Installing Ubuntu on a REALLY old computer

[bbbl67]

I just upgraded my brother's computer from Win XP to Ubuntu 5.10. It
was an unbelievable success! It surprised even me how smoothly it went
-- didn't need to go into the command-line even once. Linux has
arrived, it seems. My brother is a highly typical computer user,
doesn't know how it works, just wants to use it for: email, chat, IM,
P2P, videos, MP3's, etc. What surprised me too was that after I
finished installing Ubuntu 5.10 for him, he himself went to the
Internet and upgraded it to Ubuntu 6.06 without my assistance! You know
you've got fool-proof system when it's that easy. So he's got his
Firefox and Thunderbird just like in Windows. He's found himself a
bittorrent client that he likes, IM's with Gaim. I've even found the
solutions to allow him to play Windows *.WMV and *.WMA video and audio
files. He's happy.

So, later I told this story to some of my cousins and now they're
interested in putting Ubuntu onto a secondary computer of theirs. Now
my brother's computer was easy because it's a relatively modern PC (AMD
Duron 1.1Ghz), but the cousin's PC is a really old museum piece of a
computer, an old HP Pavillion with an original Pentium at 100Mhz. I
tried to boot from CD, but I'm not sure if this thing can even boot
from CD. Looking up the HP site seems to indicate that it can boot from
CD, but maybe that's only for its own original equipment CD drive --
that's long since died and it's been replaced with an aftermarket CD
burner. I can't even get into the BIOS setup of this HP PC. Anyways,
long story short, I'm thinking of taking the hard drive out of the HP
and temporarily plugging it into a more modern computer to install the
Ubuntu from CD there. Then when it's done installing the packages and
it asks you to reboot the machine, I'm thinking of then moving the hard
disk back to the old HP, and let it finish its setup there. I'm
assuming that there's nothing system-specific that's being done in the
first part of the install, and all of the system-specific stuff is done
in the second part of the install? Does this have any chance of
working?

Yousuf Khan

 

[ray]

I just upgraded my brother's computer from Win XP to Ubuntu 5.10. It
was an unbelievable success! It surprised even me how smoothly it went
-- didn't need to go into the command-line even once. Linux has
arrived, it seems. My brother is a highly typical computer user,
doesn't know how it works, just wants to use it for: email, chat, IM,
P2P, videos, MP3's, etc. What surprised me too was that after I
finished installing Ubuntu 5.10 for him, he himself went to the
Internet and upgraded it to Ubuntu 6.06 without my assistance! You know
you've got fool-proof system when it's that easy. So he's got his
Firefox and Thunderbird just like in Windows. He's found himself a
bittorrent client that he likes, IM's with Gaim. I've even found the
solutions to allow him to play Windows *.WMV and *.WMA video and audio
files. He's happy.

So, later I told this story to some of my cousins and now they're
interested in putting Ubuntu onto a secondary computer of theirs. Now
my brother's computer was easy because it's a relatively modern PC (AMD
Duron 1.1Ghz), but the cousin's PC is a really old museum piece of a
computer, an old HP Pavillion with an original Pentium at 100Mhz. I
tried to boot from CD, but I'm not sure if this thing can even boot
from CD. Looking up the HP site seems to indicate that it can boot from
CD, but maybe that's only for its own original equipment CD drive --
that's long since died and it's been replaced with an aftermarket CD
burner. I can't even get into the BIOS setup of this HP PC. Anyways,
long story short, I'm thinking of taking the hard drive out of the HP
and temporarily plugging it into a more modern computer to install the
Ubuntu from CD there. Then when it's done installing the packages and
it asks you to reboot the machine, I'm thinking of then moving the hard
disk back to the old HP, and let it finish its setup there. I'm
assuming that there's nothing system-specific that's being done in the
first part of the install, and all of the system-specific stuff is done
in the second part of the install? Does this have any chance of
working?

Yousuf Khan

IMHO - you should not even try to install Ubuntu on a computer that old.
If it succeeded, you would not be happy with the performance. Much better
to try Elive, Vector, Damn Small, or something of that ilk.

