I have installed linux on many machines in my life but this is just weird (note i know how to install not configure :P ). I'm trying to install fedora 7 on an older machine with :
500mhz P3 processor
~180 ram (not sure but it is that or above)

20 GB HDD

During the install it says "Not enough ram running text install" and i go through the install smoothly. But when i boot it up for the first time it boots to a command line (?!) does anyone know how to fix this?

PLEASE HELP (I need it for a VPN server badly)!

Can you get a GUI to start-up by typing startx on the command line?

Can you upgrade your ram? Or try a older version of FC, Slackware would run fine with those specs, FC will I think if you have more ram.

What about if the swap partition would be big, would that help?

And i don't get it it runs WinXP normally without any problems, why not fedora ?

XP is six years old, Fedora 7 only five months. It would be better to compare between F7 and Vista.

Anyway, the minimal requirement for an F6 install was 256 and it may now even be a bit higher. The thing isn't that it won't run - it will just be rather slow. Using about 512MB of swap may be helpful in pumping of the amount of available memory but it is also slower - a lot - than RAM. The moment that your system starts swapping, you'll notice it right away.

Of course, with limited memory, it may be better not to use Gnome or KDE. The XFCE desktop is far less demanding but it is something you may need to get used to - it looks radically different from what most people are familiar with.

Have you tried startx? Even 180MB should be enough to at least bring up Gnome.

Yes it works thx for that. I have actually set it up so it has 4GB of swap which i think is completely over doing it but u never know. This is my temporary VPN/Domain controller server so i don't want to buy anything for it. It is slow but it is actually not that bad since i'm not running anything on there yet. I will try the XFCE thx for the advice !

ok there is a problem :/ each time i reboot it still puts me into the command line. Is there a way to make it go to XFCE driectly? I'm using this PC via VNC so it is not convenient if i have to connect a monitor each time i try to log in.

ok so you guys suggest on either getting an upgrade/new machine or different version of fedora or linux. So which version will be the most suitable?

It's no doubt that you system isn't configured yet to start a GUI by default. Here is a short article that should help:

http://zzlinux.blogspot.com/2005/02/...2-default.html

4 gigs of swap is complete overkill, 1 gig is almost too much swap

Typical recommendation is to use swap = 2X RAM. The swap is going to thrash like crazy with a big distro if you ever get it to run. A number of small distros would work, slack, vector, damn small, puppy. Check out distrowatch.com. If you're using samba, the samba version is probably more important than the distro.

well i'm not sure :/ So let me describe what i'm trying to do and myabe you will haelp me decide

I want to set up linux to:
Be a VPN server for windows and linux (very important)
HTTP/FTP server for all os
and if possible to be a domain controller for both linux and windows.

So now any ideas on what to use?

I'm thinking of using fedora core 4.

Well, yes, I certainly wouldn't try anything higher than FC4; I have the Fedora Core 5 Bible and I see that this version already required 256MB RAM to run well. Unless you prefer a recent distro that uses XFCE by default, of course. Maybe you're not too Ubuntu minded but I think that Xubuntu wouldn't be a bad choice. If you select the alternate install cd, you won't need more than 64MB to install (but 128MB is recommended for it to run well).

I used the alterante CD thing and installed via Text based installation.
When i boot up it puts me into command line (which is not what i want) but when i type "startx" it says i need to be a superuser. So i type "sudo startx" but it asks for password!!! I didn't set the root password yet, so i leave it blank but it will not let me do anything any ideas how to solve that?

You use your own user's password for sudo.

"su authentication failure"!!!!

Logged in as Irek
used my pass

typed in "su"
put in my pass

on a reboot tried to log in as root said "incorrect login"