Help needed by newbie!!!

[fransiaho]

Hello my Linux friends!!!i installed a Linux distro (Mandrake 9.0) for the first time 1 year ago. To say the truth it wasn't my decision We had a lab course at University called OS. They were teaching us some basic theories about the Kernel (threads, pipes etc) and how to write small scripts. In order to practise at home those things i installed Mandrake 9.0. After passing this lab i stoped working on Linux. Now i have installed SuSE 9.2 Pro on my latest PC and try to do with SuSE whatever i was doing on Windoz. I have an old pc(Pentium@166Mhz) on which i want to install a Linux distro. I had once installed on it Slackware(without X, just konsole) but i've been trying to install some other versions on it. Here is my first question: I try to install SuSE 9.1 on it. When it boots from the CD and tries to load the Kernel i get the following message after the detection of the hard disks : RAMDISK: compressed image found at block 0 and then the Kernel panic message shows up. I have formatted a lot of times my hard disk but nothing changed. What can i do? Should i try to run a disk utility to erase the MBR or it has nothing to do with this? Another thing i dont get is that when i try to install Slackware the Kernels loads without any problems and i can go on with the installation normally.
Question no2:Is there any DVD player for suse 9.2 Pro?Thanks for the answers i'm sure you will give.

[Flatline]

You may just not have enough memory in that system for the installer to use the ramdisk; there may also be a bad sector or two...try to run memtest and see what comes up.

I'm not sure whether the Slack installer uses the ramdisk method for loading. If not, that would explain why the Slack install works.

The native multimedia apps in SuSE can work as DVD players, but you have to install libdvdcss2; you can find that package online.

[serz]

No, that has nothing to do with the MBR.

Does this cd work in other computers?

Yes, SuSE must have a dvd player.. look for Xine or Ogle.

But.. if I were you, I wouldn't even try to run SuSE on that box.. it's just too heavy.

[fransiaho]

Does this cd work in other computers?

Yes it works.

I have only 64MB of memory

Thanks for your answers guys

[jaboua]

I thought SuSE required 256 MB ram? Or is that just the livecd?

On the old computer, I would rather have tried installing DamnSmallLinux, or as I always say you can install gantoo. It would take a AWFULL lot of time compiling everything on that one, but the speed would be significally better on an old box like that. In addition, you learn very much from installing gentoo

[fransiaho]

I dont think im at the level of installing Gentoo I'll try DamnSmallLinux (really how small is it?My HD is 2GB )Does it has server packages(Apache,Samba,Squid etc)?Thanks for the help

[serz]

DamnSmallLinux (DSL) is just 50mb.. believe it

www.damnsmalllinux.org

[fransiaho]

DamnSmallLinux (DSL) is just 50mb..

[serz]

Yeah, there are many mini LiveCDs around..

You may want to take a look at the The LiveCD List.

[fransiaho]

Thanks serz.