can't manage to start the Debian installer from Plop.
The freedom advocates won't be happy with my recommendation, but I find it much easier to install Debian with a CD image they make with non-free firmware blobs included: http://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/unofficial/non-free/cd-including-firmware/
You'll save yourself some trouble. Debian is stable, uses low ressources and has good support for old hardware. I would keep trying with Debian.
Direct link to the image you most probably want: http://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/unofficial/non-free/cd-including-firmware/7.7.0/i386/iso-cd/firmware-7.7.0-i386-netinst.iso
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b_o_b
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Indeed
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Can't you swap out the videocard for something else? Maybe only while installing. Then swap the videocard back.
Mate does strange things with the videocard at shutdown.
I installed Mte for someone, but he had this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DMS-59 connector I'd never seen in my life. So instead of buying a connector I put in another graphics card, installed it, then swapped the videocard back.
Another idea is to find old Linux magazines out there, and make a CD with those old distro's. At least it will install (and support old hardware), be faster than current distro's (yes, they get slower and slower). Then, upgrade the system once it is running.
Mate does strange things with the videocard at shutdown.
I installed Mte for someone, but he had this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DMS-59 connector I'd never seen in my life. So instead of buying a connector I put in another graphics card, installed it, then swapped the videocard back.
Another idea is to find old Linux magazines out there, and make a CD with those old distro's. At least it will install (and support old hardware), be faster than current distro's (yes, they get slower and slower). Then, upgrade the system once it is running.
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Ziz
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I forgot something:Nope.
Nopenopenope!
XP needs at least (!) 512 MB to work reasonably... More is better.
PowerGod
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I had a better look at the "isolinux.cfg" of the Debian distro, and found out it was including more then 10 cfg files ricorsively, while the other distros had the entire menu in just that file... so I modified it and PLOP finally showed me the menu, anyway Debian had the same problem of the other distro, seems using the same things for my video card that are locking the boot...
@benoitb: thanks for the interesting links, I'll try them if I fail with the "open way"
@FBnil: my only other video card is an NVidia GeForce 2 that is a little older than this NVidia nForce... but I can try (the PC with the GeForce is dead too anyway)
@b_o_b: at some point I put Puppy on another USB stick and indeed it started without problems, I used it mainly to edit the configuration for starting Debian, because rebooting to Windows everytime was becoming a pain... this little distro is indeed useful and EXTREMELY EASY, but the repo is soooooo empty...
@Ziz: indeed, I'm using it with 512 Mb and I can't use more that 2 programs at a time without encountering slowdowns (and I have to limit open tabs in the browser)
@benoitb: thanks for the interesting links, I'll try them if I fail with the "open way"
@FBnil: my only other video card is an NVidia GeForce 2 that is a little older than this NVidia nForce... but I can try (the PC with the GeForce is dead too anyway)
@b_o_b:
at some point I put Puppy on another USB stick and indeed it started without problems, I used it mainly to edit the configuration for starting Debian, because rebooting to Windows everytime was becoming a pain... this little distro is indeed useful and EXTREMELY EASY, but the repo is soooooo empty... @Ziz: indeed, I'm using it with 512 Mb and I can't use more that 2 programs at a time without encountering slowdowns (and I have to limit open tabs in the browser)
Was waiting for being called on that
Actually these were nlite created custom install images I did for the family members for their old systems. Do work reasonably well for reading wikipedia and doing some word 97. My point is: debian testing doesn't do even these simple tasks on comparably old hardware. Recent network manager alone will eat 64MB before the rest of the DE has even started (which will take ages because of the much lower I/O bandwidth on old systems). And pretty much any desktop environment now available has gimmicks like showing window content while dragging/resizing as default which is really horrible on any older card that was not high end then or that doesn't have very good driver support (and around 0% of old graphics cards have good driver support on recent X).
I'm not really proposing to use XP, but it *is* from 2003 and is (just like old Linux distributions) much more adequate for equally old hardware than anything released (be it FLOSS, MS, Apple, whatever) in the last couple of years. On an old system any recentish combination of OS+DE will be less responsive than a fresh XP installation.
