sparrish Posted July 25, 2005 Report Share Posted July 25, 2005 Hi all. I'm trying to install Mandriva LE 2005 on a Compaq Deskpro 2000 5200 MMX with a Pentium 200 mHz, 160 MB RAM, a 1 MB video adaptor (S3 Trio64 V2/GX) and an 18 GB hard disk. I know this sounds like a recipe for disaster, but I just wanted to see if I could squeeze any decent performance out of it at all. To add to the challenge, I'd like to see if I can get it to run KDE (with all the bells and whistles backed off, of course). Anyway, once I finally got everything installed, it booted up fine (slowly, but fine), but the screen goes black when it tries to load up X. I checked and triple checked the xorg.conf file and everything seems to be configured flawlessly, but it just won't start. Should I keep looking for the problem, or is there a possibility that X isn't going to start no matter what I do? Any opinions or recommendations? [moved from Software by spinynorman] Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
devries Posted July 25, 2005 Report Share Posted July 25, 2005 Try the vesa driver for X. (it's the one used for the installer). If that doesn't work you know it's a problem with the hardware. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sparrish Posted July 25, 2005 Author Report Share Posted July 25, 2005 Try the vesa driver for X. (it's the one used for the installer). If that doesn't work you know it's a problem with the hardware. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Thanks! I'll do that and report back. Before trying the Mandriva install, I installed a copy of Red Hat 7.1 just to check for compatability, etc., and that worked fine. Even ran KDE just great, but I'd like to get something more robust than KDE 1.1 on it, lol. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sparrish Posted July 26, 2005 Author Report Share Posted July 26, 2005 Well, I'm not sure exactly what the problem is yet, but I did get it to run once. KDE even started up, but since I had logged in as root in failsafe to edit the xorg.conf file, it didn't last too long. I finally got X to load during a regular bootup after several tries, but it froze before KDE loaded. I installed from and FTP server because the CDs were hanging up (same discs I used to install on my Athlon 1600+ box, so the discs should be ok), but I might give the CDs another shot. Maybe if I copy them to the hard disk first. I don't know, lol. I'll keep you guys posted on the progress. The time I got it to run was with the VESA driver, so I'll try using that from the install. If anyone has any recommendations in the interim, I'm definitely open to any suggestions. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sparrish Posted July 26, 2005 Author Report Share Posted July 26, 2005 Reinstalled the whole deal with the vesa driver and it worked! Tried switching to the proper driver for the video chip and it went crazy, so back to the vesa. I also removed a configuration from the xorg.conf file that was out of range of what the card is capable of. I actually got KDE running fairly well on the system, and I'm going to give xcfe a shot. I suspect that will run quite nicely. So, with it up and running using the vesa driver, I have one final question: Is there a problem with running the vesa driver full time? Any risks to the hardware or performance drawbacks? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aomighty Posted July 26, 2005 Report Share Posted July 26, 2005 Don't you just love backwards compatibility? I gotta try something like that someday. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
arctic Posted July 26, 2005 Report Share Posted July 26, 2005 I have one final question: Is there a problem with running the vesa driver full time? Any risks to the hardware or performance drawbacks? one of my boxes runs with the vesa driver instead of the nvidia one since nearly two years and i never encountered any drawbacks... except missing 3d-support, but 3d-support is unnecessary for me. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sparrish Posted July 26, 2005 Author Report Share Posted July 26, 2005 (edited) one of my boxes runs with the vesa driver instead of the nvidia one since nearly two years and i never encountered any drawbacks... except missing 3d-support, but 3d-support is unnecessary for me. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Cool, thanks! I'll just leave it that way then. I have an identical machine to install on also, and I'll be doing that one the same way. The machines are for a company that I work for that is evaluating switching all of their systems to Linux, so they sent the P1s over to test them out on. If I can make them happy with Linux on these machines, I've got a good shot at a wide deployment on a lot of systems for a lot of users who are totally new to the Linux experience, so this could be a very good thing. :D Edited July 26, 2005 by sparrish Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sparrish Posted July 27, 2005 Author Report Share Posted July 27, 2005 Okay, I lied, lol. I have another question. What would be the fastest filesystem to run on these machines? I would suspect running something basic like ext2 would run faster than a journaling system, or doesn't it really matter? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
theYinYeti Posted July 27, 2005 Report Share Posted July 27, 2005 Even if faster, I strongly advise against using a non-journalized filesystem. So in the journalized category, the faster is ReiserFS. Be sure NOT to use XFS, which is a very good filesystem, but requires more CPU than ReiserFS or JFS. Yves. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sparrish Posted July 27, 2005 Author Report Share Posted July 27, 2005 Even if faster, I strongly advise against using a non-journalized filesystem. So in the journalized category, the faster is ReiserFS. Be sure NOT to use XFS, which is a very good filesystem, but requires more CPU than ReiserFS or JFS. Yves. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Thanks for the help! I'll be going with ReiserFS. All in all, I've been pleasantly surprised with this little machine. I first installed expecting the worst and having to tell my client that running a decent Linux distro with a GUI on these old boxes wasn't going to be possible, but my expectations have been far exceeded. In fact, after backing off some of the eye candy on KDE, (aside from the long load time) I've actually found it to be about as responsive as Xfce. Except for the fact that you may as well grab a cup of coffee while you wait for OpenOffice to load, Mandy LE 2k5 gets my seal of approval on older machines for basic office functionality. Would I use the setup for my everyday work? No, but if you need an extra terminal, I say go for it! One other thing that's always confounded me and I've never got around to asking: what's up with the stock fonts? They've always looked really weird to me, and the spacing is awful. Any recommendations on a decent default font to use (especially for KDE)? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
devries Posted July 27, 2005 Report Share Posted July 27, 2005 The default Mandriva font is 'Dejavu'. (if you see sans, serif etetc it's a link to the dejavu sans etcetc). I gues aa is a bit of a problem on such a machine. Better turn it off and experiment a bit with the fonts. If I remember correctly Luxi is a good one. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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