Was just wondering if Ubuntu 11.04 can be installed over or with a win 98 system?
I reformatted the hard drive and installed win 98se which works fine. Free space on drive is 11gb.
Ubuntu installs up to the point where a black & white window appears and asks "Try Ubuntu" or "Install Ubuntu. Whichever one I try, I wait for over an hour and nothing happens. Any help would be appreciated.

It depends on the hardware. Can you post the specs of the machine including brand/model, processor, amount of RAM, etc.?

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Windows 98?! This is 2011! If this computer connects to the internet, your data is very, very vulnerable! I would definitely recommend backing up your important data and putting Xubuntu on there instead.
Regular Ubuntu is most likely too resource-intensive for an older machine like that. Head on over to the Xubuntu website, click the nearest country to you under 11.10 (Oneiric Ocelot), and get the one labeled "xubuntu-11.10-alternate-i386.iso". This is Xubuntu, which is just as easy to use as normal Ubuntu, but takes away the eye candy and bloat from Ubuntu making it much less resource-intensive at the cost of some aesthetics. The alternate .iso uses a text-based installer and will also be less resource-intensive, which will probably allow you to get it installed. In the installer, just tell Xubuntu to erase Windows and use the entire disk -- this will delete the very insecure Windows 98 off of your hard drive. Just make sure you get anything you want/need off of Windows BEFORE you install Xubuntu!

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When I first started trying out different distros, I was using a computer with 256M RAM and running XP. With practically any distro running Gnome or KDE I would have the same problem you're having. You may have some luck with XFCE, but if my guess is correct and your hardware is less powerful than mine was at the time, it may not work either and will probably feel too slow, as it did with my machine.

You may have better luck finding a distro with LXDE, Openbox, Fluxbox or any other low-resource window manager. There is an Ubuntu variant called Lubuntu that you might be able to run.

You may also want to check out the "old computers" list on Distrowatch. I had decent luck with Unity.

You may have to try quite a few to find one you like or that will even run. With old hardware, the distros may be a little more difficult for a new Linux user to grasp since something like Fluxbox is pretty un-Windows like, but don't be discouraged. You are at the mercy of a limited and obsolete system so your results won't really be indicitave of what Linux really has to offer under better circumstances.

Good luck finding the right distro, be patient, and remember that whatever results you do get, due to the situation, they very likely aren't typical.

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Thanks for all the advice guys. Will check all that out.
The old laptop is a Dell latitude mod.ppx with 256mb of ram and
will be dedicated to just ONE task, using ubuntu's "Terminal Mode"
Already had Lubuntu installed, but no "terminal" pgm.
I was under the impression that ubuntu was'nt a complete o.s. and
would only work on a computer that had one.
Win 98 was the only one I had a "key" for and was'nt about to
give Gates another 2 or 3 hundred for a cd I did'nt get with my
other 3 pc's with xp,vista & win7. And they
all have Ubuntu 11.04 installed along side the win. o.s.
Thanks again for all the info. Most interesting!

Depending on the desktop environment or what is installed, terminal emulators can have different names. Ex: gnome-terminal, konsole, xterm, etc.

I did a quick search for which terminal Lubuntu uses and it's LXTerminal, the default terminal emulator for LXDE.

Where's the Terminal?

You can also access the no-frills terminal in console mode (no display, text only) by pressing Ctl+Alt+F1 in most Linux distros.

Hope that helps and best of luck. I definitely remember how hard it was learning the basics when my hardware was holding me back!

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Thanks for all the help guys. Got problem solved by installing
xubuntu!