your system doesn't seem like it's too old for linux. Some of the dell systems are configured to work better with windows. Isn't mandriva working fine?

just ditch vista it's just a resource-eater. heard windows7 is not that hungry, never tried. The only windows made a little impression on me is win2k though

Yep, I'll keep Mandriva. Just have a problem with the Netapplet, but I can live with it.

Thanks everybody for your help and support.

I'll gladly second what you say about System Rescue CD. It is a great tool to have around, even if they no longer include the manual on the CD like they used to.

But since we know he has enough disk space, perhaps we should suspect the problem has to do with partitioning rather than shortage of total space? And for resolving partitioning issues, the standard format for partitioning data seems to be the output of Linux 'fdisk -l', rather than Gparted. At least the former is a lot easier to cut and paste to a forum post.

And just in case the font isn't clear, that is a letter 'l', not a numeric digit '1'. Execute it as superuser, or it just immediately returns w/o printing anything.

Puppy Linux and Sidux-(XFCE version) are two distros that work well on my system. Your system, resource wise seem similar to mine. There's also Slitaz (only 30 MB) - you'd be impressed and surprised how well this one works. If you try any of these, please let me know. I'm curious to know if the three distros are up to the task of working with Dell. Thanks.

My Box:
Sony Vaio PCG-GRT250
Mobile Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 - M CPU 2.20GHz
512 MB memory
nVidia Corporation NV17 [GeForce4 420 Go] (rev a3)
40 GB total hard drive space

Both your machine and perso's are sufficient to run modern major linux distro's ... it's just that live sessions might be kinda heavy to run without swap with only 512 ram...

And about the kernel compatibility, I don't think this is the problem, as both xubuntu and ubuntu releases use the same kernel....

apic problems might be a good candidate

by the way, where are we now ?

I guess I should have mentioned that Slackware 13.0 runs fine on my laptop, but I don't think Slackware is an appropriate distro for perso right now.

I agree that it should not be a problem to run a modern distro –especially when I can run Mandriva 2009.1 but on the other hand that is the only “modern” variant that’s able to boot.

When it comes to the kernel issue – the problem is not that Xubuntu works and Ubuntu does not, but that Xubuntu 8.04 works but not 8.10 and 9.04. I’m sorry to say that I haven’t tried Ubuntu 8.04 only 9.04 and that one doesn’t work. Since 8.04 has a different kernel (at least that’s what I thought) than 8.10 and 9.04 I got a feeling that this might have something to do with it.

And yes I have a feeling that apic is causing some problems, but it feels like it’s only part of the problem. For instance Mandriva works without changing the apic settings, Mint starts sometimes when I use acpi=off and noapic, but almost never if I don’t change this, SUSE and Xubuntu (8.10 and 9.04) doesn’t start whatsoever.

mejohnsn – I will try the fdisk command when I get home tonight. Since I live in Sweden it’s now over 8.30 am and time to work.

I think you are absolutely right.

perso, did you partitioned and added swap, then tried over ?
we have to finish a point at a time .. we can't check all these possibilities on the same time ...

Kubuntu, Xubuntu are very similar, Mint is an Ubuntu-derivate,
(Suse never worked with me)
Fedora is different to the once before.
I think the only way is to try some more LiveCD/DVDs

I myself had excellent experience with:
openmamba (KDE) / RPM (APT)
Mandriva (GNOME, KDE) / RPM
SAM (XFCE) / RPM
SaxenOS (LXDE) / TGZ
Knoppix (LXDE) / DEB,
Puppy (JWM) / PET,

Another option would be to disable ACPI in BIOS and give it a try.



Acording to this thread, Suse 9.2 runs on Dell Dimension 4300. So I would try following versions:

Suse 9.2
CentOS 5.x (Yeah, it is not quite desktop type of distro, by I am using it on my MSI VR601-X and I made everything work like a charm, and it is based on Fedora Core 6, and kernel is then enhanced by backporting many new stuff)
Fedora Core 6 & 7
Any older version (roughly from 2004-2005), and then work your way up the timeline.

Also, there are many LiveCD distro's that does not want to boot on some types of PC's, for various issues. My recommendation is to try to install full version and avoid LiveCD variants.

So now I'm back home and it's time the fdisk command. I booted with the Xubuntu 8,04 Live CD - and the output is:


To me this looks ok. I decided yesterday to reinstall Mandriva, but Mandriva did not like the fdisk command, thats why I used the Xubuntu Live CD.

Yes I did. I then tried to install Xubuntu 9.04 (directly and not open a Live session first), but without any luck. I then reinstalled Mandriva, since it's been working before. And it worked again - thats nice.

It's a bit of a mystery to me. I can accept that my old machine does not like newer distros - but why is Mandriva the only one working? First I thought it was only new distros from the "Ubuntu world" that didn't work, but as we seen this is not the case. Anyway I'm happy with Mandriva as long as I don't have to mess with my wireless card.

I just tried openSUSE 10.2 and that one also works – at least as far as starting up Live, and since this has been a hard part for many distros so far, I'm confident that it would work to install it too.

With this I think that I will close this issue – it looks like it's just a matter of newer distros and my Dell not working together properly (Mandriva is the exeption).

I would like to thank you all for your efforts and inputs – it was truly great to get so many good responses on my problem.

Now I will be using Mandriva for a while, and at least I know that Xubuntu (probably also Ubuntu) up to 8.04 works, and openSUSE up to 10.2.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Ubuntu_releases tells you the kernel version with each Ubuntu release.
if you open a terminal in any linux distribution that works you can enter the command uname -a the kernel version is the first thing shown.
For instance
Ubuntu 7.10 used kernel version 2.6.22
Ubuntu 8.04 used kernel version 2.6.24
Ubuntu 8.10 used kernel version 2.6.27
Ubuntu 9.04 used kernel version 2.6.28

As I understand it Mandriva 2009.1 used kernel 2.6.28 then 2.6.29 which you are able to get running although with netapplet probs.
Now it is still possible that the later kernels don't fully support your Dell but less likely because Mandriva runs ok ish.
I'm using an Amilo laptop to write this and once I moved from Ubuntu 7.10 I had to update the computer bios to the latest version to get Ubuntu 8.10 installed.
Don't be deterred try to narrow down the problem it may be hardware run a memory check if you haven't done so