Odd behaviour on boot

[M3ta7h3ad]

Hi,

This isnt so much a problem now as I no longer have it, but I'd like to know what causes it if possible.

I have an old computer (Pentium II 350Mhz, 64mb Ram, Intel BX440 motherboard I believe, 6.1Gb Hard drive) and I've tried so far.

Ubuntu
DSL
Xandros

Both Ubuntu and DSL would take over an hour to boot up, Ubuntu wouldnt give an error, it would just freeze on the word

"boot" when it was loading up (it did about 5 lines of text that seemed to suggest it was loading things up, and then it would say "boot") and it would stay there, no discernable hard drive activity and it stayed like that for about an hour and ten mins (I found out because I just left it like it and went off to get a cup of coffee, watched tv and forgot about it as I walked back in the room it sprang to life again) after that period it loaded fine, everything worked.

DSL (a live cd) would run, and just freeze, I didnt hang around the hour needed for ubuntu to load up so I left it 30 mins and then quit it.

I think its hardware detection but then..

I installed Xandros Linux (another debian based install) boots up fine, and for the hardware detection phase, it zooms through without stopping, bootup time is in about a minute.

Any idea what could be causing these problems?. I am downloading slackware 10 (first time I've ever used slackware) now to see if that gives me the same problems.

[zeeone]

Older machines, newer distros do not always work. The distros that I use on my older machines are Vector, Mepis,and knoppix.

[M3ta7h3ad]

Vector?.. is that debian based perchance?. I am currently running college linux on my one now, its rather speedy!, KDE can be a bit clunky, but booted up into XFCE or similar its a pleasure to use. no noticeable difference really.

My main problem now is that college linux is slackware based... I reallllly like debian, and so if vector is debian based I would definately consider it.

Knoppix is a live cd/installable to hard drive, do you think my 64mb ram will limit its usability?, as for mepis I downloaded SimplyMEPIS once, tried booting it and it gave me a text screen with no clear method to progress to either boot it, or to install it.

[zeeone]

No, Vector is Slack based with no KDE or Gnome, with only 64 megs you will be limted to what you can run. Also the BX440 chipset can be a problem, if I remember right, Intel never did get that one to work right for the US market and dumped it off to the overseas market. With the memory limit the best distros are going to be the older ones, Slack 9, Mandrake 9, RH9, and so on.

[kriss]

Remeber that you can always download software automagic in Slackware using programs such as slapt-get and emerde (Slack port of emerge) so it is not nessecary to not use Slackware.

Good luck

[zeeone]

Knoppix is a live cd/installable to hard drive, do you think my 64mb ram will limit its usability?, as for mepis I downloaded SimplyMEPIS once, tried booting it and it gave me a text screen with no clear method to progress to either boot it, or to install it.

Mepis is Debian based, Knoppix is also, however the Knoppix install will be a Debian install. But again, all of the newer distros, the machine needs 128 megs of memory or higher. I have Slack 10 waiting to be loaded on one of my older machines, but the machine has 256 megs on it, in my research and testing I do know that Slack 9 will work with 64 megs. There is nothing wrong with running Slack or Slack based, Right now I have a 350 K6-ll with 256 megs running Mepis on it, and it runs great, just shut it down for the first time in two weeks. So if you can, get the memory pumped up, or your choice of distros will be limited.