Thanks to some guys on the IRC channel (sorry, I forget who), I managed to install GRUB with virtually no problems. (okay - 3 tries :P )
However, I'm now facing the same problem I had with OE on my Palm; the window manager, or something else in runlevel 5 crashes as soon as it hits the login screen. I haven't tried setting autologin=true yet, but it didn't help on my Palm. I ended up using the Z72 image at http://ossfans.org/z72ka, which works great. Are there any packages in OE that might be causing this? I can use the CLI fine, by the way. I really like Angstrom, and I think it would be ideal for my (very) old second laptop, but I was kind of hoping for a GUI...

Thanks

~Jeffery MacEachern
<>< :: Angstrom|Palm Z72 User :: Ubuntu Gutsy User :: All-around Geek

How much RAM has your old laptop? For good work in GPE >=64MB ... :)

I have 40MB RAM, and 192MB swap in the laptop. My Palm runs it just fine with 32MB RAM/192MB swap. Of course, the processor *is* only 75MHz, but I figured I'd rather have a performance drop than go with something like Damn Small Linux and not be able to do anything with it. I don't expect it to run well, but I just want something useful on it. The issue is the crashing though - it starts to display the login screen, and then halfway through rendering it, crashes and either restarts GPE, or locks up. This was also happening on my Palm Z72 with the latest OE image - it was only with your image that it worked.

~Jeffery MacEachern
<>< :: Angstrom|Palm Z72 User :: Ubuntu Gutsy User :: All-around Geek

Try DeLi Linux... http://delili.lens.hl-users.com/ works on my Contura Aero 486SX/25MHz.... and 8MB RAM but slooooooooooooooooooow. Your laptop is near my Contura HiFi :)

Thanks, but I already looked at it, and it didn't suit my needs. Angstrom is light, but still does everything I need it to, and it has a nice, frequently updated repo. I never installed DeLi, but I like Angstrom better.

~Jeffery MacEachern
<>< :: Angstrom|Palm Z72 User :: Ubuntu Gutsy User :: All-around Geek

If you're prepared to go through the whole procedure, pure Debian (as opposed to derivative systems) can be installed in such a way as to use a lightweight window manager (fvwm, etc.) suitable for older computers. It involves using the network install process, a lot of apt-getting and quite a bit of time as root, though.

Thanks for the idea, but I think that's beyond me at the moment. I'm no "n00b", but I'm still learning, and even user-friendly distros can take an annoyingly long time when they need to be tweaked... I agree with the forum sig that said "Ubuntu is an ancient African word that means 'I can't configure Debian'". Maybe in a few years... :P

~Jeffery MacEachern
<>< :: Angstrom|Palm Z72 User :: Ubuntu Gutsy User :: All-around Geek

Yeah, I remember that quote (I believe it came from an article on Linux music players, in which Amarok was the victor).

To be fair, I did get a lot of tips from the site, Desktop Linux, which had an article on installing a Debian system from the net-install discs. Otherwise, there would have been no way that I would have been hardcore enough to get it running past the very basic system (not even a hint of Emacs in there! vi is disconcerting, but strangely, I can actually use ed better than I can vi - I can only use vi because I bothered to learn how to use ed as a show of geekiness. No GCC in the base install either, so I wouldn't have been able to install anything from source until apt-getting that.)

Back to the issue at hand: Obviously, this is the most difficult and awkward way of doing things, but short of installing a distro which includes GUI files as standard, you might well be left with the possibility of installing from source. The procedure for installing something small from source is pretty straight-forward:

(in source directory)
# ./configure
# make
# su
# make install

but installing a great big lump like the X Window System isn't exactly going to be a cakewalk.

Sorry I can't be more help - I'm used to either installing heavyweight distributions for my desktops or Debian for those computers needing the extra performance.

I finally got it running in CLI mode, although GPE doesn't seem to like the video hardware in one of my old computers. I just got another old (>=10yrs) desktop, which I've put a bunch of network cards into, as well as all the drives I could cram in (3 CD, 1 floppy, 1 old sk3wl floppy, 1 HDD) I'm planning to run it headless in CLI mode as a router/firewall/whatever the heck else it can do. If I can, I'm also going to offload my music collection to it and stream from it - I got that working on an even older laptop before, fairly well. One question though: if I'm running in CLI, but with X loaded (runlevel 3?), can I use X forwarding over SSH, even if the computer itself has issues actually displaying the GUI? I can't see why not, but I've never tried.

Thanks
~Jeffery MacEachern
<>< :: Angstrom|Palm Z72 User :: Ubuntu Gutsy User :: All-around Geek

Why don't you try Xubuntu?

It has the same interface as Ubuntu, but it uses XFCE, which is much lighter than Gnome (and GPE too, I guess). I've been running it on my Pentium MMX 233 desktop, which is about 12 years old too and has 64MB of RAM. So far no problems, and it has a huge repository.

Since you already use Ubuntu, it shouldn't be much of a problem.

The installation process is similar to that of Ubuntu, but it runs in text-mode only.

Thanks for the tip! I had discarded that idea, because I thought Xubuntu would need a better computer than the one I have (which is pretty darn old), but if it runs on yours, then it should run on mine. I'll try that as soon as I can.

*high five!*

~Jeffery MacEachern
<>< :: Angstrom|Palm Z72 User :: Ubuntu Gutsy User :: All-around Geek

Still haven't gotten it working, due to lack of any I/O devices available (everyone in my dorm has a fancy-schmancy new laptop). However, my friend just gave me a much more recent motherboard, so I'll be rebuilding it around that, and hopefully that will work.

~Jeffery MacEachern
<>< :: Angstrom|Palm Z72 User :: Ubuntu Gutsy User :: All-around Geek