Published at LXer:

I call it the $0 Laptop, because that's what I paid for it. The dead Gateway Solo 1450 I got a few months back now runs. The Gateway's previous owner abandoned it because its DC power plug pretty much disintegrated -- a common problem in these machines because the plug in question is a PC-board-mounted piece of plastic. With a new power plug in place, I decided to try to get some Linux and BSD distros on it. Xubuntu 7.04 had a promising start. After booting the live CD, I even had the panels that went missing in my other installs. But the install crashed, and on subsequent tries, those panels disappeared, so I decided to move on.

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