next chapter in johnnyboy's linux problems

[johnnyboy]

Alright, so I finished refurbishing my old computer. Red Hat 9 is on it. What happens is that I login, I can see the icons loading on the load screen or whatever it is, but after that I see a light blue background and hear my hard drive chugging away, however I never make it to the graphic interface. I can move the cursor around on that blue screen, slowly, but other than that the thing seems to be infinitely loading. After a while it's like the computer just quits and the screen goes blank. Here's the specs:

400MHz Celeron processor
64Mb PC100 RAM
6 Gb Hard drive

This computer is old. I know that the specs are at the lower end of retarded, but I thought it would still be enough to run Linux. Was I wrong? Do I simply need to get more memory and a faster chip?

Please help!
-johnnyboy

 

[poorboy]

You should be ok with those specs, if a little sluggish due to lack of RAM. All current distros specify 128MB, I think, mostly because KDE and Gnome and X and Mozilla and most new apps need lots of it. It sounds like something is broken, but you could perhaps try selecting a different Dekstop Environment from the Login Screen. I hate to say this after you struggled through this far, but I'd suggest ditching it and installing a newer and supported distro. RH9 is effectively EOL'd as of April anyway... My choice for a new install is currently Mandrake 10, but check some previous posts for other options. I'd strongly recommend something with the 2.6 kernel and NTPL libraries, so for "easy" distros that means Mandrake 10, Fedora 2, SuSE 9.2, and maybe others (Mepis?).


<i>Knock Knock, Neo</i>

 

[TKS]

I agree with poorboy there...64MB of RAM would be just fine with a non-graphical install. But when you start pushing into the Xwindows environment you should push your RAM up a bit. My lil Celeron 900 w/ 128MB of PC133 works great in Mandrake 10 w/ KDE 3.2

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<b>It is always brave to say what everyone thinks. </b> <i>Georges Duhamel</i>

TKS

 

[TKS]

and maybe others (Mepis?).

Damn straight dude...MEPIS rawks. Can't wait for the next release (rumored to have a 2.6.3 kernel and KDE 3.2.1) *rubs hands together eagerly*

I need to get out more :/

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<b>It is always brave to say what everyone thinks. </b> <i>Georges Duhamel</i>

TKS