I have been trying to install Mandrake 10.0. I get through the initial queries ok, but then the install hangs when it displays the message, "Please Wait... Looking for Available Packages." I am doing the install on an old Cyrix 6x86 with a clean hard drive. I have removed all but the essential cards on the motherboard to reduce the risk of conflicts. I am doing the installation from the bootable CD.

Any ideas? Thanks for any help or insight you can provide.

Welcome to LQ

How old is the Cyrix - what amount of RAM etc - in the past, certain distros have locked up at a similar stage on P133's 166's etc for me.

The Cyrix is an old PC I bought in late 1996 with Win95. It has 64MB of RAM. Although it is a Cyrix 6x86 200+, it actually runs at 150Mhz. With this configuration, it has successfully run Win98SE and WinME (if WinME can ever be considered successful...). I figure that if it can run a bloated MS operating system, it should be able to handle Linux. It's a little difficult for me to give you many more details on the system, since the vendor I bought it from, CyberMax, went out of business a few years ago.

Win98 and WinME are not comparable operating systems to any modern Linux distribution. Linux is pretty heavy duty - more like Windows XP or Windows 2000. You need to take a look at the minimum system requirements for those.

You will find that your machine cannot run either of them. In fact, double of your cpu power, and double that again, and it still would not run either one of them.

Or, you could skip installing a GUI (X Windows). Or you could try only installing Windowmaker or another low-instensity GUI like fluxbox (I guess you could browse for it using Lynx).