help with a distro

Hello all,

I have been having trouble installing any Linux distro on to a Panasonic Toughbook CF-18. It has a 1.1 GHz processor, 504 MB of RAM. I have tried Bodhi, Mint, Lubuntu, and Ubuntu Mate. Every time i boot up it comes to an option screen, i select the install option, most of the time it freezes up. On Bodhi i get a command prompt screen that has only symbols, no real words. I have tried each one on new USB drives, and New downloads, and on CD and DVD. can some one tell me what i could try next to get this to work or maybe another OS that will allow me to do basic spread sheets and text docs. Thank you.

That is not much RAM to play with and could explain the inability of some distros to install.

You could try antiX. Searching the web for linux lightweight distros will provide other possibilities e.g. https://fossbytes.com/best-lightweight-linux-distros/

Hi:

Give Anti-X a spin. It's designed for older computers.

https://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=antix

What program are you using to make your usb bootable?

https://etcher.io/

I'd say that 915GMS video chip is a likely culprit. See if you have an option to boot in "compatibility" (low graphics) mode or somesuch. Do the USBs boot as "liveCD" (try Linux) mode ?.

i remember there were some special problems with the old toughbooks.
you should always try a simple search, like this, before posting:
https://www.startpage.com/do/dsearch...oughbook+CF-18
my wild guess is that if you can you should max out the RAM before attempting something like Xubuntu...
antiX might run on half a gig, but browsing the web will be somewhere between extremely painful and impossible.

AntiX should work with 512MB, but it will require a swap partition to help performance.