Puppy seems to be the only distro that runs properly on this laptop.

Three distros I've tried to boot on this laptop:

OpenSUSE Tumbleweed

OpenSUSE Leap

LinuxBBQ Bork!


These boot on this laptop, but the only issue I have is when dmesg shows up, it always hangs at "Unpacking initramfs . . . " and I can't do anything about it except for rebooting.

The hardware specs:

Dell Laditude D531

AMD Turion-64 X2

1 GB RAM

ATI Radeon graphics

________

I have tried SliTaz Stable on it--it boots and starts X--but it glitches out eventually--blinking the screen fast enough to give me a seizure--I think it's because of the crappy GPU I have that nothing except Windows XP and Puppy Linux supports.

Please show me a workaround for the hanging initramfs issue so I can get my favorite distro--LinuxBBQ--working.

It looks to be a well-known problem unfortunately...
http://www.fedoraforum.org/forum/sho...d.php?t=294172
http://www.linlap.com/dell_latitude_d531

Does using the 'nomodeset' boot parameter help with this?

AntiX or MX Linux will likely work. - http://antix.mepis.org/index.php?title=Main_Page

"Does using the 'nomodeset' boot parameter help with this?"

Do I put that in the linux line in the GRUB boot parameters?

AntiX seems like a good distribution for the craptop.

Thank you.

I will wait until the bcm43xx module is fully operable.

How do I install and load the proprietary ATI driver? Do I have to create a custom kernel for that?

I tried out antiX... it failed. I tried all boot options with the nomodeset parameter and failsafe... no sign of it booting properly.

So I'm going to jump to the conclusion: Nothing but Windows XP and Puppy will ever work on this craptop.

What is said [Cr]aptop?

$ cat /proc/cpuinfo

On whatever distro does boot on it.

If " lm ", then 64 bit

If " pae ", then > 4GB ram capable

If neither of those, then screwed (for most distros). Debian works for me for most things. But there's extra effort for older things with linux-image-486, even though it might be a 64 bit arch.

The hardware specs:

Dell Laditude D531

AMD Turion-64 X2

1 GB RAM

ATI Radeon graphics

-----

I have the sempron version on an e-machine and debian works fine. Just stick with the radeon GPU drivers. There are no proprietary ones that work past kernel 3.4.x. And nomodeset probably wont help unless the last resort is framebuffer graphics ONLY. Usable to a limited degree, but little to no accelerations. You might also try the smaller wm's like IceWM, Jwm, since you only have 1GB ram. I upped my sempron to 2GB 800MHz ram(via goodwill tech store), and what a difference that made since it had 1GB 533MHz ram and the GPU uses shared ram (SHM).

processor : 0
vendor_id : AuthenticAMD
cpu family : 15
model : 104
model name : AMD Turion(tm) 64 X2 Mobile Technology TL-60
stepping : 2
cpu MHz : 1995.061
cache size : 512 KB
physical id : 0
siblings : 2
core id : 0
cpu cores : 2
apicid : 0
initial apicid : 0
fpu : yes
fpu_exception : yes
cpuid level : 1
wp : yes
flags : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush mmx fxsr sse sse2 ht syscall nx mmxext fxsr_opt rdtscp lm 3dnowext 3dnow rep_good nopl extd_apicid pni cx16 lahf_lm cmp_legacy svm extapic cr8_legacy 3dnowprefetch lbrv vmmcall
bogomips : 3990.12
TLB size : 1024 4K pages
clflush size : 64
cache_alignment : 64
address sizes : 40 bits physical, 48 bits virtual
power management: ts fid vid ttp tm stc 100mhzsteps

processor : 1
vendor_id : AuthenticAMD
cpu family : 15
model : 104
model name : AMD Turion(tm) 64 X2 Mobile Technology TL-60
stepping : 2
cpu MHz : 1995.061
cache size : 512 KB
physical id : 0
siblings : 2
core id : 1
cpu cores : 2
apicid : 1
initial apicid : 1
fpu : yes
fpu_exception : yes
cpuid level : 1
wp : yes
flags : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush mmx fxsr sse sse2 ht syscall nx mmxext fxsr_opt rdtscp lm 3dnowext 3dnow rep_good nopl extd_apicid pni cx16 lahf_lm cmp_legacy svm extapic cr8_legacy 3dnowprefetch lbrv vmmcall
bogomips : 3989.95
TLB size : 1024 4K pages
clflush size : 64
cache_alignment : 64
address sizes : 40 bits physical, 48 bits virtual
power management: ts fid vid ttp tm stc 100mhzsteps




I'm thinking about getting rid of this laptop after I set up an usable distribution besides Puppy. Debian seems good.

Looks normal-ish enough to me. 64 bit, and not too ancient. I did have to slap a debian wheezy kernel on a debian jessie install for my older desktop for it to boot. Not sure why outside of doing a 32 bit install thinking it was older than it is. It's my rarely turned on print server since it has a parallel port.