Wrong linux for old PC

[Roberto]

I am sure that you have heard this story a hundred times before. I have an old PC Pentium MMX 233Mhz with 98K memory laying around so I thought I would use it to learn Linux. I went to a bookstore so that I could get a manual, a linux distribution and all the accompanying software. It seemed that Linux Red Hat Fedore Core 1 was a good buy.

The PC has windows 2000 on it so I tried to install a dual boot with linux. Everything was going exactly as described in the book. The partitioning was standard, it recognized the keyboard, monitor and mouse and I started the install which was reading package information. After a long delay I received the following error message: "You are trying to install on a machine which isn't supported by this release of Fedora Core." I received the same message when I tried to install in text mode. What a bummer.

Does anyone know why this machine is not supported? The manual states that the minimum requirements for text mode are a Pentium 200Mhz with 64K memory.

[LocoCoyote]

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=106590 contains the only useful response I was able to find.

Might the installation media be bad?

Ever think of trying a different distro?


There are many to be found at www.linuxiso.org

[Roberto]

I don't think that the installtion media is bad. It was securely packaged within the book that I purchased.

I went to the link you provided and could not determine what the next step might be to get past the problem. Can you help?

[doctorgonzo]

I agree with LocoCoyote, try a different distro. I put Mandrake 9.2 on a laptop with very similar specs to yours without a problem.

[Roberto]

I was not able to download Mandrake 9.2. However, I was successful in downloading Mandrake 10.0. Do you think that it will run on my old PC?

[Roberto]

The install of mandrake 10.0 went very smoothly. However, I do have 4 problems. 1. It is very very slow on my old PC, 2. I get the boot up message failure: 'Bringing up interface eth0 failed', 3. I get the power down message: atkbd.c: Unknown key released (translated set 2, code 0x7a on isa0060.serio0). This is an XFree86 bug. It shouldn't access hardware directly and 4. Sometimes the mouse does not work and I need to do a complete hard boot to get it back.

Otherwise it appears that this is a very nice operating system and I am eager to learn all about it. It is just too painful with the above problems -- especially the slowness and the intermittent mouse.

Would mandrake version 9.2 be faster and perhaps not have the problems encountered above?

[Karnevil9]

If you are just trying to learn Linux, perhaps you would be better off with a live distro like Knoppix or Morphix. They can run right from the CD and don't have to be installed to the hardrive.
The eth0 error is pertaining to your internet connection. Is it a wireless system? I always have problems with wireless and Linux. You have to set that up, which will take time for you to learn about linux first. If you have a router, you may be able to run a CAT5 wire to your internet port, if you have one, just for when you have linux running.

[rightcoast]

If you are interested you can download Mandrake 9.2 here
ftp://ftp.planetmirror.com/pub/Mandrake/linux/9.2/en/iso/i586/

You may also want to consider using a lightweight window manager. During the install you should be able to not choose gnome or KDE and choose something like Window Maker or IceWM instead. That should help problem 1.

Problem 2: What ethernet card are you using? I will check on the right driver for you. Would you mind going to command prompt and posting the contents output by running the "ifconfig eth0" command? (no quotes)

Problem 3: let me look into it, I will try to post something for you in the morn, I don't know offhand and it is getting late :)

Problem4: I will start with asking if it is a USB mouse or not.

:)

[Roberto]

Although I want to learn linux, I don't want to install Knoppix or Morphix since I want a Linux system on my old PC.

The internet card is a netgear 32bit PCI card 10/100 with a direct connection to a westell router.

I do recall seeing Window Maker or IceWM as a choice. Was that during install? Would I be able to change them without a reinstall. If I reinstall, would I have to delete the linux partition?

Finally, the mouse is USB.

[Roberto]

Well, I figured that even if I got mandrake 10.0 to run properly it was just too damm slow. So, I downloaded and installed mandrake 9.2 as rightcoast suggested. Much better. Still a little slow, but tolerable. No internet card problems and I was connected without doing a thing. Only one problem -- no mouse.

It is a USB mouse connected through a Belkin KVM switch. For some reason it is not recognized. Would any of the updates help?