Should I instal Ubuntu?

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swee'pea99

Legendary Member
Following recent exciting adventures reviving an old PC, involving a detour via Ubuntu, I've been wondering whether I should instal it on an ancient Thinkpad I have at home.

It's a great little pooter and I like it a lot, but it's loaded with Windows ME, which I dislike about as much as I like the pooter - plus no-one supports it anymore, and it's vulnerable to viruses, and the thing freezes occasionally - not often, but sometimes.

So I was thinking about maybe taking the Ubuntu CD home, formatting the C drive, changing the BIOS to boot from CD, putting in the Ubuntu CD and da-da! Would that work? Does it matter that the beastie uses a docking station rather than having a built in CD drive?

Your thoughts much appreciated...
 

GrasB

Veteran
Location
Nr Cambridge
swee said:
Does it matter that the beastie uses a docking station rather than having a built in CD drive?
Shouldn't make a jot of difference as long as you can boot from the CD you should be good to go.
 
yes. I've also used Xubuntu as per the suggestion. You might want to google whether anyone's come up with particular quirks of your exact model Thinkpad and Ubuntu / Xubuntu, just in case. Usually works out the box, but sometimes some drivers may not be included in the Ubuntu install, and best to know before you start....
 

GrasB

Veteran
Location
Nr Cambridge
I'd just download & burn the install CD then run it in live CD mode. Drivers change & so does the laptop & almost no one gives the type number which one model may have several of (& the type number means a different board design!).
 
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swee'pea99

swee'pea99

Legendary Member
Hmmm...I've just been looking at the xubuntu site, and it says you need at least 2 Gb of spare HD space to install. The entire HD on this machine is only 6Gb (of which something over 1 has already been used for WinME). I'm starting to get cold feet....especially with warnings about old hardware...this Thinkpad is not so much old as ancient - it's a 570E - (as you can tell by that HD size).

I just found a review says 'this thing will fly with xubuntu' but also says if you install linux 'set the video to 16bits'. Um...how would I go about doing that?
 

Yellow Fang

Legendary Member
Location
Reading
I like ZenWalk. It's nice and quick. The main problem with it is that it can be a hassle connecting to the interweb, but not nearly as big a hassle as I had with Puppy. There's a website somewhere which shows you have to install Linux onto a memory stick, so you can run your laptop off that. I've got a CrunchBang o/s running off a memory stick for my PC at home. Then you have to faff around with the BIOS to make it boot off the USB stick.

http://www.linuxliveusb.com/
http://www.pendrivelinux.com/linux-live-usb-creator/
 

GrasB

Veteran
Location
Nr Cambridge
swee'pea99, the thing is with linux is the basic install takes a fair amount of space but there's also so much more in it, not only that but after that initial install each application doesn't take that much. So sure it requires 2GB HDD but a lot of things like OpenOffice are already installed in there... how big is an MS office install these days?
 
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swee'pea99

swee'pea99

Legendary Member
Ok, SOLD to the man with the bad haircut!

So, any thought on which flavour, for a Thinkpad 570e? Would this one do?
download_bullet.gif Xubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala) Desktop CD

(Incidentally, I've read of problems with using PCMCIA cards on old laptops...would karmic koala be ok? I can't lose the PCMCIA...it's the only way to connect.)
 

GrasB

Veteran
Location
Nr Cambridge
I'd say download, burn the CD & try it. The install CD includes a live CD environment so you can test the distro before you commit to the install.
 
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