have a dell inspiron 8600 with intel mobile cpu -- need a distro that runs

kdd

hello,

i have been using linux off and on, mostly off lately, for several years now. i have a dell inspiron with a mobile cpu that has balked at ubuntu and linux mint.

don't quite understand the error message, but it goes something like, there is a feature that the cpu or mobo or bios doesn't support.

if i remember correctly it has something to do with the kernel. yeah, i need a kernel that will support the cpu(?).

any thoughts, recommendations, etc. would be appreciated.

cheers,

kdd

arochester

How much RAM have you got?

elptuxman

I've had good luck using both UberStudent and Antix. Look for the isos. Could send DVD with either.
Alan

kdd

arochester wrote:

How much RAM have you got?

thanks for the quick response. sorry it has taken me so long to respond.

i have an intel centrino 1.4 ghz processor and 2gb ram. i have not had a problem running linux on an older machine, but i have not used this processor before either.

the error message i received when trying to run linux mint 15 was:

cannot boot. pae not present on cpu. use a kernel appropriate for cpu.

nowthe question is: is there a current distro out there that does not need pae? and which one is it?

cheers

kdd

elptuxman wrote:

I've had good luck using both UberStudent and Antix. Look for the isos. Could send DVD with either.
Alan

thanks for the tips. i'm downloading antix as i write.

cheers

arochester

Look at this: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/PAE

Linux Mint is derived from Ubuntu.

A number of older Pentium M processors produced around 2003-4 (the ones with 400 MHz front side bus) do not display the PAE flag, and hence a standard installation fails. However, these processors are in fact able to run the latest (and PAE-demanding) kernels if only the installation process is modified a little.

kdd

arochester wrote:

Look at this: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/PAE

Linux Mint is derived from Ubuntu.

A number of older Pentium M processors produced around 2003-4 (the ones with 400 MHz front side bus) do not display the PAE flag, and hence a standard installation fails. However, these processors are in fact able to run the latest (and PAE-demanding) kernels if only the installation process is modified a little.

excellent!! thanks for this. the link was extremely helpful. so much i have printed it for posterity.

also, i did install antiX. love it. so far a very user friendly disto of debian. still gathering operations info and "playing" with it. thanks for the recommendation elptuxman.

cheers

elptuxman

elptuxman wrote:

I've had good luck using both UberStudent and Antix. Look for the isos. Could send DVD with either.
Alan

elptuxman

AntiX packs quite a punch for an 'old pc' distro. Glad it helped you with your hardware