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did you press the F12 key during the boot up process to get the "boot devices screen" when you start you laptop
and choose the CD drive as a boot device?
What version is your BIOS, maybe you need to update it. http://www.dell.com/support/home/us/en/19
Can you confirm that your burned CD disk is bootable on another machine?
When you get to "Software selection" of the installation process it is after "Popularity contest screen" you can un-check "Debian desktop environment" tick , not to install GNOME 3
and try playing with it via the shell (Install Web Server, miniDLNA server, etc. more here http://pastebin.com/0j9FctRq)
and install desired desktop environment later .....
I'm going to rock the boat and say "don't get Debian". The fact that you find its site and the documentation confusing should be a warning!
I agree. A persons first linux experience should be whatever installs the easiest IMHO. There is way too much to learn already without picking a distro that is hard to set up in the first place.
And I probably have mislead the OP when I said "DVD", on something this old, it would probably need to be a CD.
Distribution: Debian Wheezy, Jessie, Sid/Experimental, playing with LFS.
Posts: 2,900
Rep:
Quote:
Originally Posted by rootboy
I agree. A persons first linux experience should be whatever installs the easiest IMHO. There is way too much to learn already without picking a distro that is hard to set up in the first place.
Distribution: Debian Wheezy, Jessie, Sid/Experimental, playing with LFS.
Posts: 2,900
Rep:
Quote:
Originally Posted by EDDY1
Debian has definately gotten easier to install since lenny.
I agree, Lenny was my first Debian distro but I switched to Squeeze (when it was still Testing) about a month later. Wheezy is as easy to install as Windows XP if you don't do any partitioning and not much harder if you do.
Debian actually helps you set everything up by asking questions during setup & tells you what you are missing especially if you use Advanced Options>> Expert Install.
The real thing I'm dealing with is the computer even getting to an install process, page, whatever. I've been using cd's the whole time. I didn't understand about the image needing to be burned as an image, but I'm still getting the same result after fixing that error. I checked the BIOS for the version and it's the latest available (last updated in 94. eehh.)
Anyway, there's another old laptop that I have access to (provided I can find it). If so I might check that out and maybe it's better off overall than this one that I've been close to throwing out the window.
I will of course still have the Dell at my disposal, so I am willing to try things if anyone else has any bright ideas. Might give a whirl with the 2x512MB RAM marcelp1 had mentioned. Seems cheap enough to try out, anyhow.
As a side note, it has been very helpful to have people chiming in with their thoughts and knowhow. It's made my first use of this website a positive one.
Ok, I just copied 10 gig of movies via pen drive through a pcmcia usb 2.0 cardbus at a whopping 980K a second (took a while in other words) on what snowpine would call recycler hardware.
as you can see. I filled that sucker up. This IBM A22M with a 1000hz, 512MB ram runs
Code:
$ inxi -Fxz
System: Host: biker Kernel: 3.7.10-antix.3-486-smp i686 (32 bit, gcc: 4.7.3)
Desktop: IceWM 1.3.7 Distro: antiX-13_386-full Luddite 01 June 2013
Machine: Mobo: IBM model: 2628TWU Bios: IBM version: KXET33WW (1.06 ) date: 09/05/2001
CPU: Single core Pentium III (Coppermine) (-UP-) cache: 256 KB flags: (pae sse) bmips: 1992.44 clocked at 1000.00 MHz
Graphics: Card: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] nee ATI Rage Mobility P/M AGP 2x bus-ID: 01:00.0
X.Org: 1.12.4 drivers: ati (unloaded: fbdev,vesa) FAILED: mach64 Resolution: 1024x768@87.0hz
GLX Renderer: Gallium 0.4 on softpipe GLX Version: 2.1 Mesa 8.0.5 Direct Rendering: Yes
Audio: Card: Cirrus Logic CS 4614/22/24/30 [CrystalClear SoundFusion Audio Accelerator]
driver: snd_cs46xx bus-ID: 00:05.0
Sound: Advanced Linux Sound Architecture ver: k3.7.10-antix.3-486-smp
Network: Card-1: 3Com 3c556B CardBus [Tornado] driver: 3c59x port: 1800 bus-ID: 00:03.0
IF: eth0 state: down mac: <filter>
Card-2: Ralink RT2561/RT61 802.11g PCI driver: rt61pci ver: 2.3.0 bus-ID: 06:00.0
IF: wlan0 state: up mac: <filter>
Drives: HDD Total Size: 20.0GB (88.1% used) 1: id: /dev/sda model: IC25N020ATCS04 size: 20.0GB
Partition: ID: / size: 18G used: 17G (100%) fs: ext4 ID: swap-1 size: 1.12GB used: 0.03GB (2%) fs: swap
Sensors: System Temperatures: cpu: 45.0C mobo: 44.0C
Fan Speeds (in rpm): cpu: 0
Info: Processes: 103 Uptime: 4:13 Memory: 239.4/500.7MB Runlevel: 5 Gcc sys: 4.7.2
Client: Shell (bash 4.2.37) inxi: 1.9.14
harry@biker:~
$ inxi -r
Repos: Active apt sources in file: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/antix.list
deb http://www.daveserver.info/antiX/debs testing main
Active apt sources in file: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/debian.list
deb http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ wheezy main contrib non-free
deb http://security.debian.org/ wheezy/updates main contrib non-free
harry@biker:~
$
Later on it will go into it's laptop bag and when I travel to my ranch (no electric, off the grid) I can unpack it (place is dusty and I won't take my newer gear there) and power it up on Battery (good for a couple of hours) or via pickup truck inverter and watch movies
after dark. Posting on line right now with it. So much for recycler gear.
Edit: Look at my terminal readout. You will see 2001. Older than your dell.
So. If having a hard time installing Debian.
LBurtonWoodclark. you may have an incomplete iso image. my destop is an old 03 with only 512 ram. I was able to run ubuntu 12.o4, Debiain 7.1 and am now running AntiX 13. You should be able to get something on it. Maybe download AntiX or even Puppy Linux which is for older machines. Worth giving it a shot. eh
The real thing I'm dealing with is the computer even getting to an install process, page, whatever. I've been using cd's the whole time. I didn't understand about the image needing to be burned as an image, but I'm still getting the same result after fixing that error. I checked the BIOS for the version and it's the latest available (last updated in 94. eehh.)
Anyway, there's another old laptop that I have access to (provided I can find it). If so I might check that out and maybe it's better off overall than this one that I've been close to throwing out the window.
I will of course still have the Dell at my disposal, so I am willing to try things if anyone else has any bright ideas. Might give a whirl with the 2x512MB RAM marcelp1 had mentioned. Seems cheap enough to try out, anyhow.
As a side note, it has been very helpful to have people chiming in with their thoughts and knowhow. It's made my first use of this website a positive one.
Just a thought, have you got any other installation CD (Windows or MAC) at home to check, if your drive is maybe not at fault?
I had similar problem when I wanted to install Debian for the first time and did not know what to do, so understand how frustrating that is and how unhelpful it is that
the more experienced users give advise such as download this or use that (is it luck of empathy? who knows).
I still have in loft my old IBM ThinkPad 765D and ThinkPad R40e - 2684 with older versions of Debian on them for some occasional testing, so keep the Dell
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