Hi all,

I'm not new to the Linux world and have actually tried installing different Linux distributions about 100 times or more in the last years. And one thing strikes me as
extremely annoying with Linux: Unlike Windows, Linux is a pain in the behind to install, simply because many distributions are plain buggy or are unable to support
your hardware (and they DON'T KNOW that and usually claim otherwise!!).

In the older days (a few years ago), it was said that to
install Linux, any distro, you need to have older hardware, because new hardware was not supported yet because nobody wrote a driver for it. Today it seems older hardware is not supported anymore either. Many distros, such as DEBIAN no longer support slightly aging STANDARD PC hardware, such as an ASUS mainboard (P2B) from about 1999, or older CD-ROMS!
Unfortunately MANY distros take Debian as their base, so don't be surprised if dozens and dozens of distros fail to install on standard PC hardware that is 5-10 years old! - Such as Ubuntu and many many other distros.

Maybe we could make this thread a thread about which Distro still works today with STANDARD (OLD) PC HARDWARE?
Which distro installs WITHOUT A PROBLEM on your standard (old) PC hardware?

I'll start with Slackware:
While they put some bugs into the installer of Slackware 12.0 which were not there in 9.1 (checking blocks during formatting no longer works, selecting inode size got lost, etc.), at least Slackware still installs (if you DO NOT open a second terminal to check disk usage as mentioned in the instruction manual, that causes the install script to break eventually).
So anyone having problems with Debian, Ubuntu and dozens of other (Debian based) Linux distros, I would recommend trying Slackware.

Other than that, I'm really curious: Who has some good experiences with what distro it terms of trouble-free installation on STANDARD PC HARDWARE that is 5-10 years old?

Regards,
Mark

That's odd I have Debian running on quite a bit of old hardware.. I think my Pentium 100 and 133 Systems predate 2000 quite a bit. My biggest problem was trying to get enough RAM in an old system like that since my board refused to accept memory modules larger than 16 MB so 32 MB of RAM was the max I could get on the system, and the video card in the system had 1 MB of RAM I believe, maybe less but it sure limited the resolutions and color depth you could use. Either way the Debian Etch installer went immediately into low-memory mode so it could install on those systems.

Might get farther by sticking with a single distro and finding out why the hardware isn't working and fix the problems..


Installing Debian on an ancient laptop

I'm running Debian on my new laptop, and my old PC. Old PC has a 433MHz Celeron, 192MB ram and some 8MB graphich card. Everything worked out of the box. No drivers or setting up needed.
On my new laptop I had to install NVidia drivers and wireless drivers. Everything else worked.

Ubuntu 6.10 didn't recognise my soundcard, however Debian did and it works.

Hmm... Yes, maybe Intel Pentium II's at 233 MHz, CREATIVE Soundcards or ASUS mainboards are just way too small and unknown products for such a big Distro as Debian to support?

It's funny, you always hear from the people who don't have problems, yet when you install yourself, it never works like for those who wrote how easy it was for them...
When I look around, it seems like others had problems with Debian based systems like Ubuntu as well.
What's especially annoying is that today so many distros just use Debian, thinking it's the best in hardware detection. Then, if Debian does not support your hardware you'll have a harder and harder time of finding a working Linux distro. What's even more annoying is as said, when Debian, the so-called "best" hardware supporter, does NOT support Intel Pentium II's at 233 MHz, ASUS mainboards or Maxtor hard disks with 20 GB.

Maybe you could specify WHAT kind of hardware *exactly* you are using. Maybe I should just get that exact hardware and try again?
:-(

Mark

It should install and work on your system just fine.. The brand of motherboard when it's that old, shouldn't be an issue. Intel chip sets and CPU's are well supported, so theres something else going on. The Asus P2B was a popular motherboard back in the day (I actually recognized the model number when I saw it.. )with the Standard Intel 440BX chip-set on it.. that should be no trouble at all.

Did you review the Install errata to look for specific issues ?
http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/errata

Did you look through the Debain installer guide ?
http://www.debian.org/releases/sarge/i386/index.html.en

What kind of errors do you get when you try to install ?

