Member Avatar for Antonio44

Ok so here is how it goes. I am currently in possesion of my own computer which has Ubuntu 7.04 on it. YAY! I did that yesterday. My little brother would like the same thing but sadly I think his is too old. I inserted the CD that had ubuntu on it and it gave me the erorr message that it did not make the 1999 cut off for something in the bios. It is a Pionex computer and it is not that great. I just would like to know what to put on it. Here is the big catch. I MUST have a GUI I have used Windows for all of my 18 years on this planet and I can't do any coding or anything that I have seen in base systems. Also I need something with the synaptics package thingy if it is possible. If anyone can solve my problem or give me a distro of some kind that would be great. The PC currently is running XP professional and it has a hard drive of like 9-10 GB as well as another 3GB hard drive, a DVD ROM and a floppy drive. Again it is a pionex and I have no documentation it was given to us by a friend. Anything that I can do to get it running would be cool. Again this if for my little bro (12 y.o) it can't be complicated. I am sorry this is so particular anyting you can reccomend with a GUI is better then nothing. Bless anyone who helps.

Thanks,


A.

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  • Latest Post Latest Post by jbennet

Recommended Answers

All 18 Replies

Member Avatar for iamthwee

How much ram does it have out of interest?

Member Avatar for Infarction

I'd suggest taking a look at Debian (from which Ubuntu is based), but I will say that I've never used it myself.

Member Avatar for Sturm

debian, gentoo, arch, or slackware should work well. btw, gentoo and arch will be the fastest.

Member Avatar for jbennet

Arch + Gentoo arent user friendly or easy to insstall though

I recommend debian. You only need CD1 and 2 for a standard install with a GUI. It runs well on older systems.

Member Avatar for TheNNS

debian all the way. slackware and gentoo are WAY to complicated for regular users to install

Member Avatar for Sturm

Sure they are. I have been using linux for ~4 months. I installed gentoo, slackware, and arch without a hitch.

Member Avatar for TheNNS

keep in mind this guy doesn't want anything to do with a command line, I'm sure he also doesn't want to configure every little file like you have to in slackware. Besides, slackware takes lik 9 cd's.

Member Avatar for Sturm

only 1 for a base system.

Member Avatar for TheNNS

the base system has nothing on it.

Member Avatar for mepnoob2005

You could try antiX on an older computer. It runs well on 128 Mb of ram. It has synaptic package manager. AntiX is a stripped down re-mastered version of the newest mepis. It is based on SimplyMEPIS 6.5. It has a gui. Uses fluxbox instead of kde but you can also use icewm if you like a windows type desktop. You can get antiX at distrowatch. You can find listed there under mepis. Download the live cd and try it on your older computer.
Also go into the bios of the of the pionex and check to see that it is able to boot from cd. You may need to check the box beside cdrom in bios to get it to boot. I use SimplyMEPIS 6.5 and I also use antiX rc5. AntiX is sooo fast and it is just great fun to use. I actually use antiX more than anything 'cept when I want to show beryl. Then I have to boot mepis or pclinuxos.

Member Avatar for jbennet

If it cant boot from the cd you can always do a debian netinstall from floppy

Member Avatar for Sturm

Or you could install this

Member Avatar for jbennet

that program is buggy in my experience

Member Avatar for linux

What the heck does it do? It's like 317KB!

Member Avatar for linux

Yeah I just saw that. Can you keep your XP/Vista install on the hard drive as well? Like can it partition?

Member Avatar for John A

>Can you keep your XP/Vista install on the hard drive as well? Like can it partition?
Well, the only partitioner as far as I can see is within the Debian installer, like it always is. And that one can't non-destructively shrink the Windows partition, so if you don't have any free space on your hard drive that isn't taken up by partitions, you'll have to redo everything. Alternatively, you could use a LiveCD like Ubuntu, which has GParted/QTParted, and those can dynamically resize your NTFS partitions.

Member Avatar for jbennet

Yes, Gparted can shrink your XP partition. MAKE SURE YOU DEFRAG YOUR DISK FROM XP BEFOREHAND TO REDUCE THE RISK OF ERRORS!

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