 

[Rod Speed]

I just upgraded my brother's computer from Win XP to
Ubuntu 5.10. It was an unbelievable success! It surprised
even me how smoothly it went -- didn't need to go into the
command-line even once. Linux has arrived, it seems.

Nope, now try accessing NTFS formatted partitions on that.

Or even just FAT32 partitions.

My brother is a highly typical computer user, doesn't know
how it works, just wants to use it for: email, chat, IM, P2P,
videos, MP3's, etc. What surprised me too was that after I
finished installing Ubuntu 5.10 for him, he himself went to the
Internet and upgraded it to Ubuntu 6.06 without my assistance!
You know you've got fool-proof system when it's that easy.

See above.

So he's got his Firefox and Thunderbird just like in Windows.
He's found himself a bittorrent client that he likes, IM's with
Gaim. I've even found the solutions to allow him to play
Windows *.WMV and *.WMA video and audio files. He's happy.

Until he trys to access XP partitions.

So, later I told this story to some of my cousins and now they're
interested in putting Ubuntu onto a secondary computer of theirs.
Now my brother's computer was easy because it's a relatively
modern PC (AMD Duron 1.1Ghz), but the cousin's PC is a really
old museum piece of a computer, an old HP Pavillion with an
original Pentium at 100Mhz. I tried to boot from CD, but I'm not
sure if this thing can even boot from CD. Looking up the HP site
seems to indicate that it can boot from CD, but maybe that's only
for its own original equipment CD drive -- that's long since died
and it's been replaced with an aftermarket CD burner.

Unlikely to be any different on booting.

I can't even get into the BIOS setup of this HP PC. Anyways,
long story short, I'm thinking of taking the hard drive out of the
HP and temporarily plugging it into a more modern computer
to install the Ubuntu from CD there. Then when it's done installing
the packages and it asks you to reboot the machine, I'm thinking
of then moving the hard disk back to the old HP, and let
it finish its setup there. I'm assuming that there's nothing
system-specific that's being done in the first part of the install,
and all of the system-specific stuff is done in the second part
of the install? Does this have any chance of working?

Should work, you can usually move a hard drive
between systems and have it boot fine with linux.

You could also try http://btmgr.sourceforge.net/about.html
to boot the CD

You should be able to see how to get into the bios on the
Pav on the HP site if you have a proper model number.

 

[Unruh]

Nope, now try accessing NTFS formatted partitions on that.

Or even just FAT32 partitions.

Yes, and you will find that it makes a terrible cup of espresso as well.

Until he trys to access XP partitions.

And he wants to do that why?

 

[nobody]

IMHO - you should not even try to install Ubuntu on a computer that old.
If it succeeded, you would not be happy with the performance. Much better
to try Elive, Vector, Damn Small, or something of that ilk.

Win98. And while you are tinkering with it, look through your pile of
junk for any Pentium MMX. Don't try K6 or Cyrix - it will not
withstand such an abuse. I "upgraded" a few boxes that way. The
last one was Gateway P75. I plugged in a PMMX200, played a bit with
jumpers, and got it work at 166 - a hell of upgrade from 75. The BIOS
reported it as P66, but Sandra recognized it as 166MMX. Seems it
could survive 3.2Vcore socket5. But don't try any modern OS on that -
Win98 or (cough) NT4 is tops it can "run" (rather crawl), even with
sufficient RAM (at least 64MB).

NNN

 

[JDS]

Does this have any chance of
working?

Yes, but it won't be pretty, fun, or very usable. Even with a fast, lean
window manager like blackbox that machine will be sluggish doing what
today passes for the most basic of tasks.

 

[ray]

Win98. And while you are tinkering with it, look through your pile of
junk for any Pentium MMX. Don't try K6 or Cyrix - it will not
withstand such an abuse. I "upgraded" a few boxes that way. The
last one was Gateway P75. I plugged in a PMMX200, played a bit with
jumpers, and got it work at 166 - a hell of upgrade from 75. The BIOS
reported it as P66, but Sandra recognized it as 166MMX. Seems it
could survive 3.2Vcore socket5. But don't try any modern OS on that -
Win98 or (cough) NT4 is tops it can "run" (rather crawl), even with
sufficient RAM (at least 64MB).

