[ursulakatariina]

Hi all,

So, I have HP nx6125 laptop and cannot run the 2010.0 live cd (with KDE, haven't tried with gnome yet) on it - it takes over 25 minutes to boot and when it is ready for use, every mouse movement freezes it for about 5 minutes. Anyone else having similar problems?
Don't have another laptop or desktop to try the cd, so don't know if there is something wrong with it, md5sum is ok...


BR,
ursulakatariina

[tux99]

Try gnome, KDE is quite 'heavy'...

[daniewicz]

I think I would try burning a new CD.

[SilverSurfer60]

Gnome is the way to go on an older laptop, I found that out with 2009. Live disks take forever to load as the entire system has to be loaded up from cd. It may be a bit quicker with gnome, adn stop the freezing of the mouse etc.

[Greg2]

According to HP's specs here: hp.com/products/quickspecs/#Memory

Your laptop was 'probably' sold with 512 MBs of RAM. You 'probably' have an ATI RADEON XPRESS 200M Chipset that is sharing some of that RAM. I would suggest that you enter the BIOS setup and reduce the shared memory of your 200M Chipset. This would give you a bit more system RAM. If you still have problems with using Gnome, you may want to try using the LXDE desktop, it's in the repos.

Alternatively and if you can afford it, you could install some more RAM in your laptop and use anything you want. :)/>

[arctic]

I would recommend to not run distros like Mandriva or Fedora etc. in the out of the box-configuration on older laptops. There do exist several "smaller" distros that are especially designed for less powerful computers which might be worth a look. (you can find them at distrowatch)

If you are keen on running Mandriva on the laptop, switch to Windowmaker, Fluxbox, Icewm, LXDE, XFCE, Rox and other lightweight solutions that don't eat up 512 MB RAM.

[boatman9]

I just loaded 2010.0 One KDE4 into a 667 MHz desktop with 512MB RAM. Booting from CD was very slow, but when loaded on the hard disk it works much faster.

[scarecrow]

LXDE is a fine lightweight desktop (needs quite a bit of manual config though), and XFCE4 is somewhat heavier, but very fast, and very configrable (certainly way more so than Gnome, which is just about the only Linux DE I cannot stand at all- and I have tried pretty much everything available).

[ursulakatariina]

Wow, seems that KDE has really grown too big to my old laptop... With gnome the live cd acts like mandriva was installed... No freezing, no screaming and no :wall:/>
Just have to do the installation and start having all the usual after installation problems... :lol2:/>

[boatman9]

ursulakatariina, on 16 November 2009 - 09:30 AM, said:

Wow, seems that KDE has really grown too big to my old laptop...

How much RAM is in your laptop? I am hoping that 2010.0 Gnome can work on an older 256MB computer I've got. I am also planning to switch my primary computer from KDE to Gnome or LXDE because of a display latency issue I've described in another thread.

[tux99]

256MB is ok if you don't plan on starting Firefox or Openoffice, use Opera and Gnome office tools (for example Abiword) instead. LXDE is likely better than Gnome with 256MB.

[scarecrow]

Both the fallback DE LXDE and XFCE4 will work much better than GNOME or KDE4 on that machine.
LXDE needs some experience to be customized, while XFCE4 is very customizable right out of the box (factly: way more customizable than GNOME, where most customization is hidden under the annoying gconf-editor cryptic UI).
LXDE is evolving fast (mainly due to *buntu help), while XFCE4 is evolving very slowly (XFCE 4.6.3 was scheduled for July, but we are STILL at 4.6.1, doh!), but it's moving. XFCE 4.8 with new features (including a native virtual flesystem) is scheduled for mid-April, but I'd be suprised if it appears earlier than September, 2010.
It's really a pity that such a good DE has only half a dozen of active devs, but so far none of the major distros has decided to actively help its development.

[ursulakatariina]

boatman9, on 23 November 2009 - 05:28 PM, said:

How much RAM is in your laptop? I am hoping that 2010.0 Gnome can work on an older 256MB computer I've got. I am also planning to switch my primary computer from KDE to Gnome or LXDE because of a display latency issue I've described in another thread.

There is 768MB memory in the laptop. I must say, that I miss the old KDE, 3.5.X -series, very much and have to start finding something as customizable... But you can't always win, sometimes you'll just have to take what life gives to you - old KDE is not coming back and so I must move forward too.

[SilverSurfer60]

Mandriva 2010.0 will not install on a laptop with 256mb. I have been trying and it will not complete the install. I did manage 2009.1 & gnome, but 2010 will not install.