Actually these were nlite created custom install images I did for the family members for their old systems. Do work reasonably well for reading wikipedia and doing some word 97. My point is: debian testing doesn't do even these simple tasks on comparably old hardware. Recent network manager alone will eat 64MB before the rest of the DE has even started (which will take ages because of the much lower I/O bandwidth on old systems). And pretty much any desktop environment now available has gimmicks like showing window content while dragging/resizing as default which is really horrible on any older card that was not high end then or that doesn't have very good driver support (and around 0% of old graphics cards have good driver support on recent X).
I'm not really proposing to use XP, but it *is* from 2003 and is (just like old Linux distributions) much more adequate for equally old hardware than anything released (be it FLOSS, MS, Apple, whatever) in the last couple of years. On an old system any recentish combination of OS+DE will be less responsive than a fresh XP installation.
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I think you have a motherboard with an nForce chipset and gfx card integrated
Chip Number:
CR11
Chip Description:
NVIDIA GeForce2 Integrated GPU
Notes:
integrated nforce
according to this webpage http://www.pcidatabase.com/vendor_details.php?id=606
what i don't know if you have tryed booting with nvidia official drivers or the open sources (nouveau) drivers...or maybe both.
If you have only tested with official legacy drivers maybe try enabling the opensource's one.
Chip Number:
CR11
Chip Description:
NVIDIA GeForce2 Integrated GPU
Notes:
integrated nforce
according to this webpage http://www.pcidatabase.com/vendor_details.php?id=606
what i don't know if you have tryed booting with nvidia official drivers or the open sources (nouveau) drivers...or maybe both.
If you have only tested with official legacy drivers maybe try enabling the opensource's one.
Ziz
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And for wikipedia browsing and word 97 / Abiword some VESA driver is enough.
So you are comparing an optimized XP with an unoptimized Debian... NetworkManager uses 17MB here. Furthermore you could use wicd if you want. And you can optimize lxde to be quite fast without showing the window content while moving...Was waiting for being called on that
Actually these were nlite created custom install images I did for the family members for their old systems. Do work reasonably well for reading wikipedia and doing some word 97. My point is: debian testing doesn't do even these simple tasks on comparably old hardware. Recent network manager alone will eat 64MB before the rest of the DE has even started (which will take ages because of the much lower I/O bandwidth on old systems). And pretty much any desktop environment now available has gimmicks like showing window content while dragging/resizing as default which is really horrible on any older card that was not high end then or that doesn't have very good driver support (and around 0% of old graphics cards have good driver support on recent X).
I'm not really proposing to use XP, but it *is* from 2003 and is (just like old Linux distributions) much more adequate for equally old hardware than anything released (be it FLOSS, MS, Apple, whatever) in the last couple of years. On an old system any recentish combination of OS+DE will be less responsive than a fresh XP installation.
And for wikipedia browsing and word 97 / Abiword some VESA driver is enough.
PowerGod
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I have to add that Win XP is not anymore how it was in 2003... too much things where added/updated in the mean time slowing down the beast, also the Puppy Linux I'm using is updated to 2013 and it's faster (even using Flash videos from the browser), so it's just a matter of choosing the right components.
So you are comparing an optimized XP with an unoptimized Debian... NetworkManager uses 17MB here. Furthermore you could use wicd if you want. And you can optimize lxde to be quite fast without showing the window content while moving...Was waiting for being called on that
Actually these were nlite created custom install images I did for the family members for their old systems. Do work reasonably well for reading wikipedia and doing some word 97. My point is: debian testing doesn't do even these simple tasks on comparably old hardware. Recent network manager alone will eat 64MB before the rest of the DE has even started (which will take ages because of the much lower I/O bandwidth on old systems). And pretty much any desktop environment now available has gimmicks like showing window content while dragging/resizing as default which is really horrible on any older card that was not high end then or that doesn't have very good driver support (and around 0% of old graphics cards have good driver support on recent X).
