cannot install linux on an old micron PC,200mz,32mb ram

**duah55** · 03-20-2004, 04:29 AM

I have tried 5 distros,but cannot install linux on an old micron PC,200mz,32mb ram,it always stalls in middle,during X server, X 11.......

I tried knoppix ,as well as SUSE live cds will not boot correctly,nor will Vector ,which is suited to old PCs

does this sound like some mobo,hard drive problem?

**windos_no_thanks** · 03-20-2004, 04:46 AM

With that little memory KDE would be just horrible (lots of swapping) so you should at least use some lighter window manager (see the cheat codes) If it really stalls and not just keeps swapping like mad (or run out of memory if you didn't give it any swap space) you could try booting into text mode only to be able to test things. Type this at the boot prompt:

Code:

knoppix 2

Does this box have some other working OS on the hard drive ?

**OErjan** · 03-20-2004, 10:05 AM

the booting can be solved with a bootfloppy, the other i agree is a memory related issue, that is too little memory.

**duah55** · 03-20-2004, 12:44 PM

the box had W95,but its corrupted,I wiped it with fdisk,so are you saying knoppix WILL with a boot floppy,how do I do that?

What about smaller distro,damm small or feather linux?

**windos_no_thanks** · 03-20-2004, 12:47 PM

Originally Posted by OErjan

the booting can be solved with a bootfloppy, the other i agree is a memory related issue, that is too little memory.

A boot floppy won't help in this case since it does boot but gets into trouble when starting the GUI stuff.

**windos_no_thanks** · 03-20-2004, 12:56 PM

Originally Posted by duah55

the box had W95,but its corrupted,I wiped it with fdisk,so are you saying knoppix WILL with a boot floppy,how do I do that?

What about smaller distro,damm small or feather linux?

If the problem is just too little memory you can deal with it in knoppix too. I'd still suggest trying the "knoppix 2" cheat code first, if that works you could reboot with this cheat code: " knoppix desktop=fluxbox" If that also works your problem was just too little memory. BTW, did you let it create a swapfile or not ? (without any swapfile 32MB is very little even when using a light window manager)

**duah55** · 03-22-2004, 03:52 PM

ok got Feather linux installed, nothing else will install

how do we get the screen GUI ??,

when i select window managers,flux,nothing happens,still black desktop,

the lack of how tos is very frustrating,we'r not all experts

**windos_no_thanks** · 03-22-2004, 08:26 PM

Originally Posted by duah55

ok got Feather linux installed, nothing else will install

how do we get the screen GUI ??,

Very hard to help with that without knowing what the video hardware is. Perhaps you could do a "lspci -v > file.txt" and post the contents of file.txt here ?