Why would you want to take the hard drive out?

Show us were you downloaded the iso from.

It was probably in reference to my suggestion to do the install on a different machine, if all else fails and he wants to try everything.

I'm a girl And one who likes computers and tech too


It was downloaded from the official Ubuntu website: http://www.ubuntu.com/download/desktop

Oops. Sorry about that. My bad.

There's no way you'll get Ubuntu to run on a low spec. A couple of years ago, yes, but not now. Our little EeePC only has 512Mb of RAM, and I had to put Bodhi Linux on it. It's just about OK with that. Bodhi is a lovely Ubuntu based lightweight Linux, but the desktop environment might be a bit of a culture shock. I absolutely adore it, but it's highly configurable. I would recommend the distro though. It's got to be worth looking at for you.

youre right it would be a culture shock.

Nice to read they are still at it
http://jeffhoogland.blogspot.co.uk/2...beginning.html

Maybe
http://xubuntu.org/
or
http://lubuntu.net/
would be less of a culture shock

It's not difficult to use, just really tweakable and you can't leave it alone! I'd recommend it every day. It's pretty awesome, and it's easily my favourite I've put on the old thing. The new version is due out shortly I think. I reckon it'll be the last distro I stick on the Eee before it visits the big broken gadget shop in the sky.

There's a chance you, or others, with the black screen issue may have a graphics driver problem. I did with 12.04 even though I'd been Ok with previous versions. Have you got Nvidea graphics on that laptop? If so the solution may be the same as the one I used. It's probably worth trying anyway since it's a relatively easy fix.
The trick was to reinstall keeping my finger on shift after boot till I got the menu (not usually displayed) that enabled me to select" Other options" where I could insert "nomodeset" then control X to carry on. Then - after installation - install the recommended Nvidea or other proprietary driver using the "Additional Drivers" in system settings. I've been up and running on Ubuntu 12.04 for several weeks and it's been fine.

Enlightenment was pretty amazing years ago and, having a slight problem with kplasmoids not staying where I put them, I think I might give Elive a try.

The "intro" video here would seem to suggest I'm in for some fun.

No worries!


Why would the desktop environment be a culture shock? Is it possible to make a bootable CD of it?

This is the point though. Most of the latest Linux distros are not designed for older hardware. Often they will run on it, but not all that well.

As has been suggested, if you insist on an Ubuntu derivative then the best ones to try are Xubuntu or Lubuntu. With these two you have a relatively light desktop environment which helps a bit, but the kernel and core of the thing is still all suited to the latest hardware.

Puppy Linux is much lighter all round and easier to play around with from a Live CD and if your hardware is really low spec you can try one of the Puppy variants like Wary which is designed for older kit right through to the core, even though the latest release is only a few months old.

Lucid Puppy is more elegant and sophisicated but still with an older kernel and drivers. Slacko Puppy is state-of-the-art but will still probably run almost as fast because of the different way Puppy works.

You could even toss the hard drive out and just use a USB flash drive and you can make it look like a mac if you want as well.

Yes you can make a bootable CD or USB of Bodhi Linux. I used a USB for our Eee PC, as it doesn't have a disc drive (obv.). The desktop is a bit of a culture shock if you're used to having things preset for you. It does have some great options for you to try out at boot though, and it is pretty friendly in this regard. I just picked their regular "desktop" look for our Eee, but there's all sorts of choices from laptop, netbook, and I think they even had a tablet option too. Very impressive I says.


I've never been a big fan of Puppy. I always found it to run well Live off a USB or whatnot, but had all sorts of bother trying to install it. It is impressively fast though.

Just to add I'm running 64 bit Ubuntu 12.04 on a 6 or 7 year old HP Pavilion t3245 with a single Athlon AMD 64, 1 meg of RAM (just upgraded to 3 Meg - the difference is marginally better), and the original Nvidea graphics over wireless. For Internet use, email, office, skype, stellarium and the arcade type games - it's fast and very stable.

Hmmm, but unless I'm mistaken, the OP is talking about a lower spec than that. That doesn't sound too bad!

Yeah, except the 3 meg of ram..

Ahhh just checked. That is an oldie.. I did run 11.04 on a Thinkpad T41 (centrino 1 gig) quite happily for a year but the system board pegged it recently and I never got to try 11.10 or 12.04 on it.

Oh, 3 Meg of RAM! Thought you meant 3Gb!

Blimey... And Ubuntu runs on that?

Yep, 64 bit and all - no problem.

Thanks for all that info. I might have a look at a lighter Linux distro and see if I can get it working on the old PC. I was just looking for one that I could install so I could reformat and get rid of Windows.

Are you interested in installing and using and getting to play with a Linux OS?
Or do you just want the hard drive with windows on formatting?

Youre posts seem very not sure what you want to achieve?

Boot your computer with the Puppy Linux Live CD in the drive and once you get to the desktop you can just launch Gparted from the menu and that can be used to remove Windows and format the hard-drive in an instant.

You may wish to format the drive as an ext3 or ext4 partition if you intend to use it for Linux, but you can keep it as ntfs or vfat and you can still create a Puppy save-file and store other data in that. You can also do a frugal install or full install or just boot from the disc while you are getting used to it all.

Remember that once booted, the Puppy Live CD can be ejected as it will all have loaded into RAM so will run at full speed. The Ubuntu Live CD's can not do this.

Well I want to remove Windows altogether so I can install and play around with a Linux distro. I want to get rid of Windows as the hard drive is only 60GB.


Thanks. Might try this tomorrow. I'm going to bed now.

Youve already been told, you dont need to worry about removing windows. When you get to install the Linux OS you are booting from the live cd, it will give you the option to save windows OR remove it and all other info (eg format)

Most of the main linux distros follow something like this installer.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=niF8i9n--7k

Also 60GB is more than big enough for using Linux.

With 1 GB of RAM your laptop should be able to cope perfectly happily with the latest Ubuntu.
Fair enough, if you want to try something light like Puppy, but you shouldn't have to.

Not sure what CPU is in the laptop, but it might not be 64bit capable, so best to stick to 32bit versions if you're not sure.

The first thing is to get it to work with a live CD, so if the Ubuntu one doesn't work for whatever reason, burn a couple of others to see if they work. Linux Mint or Puppy for example.

Thanks. My brain's been confused a bit over the last week or so I get it now. I might try a couple other distros this weekend or next week if I have time.

Just been trying out Kubuntu 12.04 on the missus' laptop that currently runs Xubuntu. Believing KDE to be a bit heavy, I didn't expect much, but bugger me if it seems to be using less resources than Xubuntu. It's lightning quick too, which is another surprise. Goes to show that a lot of the myths about KDE being heavy are based on people's usage of it from years ago. It clearly isn't now.

Kubuntu is massively underrated imho.