NNN

I have installed Elive Linux on several P166 with 64mb ram - runs well,
and performance is quite acceptable.

 

[Mouser]

Nope, now try accessing NTFS formatted partitions on that.

Or even just FAT32 partitions.

I have two external (USB2.0) 112GB hard drives where I keep everything that
isn't part of the UBUNTU 5.1 system. That's on an internal 35G drive. Both
the USB drives are set up with FAT32 partitions. They work fine.

In 1996 I put Slackware 2.something Linux on a 40MB (yes, MB) hard drive.
Don't remember for sure, but I think the clock speed on that computer was
around 50 MHz. Didn't have a clue about drive partitioning, so I kept
everything in one "big" partition. And everything worked fine. (No bearing
on the original poster's question, but I thought it might be of interest to
somebody...)

 

[The little lost angel]

I just upgraded my brother's computer from Win XP to Ubuntu 5.10. It
was an unbelievable success! It surprised even me how smoothly it went
-- didn't need to go into the command-line even once. Linux has
arrived, it seems. My brother is a highly typical computer user,
doesn't know how it works, just wants to use it for: email, chat, IM,
P2P, videos, MP3's, etc. What surprised me too was that after I
finished installing Ubuntu 5.10 for him, he himself went to the
Internet and upgraded it to Ubuntu 6.06 without my assistance! You know
you've got fool-proof system when it's that easy. So he's got his
Firefox and Thunderbird just like in Windows. He's found himself a
bittorrent client that he likes, IM's with Gaim. I've even found the
solutions to allow him to play Windows *.WMV and *.WMA video and audio
files. He's happy.

I am embarrassed and stunned speechless by your brother wrt the same
attempt. I had to jump through hoops just to get a newer version of
Firefox to work on my Ubuntu. A new project got in the way so I still
haven't got around to fixing sound (gone after attempting to make MP3
work), much less video.

 

[Rod Speed]

Yes, and you will find that it makes a terrible cup of espresso as well.

Have fun explaining how come knoppix handles the same drive fine.

And he wants to do that why?

Irrelevant to whether it really has arrived. It hasnt even now.

 

[Rod Speed]

Rod Speed wrote

I have two external (USB2.0) 112GB hard drives where I keep
everything that isn't part of the UBUNTU 5.1 system. That's on an
internal 35G drive. Both the USB drives are set up with FAT32
partitions. They work fine.

I didnt say they dont work, its just nowhere near as
intuitively implemented as say with knoppix that handles
that very basic op fine. Nothing like 'arrived' yet.

Some areas, like what happens when you plug in a digital camera
is done very well, others like that partition access still has some
way to go with ubuntu, but not with knoppix. Knoppix doesnt handle
the digital camera so intuitively tho, so neither has really 'arrived' yet.

 

[YKhan]

Nope, now try accessing NTFS formatted partitions on that.

Or even just FAT32 partitions.

Okay, those needed me to go into the command-line. But it's not really
a problem, those filesystems are about to be upgraded to Linux once
they've been copied off.

Until he trys to access XP partitions.

All of those files were backed up onto DVD-ROM prior to the upgrade,
which is ISO9660/Rockridge filesystem, not XP, so those ones get
mounted without problems.

Should work, you can usually move a hard drive
between systems and have it boot fine with linux.

You could also try http://btmgr.sourceforge.net/about.html
to boot the CD

No, that bootmanager would involve downloading something into the
computer which is already bloated with spyware under Windows 95.
Downloading is likely not going to work right now.

You should be able to see how to get into the bios on the
Pav on the HP site if you have a proper model number.

I already know the proper model number, but it doesn't look like HP is
too interested in giving you BIOS information.

Yousuf Khan

 

[YKhan]

Some areas, like what happens when you plug in a digital camera
is done very well, others like that partition access still has some
way to go with ubuntu, but not with knoppix. Knoppix doesnt handle
the digital camera so intuitively tho, so neither has really 'arrived' yet.

Yes, we've already tried the digital camera thing, and it worked like a
charm.

Yousuf Khan

 

[YKhan]

I am embarrassed and stunned speechless by your brother wrt the same
attempt. I had to jump through hoops just to get a newer version of
Firefox to work on my Ubuntu. A new project got in the way so I still
haven't got around to fixing sound (gone after attempting to make MP3
work), much less video.