I'm not really proposing to use XP, but it *is* from 2003 and is (just like old Linux distributions) much more adequate for equally old hardware than anything released (be it FLOSS, MS, Apple, whatever) in the last couple of years. On an old system any recentish combination of OS+DE will be less responsive than a fresh XP installation.
And for wikipedia browsing and word 97 / Abiword some VESA driver is enough.
@Farox: I still have to be able to actually install a distro, so I can't change anything for now... except trying to disable things from the grub configuration... yesterday I was able to start a CLI installation of Debian, but I stopped because it was late, I will retry this evening
PowerGod
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Yes !!!!
I'm writing from Debian, finally installed on the other HD. LXDE seems fast enough for this machine, and I didn't have problems with drivers this time.
Now I finally need a rest... leaving all the update/configuration work for tomorrow
I'm writing from Debian, finally installed on the other HD. LXDE seems fast enough for this machine, and I didn't have problems with drivers this time.
Now I finally need a rest... leaving all the update/configuration work for tomorrow
sebt3
homebrew player (P. & C.)
See ? I told you so
PowerGod
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Indeed for now I found no problems at all, everything was detected automagically, even the wifi dongle during the netinstallSee ? I told you so
Now I'm incredibly updating JDownloader2.jar while installing wine/tmux/and some other media things while surfing with iceweasel with 30 tabs opened... with Windows just JDownloader2 required the entire power of the machine...
But now I have a question, what is the corrispective of Thunderbird on Debian repo ? I want to try to use the SAME profile I have in the Windows partition, so to use it indipendetly from what OS I'm using (if it's possible)
EDIT: incredible... all the things are running and I can't feel slowdowns while writing
EDIT2: also I need handbrake to lower the resolution of movies and I see on the site that there is an "Ubuntu deb"... that means that it will not work on debian ? Or the "Ubuntu" label is just for the noobs who don't know what a deb is ?
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slaeshjag
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
icedove is a rebranded thunderbird afaik.
sebt3
homebrew player (P. & C.)
for handbrake, this repo have everything you need : http://www.deb-multimedia.org/
(and that also probably the only one you need to add too )
(and that also probably the only one you need to add too
)
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I have a core 2 duo machine and almost throw it away because Windows 7 was so slow on it. Now I'm on Debian with it and am happy as ever. Dolphin runs awesomely on it now which it was slow as hell on windows with the same machine...
PowerGod
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Cool things that are happening:
- Handbrake is there (and almost ready to rumble) I just need to copy/paste some profiles
- Icedove is connected to my (portableapps) Thunderbird profile in the other HD, and works great !! It is using all the plugins, addresses and settings I had in Windows !! Also the traybar plugin is working !!
(I just need to make permanent the mount of the other HD)
- Bluetooth is working too and paired with my phone, maybe I installed too much things related, but it wasn't finding my dongle at the beginning and I was clueless...
Not so cool things that are happening:
- After I paired Bluetooth with my phone the system crashed... I had to hard reset... but at the reboot all was there, even the pairing (working)
- I don't know how to add this repository "http://deb.opera.com/opera/pool/non-free/o/opera/"to synaptic, I tried adding "deb" before it but it is expecting some parameters that I don't know where to find
- Handbrake is there (and almost ready to rumble)
I just need to copy/paste some profiles- Icedove is connected to my (portableapps) Thunderbird profile in the other HD, and works great !! It is using all the plugins, addresses and settings I had in Windows !! Also the traybar plugin is working !!
(I just need to make permanent the mount of the other HD)
- Bluetooth is working too and paired with my phone, maybe I installed too much things related, but it wasn't finding my dongle at the beginning and I was clueless...
Not so cool things that are happening:
- After I paired Bluetooth with my phone the system crashed... I had to hard reset... but at the reboot all was there, even the pairing (working)
- I don't know how to add this repository "http://deb.opera.com/opera/pool/non-free/o/opera/"to synaptic, I tried adding "deb" before it but it is expecting some parameters that I don't know where to find
