Stupid Evil Bastard: I’ve been dicking around with Ubuntu.

I’ve been dicking around with Ubuntu.

Posted by Les on Tuesday, February 26, 2008 at 03:59 PM. Read 1751 times. Tags: computing, laptop, linux, ubuntu, windows

I don’t know if I mentioned it or not, but one of the other things I picked up as a result of some PC side work lately is an old donated IBM Thinkpad 600E. Damn thing is ancient (Pentium II 366 Mhz), but I was able to bump the RAM in it up to 512MB and slap a 20GB HD in it so I’ve at least got a working laptop once more. So I figured I’d see if I could get Ubuntu to install on it to try out and quickly discovered why Linux has a long way to go before it’s going to replace Windows Vista or any other Microsoft OS.

Everything I read about Ubuntu claims it’s the easiest of the Linux distros to work with. So far that has not been my experience. I started off with downloading the Live CD/Install CD image that was recommended on the Ubuntu website. That was a mistake as it apparently doesn’t give you a choice on whether to launch the Live CD (which essentially runs Ubuntu from the CD-ROM) or just do an install. It turns out that starting a Live CD takes some time, no, make that a lot of time. So much so that I thought it wasn’t doing anything at all and maybe got a bad image. After talking with some coworkers one of them mentioned that it took upwards of an hour for his to startup on some hardware that wasn’t quite as old as what I was running on, but he put that down to only having had 256MB of RAM. So I tried again that night and let it sit for two and a half hours with no apparent signs of life coming from the system.

Returning to the Ubuntu website I don’t find any suggestions that would be helpful in speeding this process up any or bypassing the launch of the Live CD, but I do find a link to downloading an “alternate text-only install CD” which I proceed to grab. This drops the whole Live CD bit and gets straight to doing the install, but this still took an inordinate amount of time to complete. By my estimates it took at least an hour and a half to finish the install and it wasn’t an entirely smooth process. The laptop itself has a Linksys PCMCIA wireless card in it and Ubuntu did manage to see the card, but wasn’t able to actually get it to work for some reason. I tossed in a 3COM 10/100 card I had and that didn’t fare any better despite the fact that it’s listed as being compatible on the Ubuntu website.

But it did finally install and I found some help pages on the Ubuntu site that offered some suggestions on how to get the networking cards working. To say that the process of installing alternate drivers and enabling them was a convoluted and involved process would be an understatement. Hell, just finding where to configure the damned things was a lesson in trial and error. To top it all off it still didn’t work even after trying everything suggested on the website. Not having a working network interface pretty much negates the whole point of having the laptop for me as I wanted it specifically for accessing the Internet away from my desktop.

So I wiped the hard drive and tossed my Windows XP CD-ROM. Total install time was an hour and four minutes. Both network cards were detected and while I did have to download drivers for the Linksys wireless card, I was able to do so using the 3COM card without issue. Considering the age of the laptop XP seemed to run pretty well probably thanks to the half-gig of RAM I had in it. The difference in the two experiences was amazing. Despite being a pretty crappy OS in many ways, getting Windows up and running was a no-brainer.

While I’m certainly nowhere near as knowledgeable about Linux as I am Windows, I have been working with it for years with my webhosts so it’s not like I’m clueless. If the difference in setting up the two OSes is that profound for me then I can only imagine what it’d be like for your average I-just-want-the-damned-thing-to-work Joe User and it drives home the point of why Linux won’t be replacing Windows anytime soon no matter how much safer, faster, better it happens to be.

I’ve not completely given up on getting Ubuntu to work as I’ve had some more suggestions from coworkers that use it on how to possibly get it up and running. Might even try reinstalling it tonight, though I’m debating downloading the Kbuntu variant as I like the KDE desktop a bit better than Gnome. Depends on whether I feel like tearing out what little is left of my hair.

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Ryan Egesdahl

Posted on 02/28/2008 at 07:02 AM

Oh my, Les. Ubuntu isn’t the right distro to be running on a laptop *that* old. Ubuntu is meant for the relatively modern machine. You *can* install on one if you want, but you’d have to pick up an alternate-install CD for that. If you want a distro that’s right for that laptop, you’d probably want a tweaked Debian or something.

Webs

Posted on 02/28/2008 at 11:33 AM

I’m still confused as to why someone would say Ubuntu works great on older machines. I haven’t come across info that would lead me to think that, and Ubuntu was never really built to be a superlightweight competitor to XP. Any unbloated Linux OS is going to out perform XP on older systems for sure, but I’m not sure about Ubuntu. I think Patness was correct about Compiz Fusion trying to run, that or Linux was having trouble loading a driver for some piece of hardware.

Les,
Your problem with having the time question was because you were installing from the command line correct? Normally when using the GUI install process you never get such a question. I taught a Linux class using Ubuntu 6.04. My students thought the install process for that was way easier than any MS install they have ever done. Just boot up, click to install, create partitions, set mount points, answer time zone, keyboard and language questions, then hit next, and wait for it to finish. Couldn’t be easier. In fact every distro has seen vast improvements in the ease of install category. Hell even DSL has a install process that starts from a GUI interface and then asks you questions in a terminal, still very easy compared to what it used to be.

Linux still has some strides to make, but try installing it on a newer system. Maybe at least a socket 939 AMD and I’m sure the differences would be startling. Plus you’d get to see why Compiz Fusion users just laugh at Aero.

