Well I just had another go with Puppy Linux 5.2.8 .

I downloaded the 129MB file then used unetbootin to transfer the IOS to a USB stick.
It perfectly on an old 1GB HP 2133 laptop with an ultra slow 1.2GHZ Via C7.
No problems whatsoever(yet) so it has now replaced the hardware inadequate SuSe Linux it came with.

It can run diskless using a 256MB USB disk. Methinks recommended RAM is still 256MB, minimums being 48MB to 128MB.

That tiny 129MB included Abiword and Gnumeric with the web browser installed via a ballot.

Ok no problem glad to have helped you

Wow. Over 20,000 views now.

Hope some people have found it useful.

The official release of GNOME 3.2 is expected next week on the 28th of September.

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pag...item&px=OTkyOQ

Brilliant news. I'm a massive fan of Gnome 3, and really looking forward to seeing it in the next openSUSE and Fedora releases.

Why the ?

So tonight my router has sprung into life. Changed the channel between the default and a different setting half a dozen times without effect. Suddenly on the last go the router is showing it's knickers to the ps3 and my pc.

All settings back exactly as they were to start with and it's working. Routers are the work of the devil.

Mind you, this still has nowt to do with Ubuntu.

Interesting. Maybe the ATI driver issue will be resolved as well and I can finally use it ?

Thought I'd bring to your attention, after my recent foray into Ubuntu 11.10 beta 2, an excellent piece of free software called Clonezilla. I really thought it worth mentioning in the big Linux thread, simply because it is so easy to use and fantastically useful. I have never previously used clone software, but despite this had no problems using this to clone a Linux partition to an external hard drive and later restore it successfully.

I don't know why I never used this ages ago. Please do look into it. Brilliant.

having been going through my bi-monthly "let's see if i can get gnome 3" working session for the past day or so, I've been playing around with some distros and my new 8gb usb stick, mainly because i've run out of blank discs

Anyway, culminated this afternoon in installing opensuse 11.4. Installed the ATI drivers using YasT, rebooted and, not unsurprisingly, gnome 3 failed to load.

Put my recovery disk in to reboot and re-load my windows image and give up (again), but decided to do the software update just in case.

Did it, rebooted and .. it appears to be working. Properly. With no glitches. The top menu bar appears transparent on the face of things, but that actually looks quite good - it's clear with no graphical problems.

I'm going to tread carefully though as knowing my luck, i'll randomly install something and it'll throw it all out of whack again but multiple reboots down the line, it's still working and still not glitching ..

Well the top bar shouldn't be transparent on Gnome 3 Jason...

Oi ! Shut it

Actually I quite like it transparent - makes it quite minimalist. It's not completely 100% perfect though - I'm just running banshee to import my MP3's and the screen glitches a fair bit when i switch between applications but it's nowhere near a show stopper - it's almost like a quick glitch then everything is back to normal.

In the system settings, it's showing the driver as "VESA" even though the ATI drivers are installed and working.

Is that in "System Info"? In mine it says under Graphics - Driver GeForce 9800 GT/PCI/SSE2. I have the proprietary Nvidia driver installed. What was your spec again? I know you mentioned it a while ago.

Yes it is. My Spec has changed slightly since the last time due to some .. err .. "shenanigans".

I've got an ATI 4350 HD GFX card now and an AMD Dual Core processor on a new motherboard.

Hmm. You should be able to use the AMD driver. I think VESA is pretty old now. I don't want to upset things if you're happy with how it's working, but could this be of any use?

Those are the drivers I actually used.

There are supposed to be open source drivers but they need compiling and, after putting my back out a few hours ago, I'm really in no mood to fanny around

All I might do is uninstall the native mesa drivers because I guess it's quite feasible there's a clash if two sets of drivers are installed - it would explain the glitching (which is getting to be a pain).

If it doesn't work, it doesn't work. Meh

Might have play with the new ubuntu release later though ..

You don't have to compile them unless you want to run the unreleased stuff.

To get the open source drivers you don't need to do anything; they're installed along with whatever distro you're using and should be used by default.

That's why i kept questioning why you always immediately installed the proprietary drivers every time you installed a distro.

Unless you're running a high-end workstation or the latest, graphically-demanding games, the OS drivers should be perfectly fine. I'm using an older version driver included with Debian Stable and have no problems.

Force of habit, usually because none of the system or hardware info offered me the 1440x900 resolution that my monitor works best under.

Opensuse and Fedora both just offered me the two default resolutions of 1024x768 and 800x600.

Ah right. Apologies.

Like you say it could be worth a punt with the new Ubuntu then. It's a little buggy, but there's nothing that ruins it for a beta. Let us know how you get on. If you think your current setup is OK, why not clone it before you remove it? Clonezilla has proved pretty amazing for me today, and could save you a bit of time in the long run.

Well the Ubuntu beta refuses to work. Install completes and then I reboot to be met with a black screen and a flashing cursor - nothing else. Not fussed tho - will have one more punt with fedora and then leave it until November I imagine!

Try this;
Open the terminal and run the following command:
sudo dpkg-reconfigure -phigh xerver-xorg
In the menus choose the defaults and when given resolution options select the 1440×900 resolution. Then, restart X by hitting Ctrl+Alt+Backspace

How long does this stay on, its probably loading stuff in the background?

I salute JasonW frankly. If I had had so many consistent problems trying to install Linux I would have given up a long time ago! Surely statistically speaking something should have worked properly by now?!

FWIW it's true you shouldn't have to be compiling anything at this stage, least of all graphics drivers.

I left it for about 10 minutes at one point. Too late now anyway, just re-loaded my windows image and about to write fedora to my usb drive to give that another crack with lettice's tip

Ah well. Weekend over and so are my efforts. Again

It's not like I can't get any distros working at all because I can - they all basically installed and worked fine.

It was just when I tried to add Gnome 3 and/or the ATI Drivers that the problems started.

Although the only distro that didn't give me any problems in the early stages was Ubuntu as the 'Additional Hardware' wizard always comes up trumps for downloading and installing the ATI driver.

Firefox just started playing up with white text on a white background and I really didn't have the patience to find a fix so I reformatted .. hehe

The latest Xorg has disabled Ctrl+Alt+Backspace. Taking a look on Google, this page gives details about this change and also workarounds: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/XorgCtrlAltBackspace

If the OP you're responding to has GDM as their display manager login, they can log into another TTY (Ctrl+Alt+F1 or F2, etc), then do "sudo /etc/init.d/gdm restart" (no quotes and omit sudo if they log in as root), which will restart X along with GDM. Replace GDM with KDM if using KDE.