Linux won't run!

HooCanTellMee

Hi all you techie types can you help?

I have a middle-aged AMD 64 machine, single core 2.4GHZ on a 939 motherboard, with AGP graphics card. I have tried several Linux flavours, but they all lock up! This machine runs XP happily, but I would rather have Linux! I have swapped the hard drive so I would only have the Linux on the drive, no need to dual boot.
Have loads of discs so I could just keep trying, but is there anyone out there that could point me in the right direction, sometimes the OS will run for a few seconds then just lock up, sometimes they run for a while longer. Live discs or installed, it doesn't seem to make a difference. My husband thinks it may be to be with the graphics card. Am I just trying the wrong OS, or do I need to look for older distro discs and see if it is because my PC is just too old for the newer up to date versions? I know it is far from state of the art, but didn't think the spec was that bad!

debitcardmayhem

Can you disable the graphics card in the BIOS? , see if it then works and then dig around the net for a driver, alternately go onto recovery mode from grub (for ubuntu and probably other variants too) and issue a lspci to see what graphics card it thinks you have

gonzo127

well one thing for sure is its not to old, i had (before bloody step daughter stepped on it) a very old laptop running a single core celeron 1.4ghz cpu, DDR 1 ram and a ide hard drive

could i ask which ones you have tried? also have you double checked the integraty of the ISO before trying to install?

next one is have you tried one of the older versions, i had trouble with Lubuntu 10.04 however 10.10 worked and so did 9.10, have you checked the known problems list?

Linbox

Try a distro like Pepermint. Puppy, antix or Tinyme
all are Lightweight, use from Livecd or usb before installing to make sure your hardware is compatible but should run these.

HooCanTellMee

debitcardmayhem,
I am afraid you are getting a little too techie for me, could get into the bios, but grub is probably a step too far for me, my husband tried to explain, but he is no teacher! To be honest I would probably just open the PC up and look at the graphics card! Far happier with hardware, please think of reasonably bright but in my mid fifties and female. Just don't stereo-type me please, I have re built a BMW 320i engine and hate housework! I like to learn and won't give in, the PC will run Linux, it won't beat me, or should I say us? I can only run this PC if the other one is off, only one monitor, keyboard and mouse. So I will have to go away and come back later. Much though I hate housework the washing won't put itself on the line!
gonzo127
I have tried:-
Fedora, several different versions
Mint
Ubuntu
PCLinuxOS
No I haven't checked out the problems list, the PC was a home build, so is not standard!
We have Linux Format discs going back for about three years, so have plenty to try. Just getting a bit frustrated and want to get using rather than wearing out the disc drive!
Am I being too ambitious, should I be looking at more basic distros? Only want to surf the net, run family accounts and play with family photos, we do have gaming PC so this is more a project. I am writing this on a similar PC to the one I mentioned, but it is in a big old server case, running Mandriva and one of the small raid hard drives has failed, so I would really like to replace it before I have no choice. Would ide drives give a problem? Take it "bloody" stepdaughter has big feet. My Darling daughter tried to fix a digibox with the aid of a hammer and cellotape, girls eh!
Thanks to you both, much appreciate your help.

Browntoa

go here

http://www.ubuntu.com/download/ubuntu/download

choose ubuntu 10.04 LTS from the first drop down and 64 bit from the 2nd

worked for me on an AMD 64 after the same problems you had

culpepper

try puppy as it has a set up screen for graphics even if you use it from live cd.
You can try different settings in the set up without harming anything permanently and once you know which one works, you can install to hard-drive or flash key with the setting saved.

esuhl

If you think the problem might be graphics-card-related, I'd try to get the PC to just boot into the text-only command-line interface.

I'm not sure if it would be suitable for you, but Arch Linux is a fully-featured distro, but it starts off with a fairly minimal text-only installation that you build upon to get the system working exactly as you want.

The advantages of this are that you can test the system at each stage to see where it's failing, and you only install what you need (so you end up with a faster, leaner installation). Also, by not trying to do everything for you automatically, you get a good feel for what is happening "under the bonnet" and the OS doesn't try to be too clever and change settings without telling you. The downside is that you have to edit a handful of text config files to begin with, but the Arch Wiki and Forum have almost idiot-proof step-by-step instructions that you should be able to follow quite easily if you know the very basics about linux.

Not sure if that helps, but Arch Linux is available here if you're interested.
http://www.archlinux.org/

esuhl

What graphics card do you have? Maybe someone will know whether there are any known issues with it under Linux or can tell you what drivers you will need...

asbokid

HooCanTellMee wrote: »

Hi all you techie types can you help?

I am a middle-aged AMD 64 machine, single core 2.4GHZ on a 939 motherboard, with AGP graphics card.

If you still have Windows installed, then note down all the component details for the machine in the Windows device manager. At the very least, this will allow you to check for reports of known "issues" with those hardware components.

I have tried several Linux flavours, but they all lock up!

Sounds fun! You can be sure it is something trivial.

This machine runs XP happily, but I would rather have Linux! I have swapped the hard drive so I would only have the Linux on the drive, no need to dual boot.

Have loads of discs so I could just keep trying, but is there anyone out there that could point me in the right direction, sometimes the OS will run for a few seconds then just lock up, sometimes they run for a while longer. Live discs or installed, it doesn't seem to make a difference.

It is important to note the stage at which the boot process locks.

Can you tell which stage the bootstrap is getting to?

My husband thinks it may be to be with the graphics card. Am I just trying the wrong OS, or do I need to look for older distro discs

Nope. Older versions of Linux are less likely to work since they will be buggy, with older device drivers and less support for hardware, etc.

Stick with a recent version of a popular Linux distribution. It doesn't matter greatly which distro you choose, but I personally use Ubuntu, but Fedora, Debian, etc, are good, too.

The underlying kernel code for all the distros is essentially the same, and it sounds like that's where your problem lies. If it is not even booting to a log-in prompt then this is kernel problem. The kernel will probably just need tweaking in some way.

As esuhl has said, there are kernel boot options, loads of them. It is probably a case of going through them and temporarily disable things like ACPI power-management. If you are not familiar with Linux, it might be easier to disable options in the BIOS rather than disabling them through kernel boot parameters.

As a first step, I would enter the BIOS configuration and choose a fail-safe default configuration. Disable anything that sounds fancy.

and see if it is because my PC is just too old for the newer up to date versions? I know it is far from state of the art, but didn't think the spec was that bad!

Rest assured, it's nothing to do with the age of the machine. Tell us exactly where the boot gets to and what does the 'freeze' look like?

fwor

asbokid wrote: »

Older versions of Linux are less likely to work since they will be buggy, with older device drivers and less support for hardware, etc.

Lots of very good advice, but one comment on the above: they introduced a completely new Hardware Abstraction Layer in Ubuntu (and hence probably also in anything else Debian-based) a while back - IIRC from Ubuntu 10.04 onward - and my personal experience is that this does seem to make it harder to get running on some older hardware.

Surprisingly, installing an older version and then dist-upgrading to the current worked for me, but it's a bit tedious as (AFAIK) you have to go through all intervening releases. Still might be worth a try though if nothing else works.