From my 15 years of POSIX-based systems experience, I have found if something does not work on Slackware, there is less chance of it working on anything else (with the exceptions of the older BSDs, though sometimes one may need to install more tools), including Debian-based systems, which I used for a year or two, and in the last few ones, I tried Ubuntu and Mint--mostly to install and administer for average users--but in the one case I tried switching, I switched back within a day... if AntiX has some sort of set of drivers that is better than the standard kernel, I would like to hear (though I could install them myself)... otherwise, all I can say to people who come to the Slackware forum recommending operating systems (OS) that are not Free/Libre and extremely much like AT&T or BSD UNIXes, or similarly serious OSes (i.e. mainly only the ones I list as using) is: YOU LACK SLACK!

I just rebooted my VR-2 to again and was going to look more closely at the error messages. This time it booted completely, so I am marking this as solved... however I may have issues with the touchscreen, so I will post on that later... if I cannot get it working in Slackware, I will see if it works in an art-focused distro that has a touchscreen-oriented GUI.

Sigh, I knew I should not have posted in this thread.

Sorry I offended you when just trying to help.

I was not offended (maybe I should be for the misquote--I was not saying AntiX is not Free/Libre; it probably is more than Slackware, but Debian and derived OSes never seemed as stable and powerful) and I hope you were not either. Since you did not have Slackware listed or said that you ever used it, I was just not sure what your purpose was in posting. Maybe AntiX would be useful if I had an older computer I had trouble running Slackware or BSD on, but I would probably just run an older version, or a derivative of one of those for older computers.

dchmelik,
I know you've looked at BIOS options, but it might be worthwhile to check the version.
FWIW, I've seen the 3.x.x kernels do much better on new BIOSes. Your machine is from the
T2400-T7500 era, and may have a much more recent BIOS available.

I added it to that hardware database. However, unless one is very careful with these machines, when changing anything, one may find it not booting. I feel like I should say more, but I just do not know everything that is going on. The manufacturer seems to have stopped laptop production, and there is no info on BIOSes at their site... I would update it if I could. This laptop does not really feel like it is from another era in terms of power/speed. Even a P4 does now, but nothing much newer than the mid-00s does.

Though I think I had checked the partition table, recently I set it bootable after a reinstall (maybe I had forgotten to, after not making an install with a new partition table for a very long time). After that, it may have halted during boot once, or that was before I set it bootable... but finally, my most recent boot with 14.1 was successful, when I only had a blank DVD in the drive rather than a Slackware one.

I was not able to write to the DVD yet even as root, but that is something else I can maybe talk about elsewhere, if I need to. I suspect the hardware is designed for Windows, because I had much other trouble with it, like not getting the touchscreen to work, and the touchpad stopping working after I loaded gpm after 'telinit 1' to upgrade, which may have been a mistake, but the hardware just seems difficult... I am pretty sure it had halted booting from hard drive in 14.0, and it cannot boot from 14.1's UEFI boot, so I had to make a DVD not booting with that, and then finally also do an upgrade from hard drive, since the disc seemed to have had problems being written (not enough to not boot, which was good because USB booting also always halted)... again I can discuss some of this elsewhere if it becomes relevant, unless anyone wants to say anything else.