Actually, the latest versions of Firefox and Thunderbird are running on
Ubuntu, but they only seem to be made available on Ubuntu 6.0+. On
Ubuntu 5.10, Firefox was limited to 1.0.5 or something (didn't try out
Thunderbird yet at that point), but under Ubuntu 6.06, it's the got the
latest Firefox and Thunderbird 1.5.0.4.

Digital cameras also work pretty well.

Yousuf Khan

 

[Ed H.]

Have fun explaining how come knoppix handles the same drive fine.

Ubuntu doesn't have any problem with it either.

Irrelevant to whether it really has arrived. It hasnt even now.

The OP didn't say he set it up for dual boot. He said he upgraded from XP
*TO* Ubuntu 5.10. If all he has on the system is Ubuntu (or any other
distro of Linux), why would there be a need to access XP partitions?

My experience has been that XP is the OS that has trouble accessing Linux
part. and not the other way around.

Ed

 

[The little lost angel]

Actually, the latest versions of Firefox and Thunderbird are running on
Ubuntu, but they only seem to be made available on Ubuntu 6.0+. On
Ubuntu 5.10, Firefox was limited to 1.0.5 or something (didn't try out
Thunderbird yet at that point), but under Ubuntu 6.06, it's the got the
latest Firefox and Thunderbird 1.5.0.4.

I was trying out 5.1 so it came with 1.0.5 which I then attempted to
upgrade to 1.5.04.

Digital cameras also work pretty well.

Never bothered to try that, not even for Windows. I simply use a card
reader. It's just SO much more convenient and hassle free without
having to worry about any potential issues from the different cameras
each of us have.

 

[Rod Speed]

Rod Speed wrote

Ubuntu doesn't have any problem with it either.

Fraid it does with the effortlessness and intuitiveness that was being discussed.

Knoppix does it much more intuitively.

The OP didn't say he set it up for dual boot.

The OP is irrelevant.

He said he upgraded from XP *TO* Ubuntu 5.10. If all he has on the system is Ubuntu
(or any other distro of Linux), why would there be a need to access XP partitions?

Irrelevant to whether its time has come for those who dont use ubuntu exclusively.

My experience has been that XP is the OS that has trouble
accessing Linux part. and not the other way around.

Not with FAT32 and NTFS partitions it doesnt.

 

[Rod Speed]

Rod Speed wrote

Okay, those needed me to go into the command-line.
But it's not really a problem,

I didnt say it was a problem, JUST that it clearly
hasnt ARRIVED yet when that hasnt been fixed.

Not as if its difficult to fix, knoppix handles that fine.

those filesystems are about to be upgraded
to Linux once they've been copied off.

Sure, but many will want to keep a dual boot config
instead, because even with ubuntu, there's still quite
a bit that isnt handled as well as it is with XP.

All of those files were backed up onto DVD-ROM prior
to the upgrade, which is ISO9660/Rockridge filesystem,
not XP, so those ones get mounted without problems.

Sure, but many would prefer to use them on the hard drive instead.

No, that bootmanager would involve downloading something into the
computer which is already bloated with spyware under Windows 95.

No it doesnt. You can download it with anything you
like and install it without even booting that W95.

Downloading is likely not going to work right now.

Corse it will, just do that on a different system.

I already know the proper model number, but it doesn't look
like HP is too interested in giving you BIOS information.

I didnt mean bios info, just how to set it to boot
off a CD. Bet it does tell you how to do that.

 

[Hans Poppe]

bbbl67 wisely stated:

I just upgraded my brother's computer from Win XP to Ubuntu 5.10. It
was an unbelievable success! It surprised even me how smoothly it went
-- didn't need to go into the command-line even once. Linux has
arrived, it seems. My brother is a highly typical computer user,
doesn't know how it works, just wants to use it for: email, chat, IM,
P2P, videos, MP3's, etc. What surprised me too was that after I
finished installing Ubuntu 5.10 for him, he himself went to the
Internet and upgraded it to Ubuntu 6.06 without my assistance! You know
you've got fool-proof system when it's that easy. So he's got his
Firefox and Thunderbird just like in Windows. He's found himself a
bittorrent client that he likes, IM's with Gaim. I've even found the
solutions to allow him to play Windows *.WMV and *.WMA video and audio
files. He's happy.