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parkay

Posted on 02/28/2008 at 04:11 PM

Webs said:
Normally when using the GUI install process you never get such a question.

that may have been true for 6.04, i don’t know i never tried that version. but i have installed ubuntu 7.04 from the live cd with the graphical installer. in addition to asking for your time zone, it asks if your clock is set to umt.

on the other hand, the text based installer on the alternate cd (7.04 and 7.10) only asks for the correct time zone.

Webs said:
My students thought the install process for that was way easier than any MS install they have ever done.

absolutely true. when things go well. it took me some time to locate the one parameter needed to get a successful install on my thinkpad t20.

l8r

Webs

Posted on 02/28/2008 at 04:43 PM

but i have installed ubuntu 7.04 from the live cd with the graphical installer. in addition to asking for your time zone, it asks if your clock is set to umt.

Hmm… I guess I never really read that question in the install screen. I always just picked the timezone and clicked next. I used 6.04 as an example because I have installed Ubuntu versions 6.04 and up and never remember seeing that question.

absolutely true. when things go well.

Yes, but I’m willing to bet that the install process for any system newer than a first generation P4 or socket A AMD is incredibly easy. I say this because I have never had a problem installing it on a system about that age or newer. Especially when the system has all Intel hardware as Intel has really good Linux support.

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trailrider

Posted on 02/28/2008 at 05:34 PM

Anyone tried wubi?

parkay

Posted on 02/28/2008 at 06:28 PM

Webs said:
Especially when the system has all Intel hardware as Intel has really good Linux support.

that is the primary problem with my t20 (piii/700mhz), it’s all intel except for the video (S3 Savage IX8) and audio (CS4624B/CS4297A). the audio works fine but the video needs to be told to use pci access instead of agp. agp works fine for win9x/2k/xp.

so i guess really all of the ‘failed’ installs i had in the past were really successful but since the video couldn’t initialize properly, i couldn’t tell it was successful.

that makes my problem a ‘driver/hardware implementation issue’, rather than a real problem with linux itself.

that being said, most people (noobs) trying to install ubuntu on a t2x thinkpad would assume that it was crap and would move on to another o/s. as a break/fix tech with 15 years experience, i kept beating my head against the wall until i finally broke it down.

i was not able to find a fix on the ubuntu forums for this problem at the time. i did eventually find the solution on http://www.thinkwiki.org/. the average end-user would just move on.

l8r

Webs

Posted on 02/28/2008 at 06:42 PM

i kept beating my head against the wall until i finally broke it down.

LOL, that’s exactly what I try to do, unfortunately my is very soft so I don’t always get very far.

Just out of curiosity, did you end up having to put in an extra line into Xorg? Or just reconfigure Xorg all together?

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parkay

Posted on 02/28/2008 at 07:34 PM

Webs said:
Just out of curiosity, did you end up having to put in an extra line into Xorg? Or just reconfigure Xorg all together?

on the first boot after install i go to the recovery console/command line and add a “option” “bustype” “pci” line to the proper section of the xorg.conf.

the documentation for the fix i found indicates that 4-5 different lines need to be added. but i checked the documentation for the driver and found that the “option” “bustype” “pci” line causes the other needed parameters to default to the correct values.

since i can be a little obsessive about such things, i tried to find a way to get the agp side of things working. i discovered that adding the agp aperture size parameter with a proper value would allow the system to boot properly with agp enabled. but alas, the screensavers became a slideshow compared to the pci bustype setting.

since i don’t do any gaming on this machine i just accept the limitation and go on.

l8r

parkay

Posted on 02/28/2008 at 07:53 PM

btw les, you probably didn’t even get to the really good part, getting samba installed and set up.

http://www.howtoforge.com/ubuntu-gutsy-samba-standalone-server-with-tdbsam-backend

l8r

Webs

Posted on 02/29/2008 at 04:05 PM

Just found this today for the Linux enthusiasts. I just tried it out and it works great! Using *.nix commands in the Windows Command Prompt.

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One-eyed Jack

Posted on 03/01/2008 at 07:03 PM

SEB, you might try Mepis. I loaded it on a PII 600 mHz, and the install was literally easier than any Windows installation I’ve ever done. It was even easier than XP. It recognized my DSL modem and USB ports without any manual intervention, and the Linux partitioning is done transparently. Mepis is similar to Knoppix but configured specifically for installation on a HDD—though it can be run from a bootable CD as well.

You get Firefox and Konqueror, most of OpenOffice, the Gimp, and various other software. Mind you, it refused to boot on my even older 400 mHz machine, but that has an early AMD CPU and that seems problematic for not only Mepis but Ubuntu as well.

Hope it works out for you. Getting an alternative to the Windows treadmill has done wonders for my sense of independence.

cybercod

Posted on 03/10/2008 at 04:37 AM

I wouldn’t put Ubuntu on an old Laptop like that.

If you want to try a version of linux for hardware that old, you should give Puppy Linux or its derivative--Fire Hydrant Linux--a shot.

I think you’ll find it runs rather spritely and has a lot of functionality on a machine that old.

An even faster, though more pared down Linux distro would be DamnSmallLinux.

But I’m guessing that since you already have your Windows back on it, your experimenting days are over.

Meh. Old dogs. New tricks. What’d ya expect?

elwedriddsche

Posted on 03/19/2008 at 02:50 PM

I used to routinely install Redhat 6.2 (IIRC) on the 600E back in its day.

Linux on laptops is a resource to keep in mind, but Real Men™ use Linux From Scratch…

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