Re: Installing Zorin Lite on an old laptop

Good day everybody,
I have opened this topic a couple of days ago and used some very good advice from 2 of the board members here but to no avail. Here is the story so far.
I have an old Asus Travelmate 2480 laptop which I have been trying to load Zorin Lite on.
It currently has Windows XP on it and it will not connect to the internet although it will connect to my router both wirelessly and via lan cable.
I downloaded Zorin Lite 32 bit and tried to make a bootable USB using Etcher but no luck
It was suggested that I burn the iso file to disk and try that
So I made a disk and after a couple of minutes the installation stops and I get a black screen with a flashing curser at the top left of the screen
A couple of minutes later I get a tool bar at the bottom with the Zorin start button on it and the date and that's it. It goes no further with the installation.
So I downloaded a program called dban and formatted the computer (that took 3 hours)
I then tried to re load Zorin and got exactly the same result.
So I thought I may have a corrupted iso file so I downloaded it again and made a new disk and tried to install again and got the same result as before. I thought that perhaps the computer hardware was at fault and maybe I should just junk the thing but before I did that I found a Windows XP disk and reloaded XP - It loaded perfectly from the CD drive so I no longer think that I have a hardware problem
If anybody thinks that they may have a solution to my dilemma I would be most grateful hearing from you. I have tried everything that I can with my limited knowledge and I am now out of ideas. I was so looking forward to trying Zorin Lite on my old laptop but after a week now I am getting a little exasperated.
Please help if you can. All ideas will be gratefully received.
Regards Patrick

Good day everybody,
I have opened this topic a couple of days ago and used some very good advice from 2 of the board members here but to no avail. Here is the story so far.
I have an old Asus Travelmate 2480 laptop which I have been trying to load Zorin Lite on.
It currently has Windows XP on it and it will not connect to the internet although it will connect to my router both wirelessly and via lan cable.
I downloaded Zorin Lite 32 bit and tried to make a bootable USB using Etcher but no luck
It was suggested that I burn the iso file to disk and try that
So I made a disk and after a couple of minutes the installation stops and I get a black screen with a flashing curser at the top left of the screen
A couple of minutes later I get a tool bar at the bottom with the Zorin start button on it and the date and that's it. It goes no further with the installation.
So I downloaded a program called dban and formatted the computer (that took 3 hours)
I then tried to re load Zorin and got exactly the same result.
So I thought I may have a corrupted iso file so I downloaded it again and made a new disk and tried to install again and got the same result as before. I thought that perhaps the computer hardware was at fault and maybe I should just junk the thing but before I did that I found a Windows XP disk and reloaded XP - It loaded perfectly from the CD drive so I no longer think that I have a hardware problem
If anybody thinks that they may have a solution to my dilemma I would be most grateful hearing from you. I have tried everything that I can with my limited knowledge and I am now out of ideas. I was so looking forward to trying Zorin Lite on my old laptop but after a week now I am getting a little exasperated.
Please help if you can. All ideas will be gratefully received.
Regards Patrick

I wonder if it may be a PAE issue
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/PAE

Another possibility is the computer's graphics may be too old to handle a late-model distro like zorin 15, which uses the latest linux kernel. I would try zorin Lite 12, or perhaps another distro entirely. I have had good luck on an old computer with original graphics, with Linux Lite 3.0. It is pretty similar to Zorin, both are made for new windows emigres.

I'm inclined to agree with @mdiemer on this one as it is very like a situation I experienced trying to revive a Toshiba Satellite l40 from 2006! I had to try a lot of 32 bit distros until I found one that would run from the live disc but even then some would not install correctly. Eventually I hit jackpot with the prototype Linux Mint 18 (Sarah). I stayed with that setup a couple of years without any problem and then discovered that the cpu was 64 bit so I upgraded the RAM to 2 GB and went through the same process of trying to find a distro that worked. No luck with most - including Zorin - but eventually it all fell in to place with Pearl DE 7. So my tip is to try out different 32 bit distros via live disc until you get one that clicks! Happy hunting!

One good thing about Linux Lite 3.0 is that it will fit on a CD. I installed 3.0, then upgraded it to 3.8. But you could probably as well download 3.8 directly. Just look for it in their forum release section. Here is the link for 3.0:
https://www.linuxliteos.com/forums/rele ... -released/
Scroll down a ways and you will see both 32 and 64 bit downloads.

Another great thing about it is that it's supported until April 2021. The reason it works well with old graphics is that it uses the 4.4 kernel, which is the last one that will let you install Nvidia 304 drivers. And some old computers work better with Nvidia drivers.

Hi, its an Acer Travelmate, not Asus friend (I think Acer would be chasing Asus for copyright misuse! ) Looking up the standard spec it only came with 512 Mb RAM - the only thing I got to run on a similar spec machine was MX Linux 19 on a D600 which also suffered from pae issue but if it was pae issue it would flag a warning at point of booting from the disc so clearly not that. One thing that will be crucial is the amount of physical RAM in the machine. The graphics chip is Intel GMA950 which might also be an issue. How old is the Hard Drive for starters?
Reading on a very old thread on a different model of Acer Travelmate there is talk of a 10 Gb wall?:

https://www.linuxquestions.org/question ... 175423101/

Whoa, with such a dinosaur you will need super light distros, like Puppy Linux, Slack, Tiny core etc. Watt OS may also work. They are re-branding it. It will soon be released as Via OS. But I would stick with an older Puppy, like version 412. Vector Linux might be another choice.

Antix.

When I installed Antix on the D600 I kept getting 'pinboard missing' notice on every boot - no such issue with MX Linux 19 - and even though it was pae distro did not get baulked at installing on the 512 Mb RAM 30 Gb HDD.

Just pin the developers on the board, and then the OS will boot. HAHA kidding. Seriously though, I don't see the point in trying to revitalize a late 90's computer, their CPU's can't even handle the full speed of your net, you will see drops in your download speeds. Also, their complete lack of memory won't be able to do anything useful either. I'd love to see someone try to do photo or video editing on 512MB or RAM. And you surely aint gonna be doing anything gaming unless its like the original classic Doom or something lol.

I agree with star treker. About the only useful thing you will accomplish is to find out how minimal an OS will allow this computer to function. Can you get it to function? Yes, but will it be functional? No, not really.

Thank you everybody for the ideas and advice. You have given me a lot of work to do and I will get onto it now. @star treker If I can get it to work on Linux it will only be used for emails when I am on the move. No gaming or video editing, Thanks for the heads up on the limitations of my old laptop.
I really appreciate everybody's input here.
I will come back and let you all know how it turns out
Best regards
Patrick

Computer's could do email in the 90's obviously, so that is well within its abilities, you shouldn't have any problems there.

MX Linux is a great suggestion and I can vouch for the 32 bit version - I even got the 64 bit running perfectly on another old system with a 3 GB RAM chipset limitation! Another one - also Debian-based - is this: https://sparkylinux.org/about/

If PAE is the problem, then AntiX is your friend.