So, later I told this story to some of my cousins and now they're
interested in putting Ubuntu onto a secondary computer of theirs. Now
my brother's computer was easy because it's a relatively modern PC (AMD
Duron 1.1Ghz), but the cousin's PC is a really old museum piece of a
computer, an old HP Pavillion with an original Pentium at 100Mhz. I
tried to boot from CD, but I'm not sure if this thing can even boot
from CD. Looking up the HP site seems to indicate that it can boot from
CD, but maybe that's only for its own original equipment CD drive --
that's long since died and it's been replaced with an aftermarket CD
burner. I can't even get into the BIOS setup of this HP PC. Anyways,
long story short, I'm thinking of taking the hard drive out of the HP
and temporarily plugging it into a more modern computer to install the
Ubuntu from CD there. Then when it's done installing the packages and
it asks you to reboot the machine, I'm thinking of then moving the hard
disk back to the old HP, and let it finish its setup there. I'm
assuming that there's nothing system-specific that's being done in the
first part of the install, and all of the system-specific stuff is done
in the second part of the install? Does this have any chance of
working?

Yousuf Khan

One little trick that I've used to get "into" the BIOS on older machines,
where entering BIOS isn't intuitive is to turn the machine off, open it,
remove one (only one) of the RAM pieces. Now boot the machine. Most systems
will then give an error i.e. physical RAM has changed, press F1 to continue
or press Ctrl + Alt +S to enter setup. On many older systems entering the
BIOS is not "Del", "F2" of "F10".

Hans Poppe
Oslo, Norway

 

[YKhan]

I didnt say it was a problem, JUST that it clearly
hasnt ARRIVED yet when that hasnt been fixed.

Okay, if mounting a non-native filesystem without some command-line
effort is what you'd consider as not having arrived yet, then so be it.
This is boring me.

Sure, but many will want to keep a dual boot config
instead, because even with ubuntu, there's still quite
a bit that isnt handled as well as it is with XP.

My point is that we're already at a point in usability here where you
will not have go back to XP for anything. That's what I meant by having
arrived. A lot of the most popular types of applications (if not the
applications themselves) are now available in Linux.

So far, I've seen IM, email, web browser, digital camera i/o and
editing, video (including Microsoft-proprietary formats) playback and
editing, printing, all available in Linux. With this little list, I've
got an operating system that is fully functional for at least my
brother for everything that he does with his computer, and I suspect
that he's probably pretty representative of a large portion of PC
users. This is a large leap in functionality for Linux from where it
was previously where only somebody like me could get it working, and
I'm on the geek end of computer users, a Unix system admin -- hardly
representative of average PC users.

Sure, but many would prefer to use them on the hard drive instead.

Most people assume that you're going to need to back some stuff off to
CD/DVD when doing the conversion. Especially since most people don't
have more than one hard disk in their system, so it's usually a case of
completely converting over their sole hard drive to Linux, not
converting one drive to Linux and leaving others alone. The partition
resizers aren't going to work if you've filled up your whole drive to
near capacity, which is easy to do when you're downloading movies and
mp3's.

If they need to use Windows filesystems, then they can go to the
slightly extra step of the command-line. The reverse option isn't even
available to them from XP's command-line, let alone through a GUI.

No it doesnt. You can download it with anything you
like and install it without even booting that W95.

If you'll recall I've already said that CD-based booting is not working
on this system. Not a Linux boot CD, not even a Windows boot CD. The
only thing that boots is the Windows 95 on the hard disk. So how do you
expect the boot manager is going to load itself into memory, devine
intervention?

Corse it will, just do that on a different system.



I didnt mean bios info, just how to set it to boot
off a CD. Bet it does tell you how to do that.

No, it doesn't, all it says is "put a CD in the drive and boot from
it", and that's extent of all of the detail it's got, but quite
obviously that's not working. But you're welcome to look for yourself.
HP Pavillion 5040.

Yousuf Khan