Does the install hang at some point ?

have you tried using some of the command line options at the beginning of install to skirt power management issues some older boards had ? linux noapic nolapic or other such options ?
Debian installer FAQ

Have you verified the BIOS setting on the motherboard ? Reset them to default possibly ?

Also with that hardware you might want to use XFCE4 instead of KDE or GNOME desktop. The lightweight XFCE desktop, will be much easier on your hardware than the heavy gnome or KDE desktops Debain 4.0r1 XFCE install CD1

Really you need to start the process then come tell us what you have and where it gets stuck, and what exact error messages if any are showing. it's probably a simple issue once you know what the resolution is.

Hardware problems or defects can also cause issues with installs. a motherboard that old could be suffering from the 'leaky capacitor plague' you'll have to check and test all of your hardware. I've run across quite afew motherboards of that vintage that suffer from this particular problem.

Linux can be frustrating when you first start out, and the learning curve is pretty steep. (especially if you are a windows power user) but once you get past the initial stages and get started using it, and know where and how to get answers, it's really quite nice.

Hope you give it another shot, we'll help with what we can, but you'll have to be our eyes and ears, because we don't know exactly what hardware you have (well you did provide a decent hardware description) or what problems errors are coming up unless you tell us with good detail.

Best of luck !

me.Ubuntu

Had some trouble with suse, but only performance issues.I don't know if it was standard, but it was trouble free. I think most people do not have hardware compatibility issues on such a basic level with linux. There seems to be something else wrong. You might want to start a thread that specifically explains the problem, if you want help rather than just vent.

On a PIII 733MHz 160 mb sdram, ASUS motherboard (I think it's also a p2b) Creative Soundcard, Nvidia Geforce2 MX, I have installed (troublefree)

-Arch
-Ubuntu 7.04
-Kubuntu 7.04
-Xubuntu 7.04
-PCLinuxOS 2007
-Debian Etch (When it was testing)
-OpenSUSE 10.2
-Fedora 7
-SimplyMEPIS 6.5

Fedora and OpenSUSE had speed issues. The installations went smoothly, however.

On an AMD Athlon K6 500MHz, Creative Soundcard, Asus motherboard, 384 mb DDR, ATI Rage Pro graphics card, I have installed or attempted to install:

-Kubuntu
-PCLinuxOS
-Debian Etch testing
-Puppy Linux 2.17

The Debian CD wouldn't install properly, but it's definitely worth noting that I didn't troubleshoot the installation process whatsoever. It's funny that the Debian install wouldn't work with default options, but Kubuntu did.

Success on 5-10yrs? I'll up you to success on 5+yrs. All of the following systems ran with just about everything working right after a kernel recompile.

On a 80486SX 25MHz w/ 32MB RAM, Creative SB, CirrusLogic Video (18yrs):
Red Hat 6
Slackware 7

On a P1 120MHz w/ 49MB RAM, Creative SoundBlaster 16, CirrusLogic Video Card (13yrs):
Red Hat Linux 6 - 9
Debian 3.0 - 4.0
Slackware 7 - 11

On a PPro 200MHz w/ 64MB RAM, Creative SoundBlaster 16 Pro, S3 video (~11yrs)
Red Hat Linux 8 - 9
Slackware 8.1 - 11

On a Celeron 300MHz w/ 384MB RAM, ATI Rage 128,
Red Hat 9

On 2x Pentium MMX 200MHz, 512MB RAM, CirrusLogic video(~12yrs):
Red Hat 6 - 9
Slackware 7

On a P2 233MHz, 64MB RAM, S3 (laptop):
Red Hat 7.2

On a Pentium 90MHz, 49MB RAM, Creative SB16, CirriusLogic laptop (13yrs)
Slackware 7

On a 2x MIPS 120000 300MHz, 1GB RAM (SGI Octane, 10yrs):
Gentoo 2006.0

On a P3 933MHz 512MB ATI Mobility(laptop):
Ubuntu 7.04
Debian 4

On a P3 1GHz 512MB RAM, Intel 82801 chipset:
Ubuntu 6.06

On a P4 1.7GHz 384MB RDRAM, Creative SBLive!, nVidia GeForce 3 (6yrs):
Red Hat 9
Fedora 1 - 8
Debian 3 - 4
Slackware 10 - 12
Ubuntu 6.06 - 7.04
Gentoo 2007.0