[SOLVED] Can't install Linux!!!

My friend PC is quite old, the specs are P4 2.6, ECS 865GV-M3, 512MB DDR-333, AGP Nvidia FX5200 and 40GB IDE HD. He is an unhappy Windows user and wants to try Linux. He wants me to do the installation since this year I migrated to linux.

I've been distro hopping this year. So I've tried mostly debian based distro like
Ubuntu, Mepis, Mint, gOS and Debian itself. Right now I'm using Debian Testing.

Since my friend is new to Linux, I decided to install a distro that is very user friendly. I've tried installing ubuntu jaunty. It boot the cd but then it hangs up. It will not continue. Tried all the option but to no avail. Tried Mint 7, the same thing. Tried mint6, same. Tried Mepis 8.0.10, I got kernell panic.

Since I was able to burn gOS gagdets w/c is based on Ubuntu hardy LTS, I decided to give it a try and crossing my fingers if it works. Tada, the live cd was able to boot up to the live environment. Then I installed it, no problem. It is still running right now.

My question is:

Does newer kernell will not work on older system? because I do have another system w/c is a 3 year old AMD machine w/c will not work on Jaunty. or somebody explain to me further. I don't remember all the error messages when I tried all those distro.

Graphics Card creates problems in most cases. Have you tried any distro in Text Mode?

I do, I successfully installed debian lenny on the system. But it will not continue, it hangs up or freeze. I just can't remember the error code. And I can't till you again the problem coz the system is already running w/ gOS.

But the reason for me to post my problem so I that the next I will install an older pc, I already have an idea what distro to install.

So I was just owndering that newer kernel won't support older pc? I hope this is not true.

That hardware isn't to terribly old. New kernel versions won't have any problems with it.
It's more than likely a graphics card problem, as mentioned by DC.

Have you tried any distros with a text based installer? Once you get Linux installed, getting the graphics problem sorted out shouldn't be much of an issue.

Hmmm,

Quote:

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newer kernel won't support older pc

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All I can say is I am running latest AntiX 8.2 release on a PII IBM which is waaaaaaaaay older than your friends gear.

@jayd512:
your probably right about that jayd, like I said on my reply #3 I installed debian succesfully but I had no success booting. The only problem is I was not able to investigate further about the problem.

@rokytnji:
Since you confirm that then my thoughts was wrong. Sorry about that.

Since everyone here convince me that there's no problem w/ the newer kernel, I will going to try it again and try to go deeper of the problem. But right now, we can stop at this thread coz the pc is running and we can't continue to troubleshoot it.

So thanks again guys.