LINUX or, "How I learned to love self abuse"~!

[berglin]

I have an older compaq -- P120 (Intel), 48 meg memory, 2 meg video card (embedded) and a WD 2Gig (IDE).... Lastly, a mox nix CTX 14 incher capable of a whopping 800x640 (see: Prior installations by experience)

I tried putting SuSe on it and that didn't work out too well (I hit the control key to enter into text mode installation and it goes into autopilot installation with an Err Code 9 on ncurses and then it stops dead)(SuSe says YAST only needs 48 meg, but in reality it wants 64 meg). TurboLinux doesn't get along well with the video card (OK, so I minimize) and we can rule that distribution out. FreeBSD hangs on the device probe.

My question is: Has anyone experienced such? IS there a distribution of Linux that would enjoy the type of hardware I am using?

This is the first time I have had such challenges -- all my other systems went in smoothly(SuSE on PII's w156meg, 8 meg video and 12 gigs and a P200 with 132meg, 4 meg video card and 8 gigs).

I suppose I could whimp out and buy more memory (much to my wife's chagrin), but that would take some of the fun out of it.

Berglin
(solutions777@yahoo.com)

 

[edfair]

I could report that my first 4 attempts with 4 different versions on about 8 different combinations of hardware all failed but that might give you the idea that I'm into S&M, so I won't report that. But you might infer that I feel that there was a lot of hype at the beginning.
In each case I was attempting to load for one job only, and when I finally got frustrated I pulled out a SCO Unix and popped it on to do the job.
I've loaded RedHat 6.0 on some of the same hardware that crashed other distributions.
Red Hat seems to have a better feel for hardware detection. Or maybe it is because the OS is finally reaching maturity. Don't think there was ever a problem with the kernel, just the loader. And I've been spoiled with SCO and am not as patient as I once was.
Ed Fair
efair@atlnet.com

Any advice I give is my best judgement based on my interpretation of the facts you supply.

Help increase my knowledge by providing some feedback, good or bad, on any advice I have given.

 

[mbaranski]

My advice would be to use redhat. They seem to ahve a pretty intuitive installer that won't hang too often. Chances are it'll work for you. As always, I hope that helped!

Disclaimer:
Beware: Studies have shown that research causes cancer in lab rats.

 

[Comtech]

RedHat will probably run on that proprietary hardware, but I'd recommend Mandrake 7.x as the easiest to install and configure.
Have you tried BeOS as an alternative? Cheers,
Jim
reboot@pcmech.com

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[ianj1]

- would also recommend Redhat i.e 6.2 or higher , it supports my Sony double speed CDROM that uses it's own controller (non-ide) which has been dropped from Win2k server

 

[kposey]

I would try Red Hat 7, it has a lot more drivers, and get you up and running quite nicely.

 

[ShaithisDanoveur]

slackware works with just about everything and has faster driver development than Redhat

 

[swayda]

I know this might not be too helpful, but perhaps the problem is your grasphics adapter. Though the linux developers are improving the detection capabilities they may not be writing drivers for older hardware. You didn't specify what the machine actually is (Dell, Compaq, Hand built, etc.. But that could be the problem. Can you disable the on-board adapter and install a newer one?