I am trying to install Mandrake 7.2, among a couple other flavors, on a Panasonic CF-25 (Pentium 90, 16MB Ram, maybe more later on, either 800MB or 2GB hard disk, etc.) on seperate hard disks. I have gotten into X-KDE under Mandrake 9, but it was so slow it wasn't useable. RedHat 9 won't boot at all, and Mandrake 7.2 is having an error when I go into X--

Child error writing to pipe (Broken pipe).

What does that error mean? I set each disk up on another machine then migrated it over to the laptop. I then ran the X configurator to set my video card and stuff--Mandrake 9 has DrakConf. Mandrake 7.2 has just xF86Config and nothing else is documented in the paperback manual, unlike what the Mandrake 9 manual has. ...so I need to know what a better configurator tool for getting X to work is under Mandrake 7.2, as well as what that pipe error is. ...of course you know what all it shows besides this error message--the mumbo-jumbo on why the error happened. However, nothing like what I expected according to this printout in the XF86Config file is found, though the file appears fine and includes all sections. It says error is on line 48 and tells me it is a SubSection "extmod" line, but in the file that is a description which is pounded out.

What configurator does Mandrake 7.2 use to adjust X from the konsole? I know Mandrake 9 X configuration can be accessed under drakconf from the konsole.

I have tried Red Hat on P90 and P100 machines (Toshiba ct500, and Dell xp1), and KDE is just too slow. There is also some compatibility problems with the new XF86 versions versus the older ones. I would try Vector Linux (www.vectorlinux.org) which offers the option of the older XF86 version, keeping in mind that a p90 is going to be fairly slow no matter what. You might try ICEwm or Fluxbox for a window manager in lieu of KDE. You get all the KDE programs, but if you don't use the KDE desktop everything is alot faster (install it, but don't use it). I use this on two old laptops, and it works.

No Vector Linux.

I did find it though, but I don't have the connection speed necessary to download CD ISO's.