Installing Ubuntu

[W3WN]

OK, so... the boss gave KB3ERQ & I official permission to test Linux on some of the old IBM T42 Thinkpad laptops (Centrino CPU) that are now essentially obsolete (they run, or ran, XP and we're not going to upgrade the OS to Win 7 or higher for a variety of reasons)

Since Ben has been a big Ubuntu fan, I went with that first.

Download the ISO for 15.04, burn it to a bootable DVD, boot the laptop, and I get this:

WARNING: PAE disabled. use parameter 'forcepae' to enable at your own risk!
This kernel requires the following features not present on the CPU:
pae
Unable to boot - please use a kernel appropriate for your CPU.

Nice. :wtf:

Same thing with 14.04, and 13.10. Jumped down to 10.04, and THAT version loads just fine. Of course, it's now an officially unsupported version, and the only way to get support is to manually update up the food chain...

So for those of you who know Ubuntu & Linux better than I (how else am I going to learn?):
I am told that the PAE is memory related?
How do I "fix" this issue to get to a more recent version -- if I can, of course?

... and before someone says "try XYZ instead", there are some (shall we say) internal politics to deal with, so before I deal with another version, I need to see if I can get this one working.

(Incidentally, I do have a copy of Puppy Linux 5.5 at home that I need to try out on a few older laptops -- if it works, I'll keep one or two for the shack and sell off the rest -- , and that CD DOES boot onto the T42 just fine. But first things first)

Plans for this morning are to try U 11 & U 12 and see if simply working my way up a version at a time takes care of the issue. I suspect it might not...

Thoughts?

[KJ3N]

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/PAE?action=show&redirect=EnablingPAE

[W3WN]

Thanks Jim. I'll check that out.

Meanwhile Ubuntu 11 is installing just fine. I'll see how far up the food chain I can get.

[KJ3N]

From that link:


Lubuntu and Xubuntu offered a PAE and a non-PAE release up to and including 12.04, but from 12.10 only the PAE releases are maintained.

A number of older Pentium M processors produced around 2003-4 (the Banias family) do not display the PAE flag, and hence a normal 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. The problem is not missing PAE, it's about the processor not displaying its full capabilities.

[ad4mg]

Jim is correct, Ron. Your best bet is to install Ubuntu 12.04 LTS. It will be supported until 2017. 12.04 LTS is very stable, and I'm running it on 2 machines at home. I just installed Ubuntu 14.04 LTS alongside Linux Mint 17.1 on a test machine, and unless you appreciate more commercialization, 12.04 is a better choice. Plus, the Nautilus file browser in 14.04 no longer offers the dual pane feature, which is a real irritant for me...


Thanks Jim. I'll check that out.

Meanwhile Ubuntu 11 is installing just fine. I'll see how far up the food chain I can get.

[W3WN]

Interesting. Ubuntu 11 (after giving me the "no longer supported" warning message is giving me the option to upgrade to 12. Well, let's see how long THAT continues. I may have burned a few DVD's for nothing.

[W3WN]

Jim is correct, Ron. Your best bet is to install Ubuntu 12.04 LTS. It will be supported until 2017. 12.04 LTS is very stable, and I'm running it on 2 machines at home. I just installed Ubuntu 14.04 LTS alongside Linux Mint 17.1 on a test machine, and unless you appreciate more commercialization, 12.04 is a better choice. Plus, the Nautilus file browser in 14.04 no longer offers the dual pane feature, which is a real irritant for me...Oh? That's good to know.

Of course, since we are or will be (theoretically) using this in a work environment, the commercialization may not be an issue. We'll see. I am thinking of leaving this test machine on 12, when the upgrade is done, and trying to go to 14 or 15 on one of the other two guinea pigs, er, test machines. Interesting also that the Thinkpad's touchpad got disabled as part of the upgrade setup process, but the 'nipple' mouse didn't.

...6 hours to go on the upgrade, as it's fetching 1400 files? Over our public wifi? All righty then...

(on edit... that was at File 20 of 1400 to download. Now that it's on File 46 of 1400, it's now showing 1:47 to go)

[wa6mhz]

I want to put it on a bootable USB stick. STIck is 8GB, should be enough room. I can always get a bigger USB module if needed (like up to 64GB)
But so far can't figure out how to make the USB device bootable, or a DVD. ALready trashed one DVD-R.
I want to run UBUNTU when I want to and leave my WIN 8.1 Laptop virgin.

[W3WN]

Pat, I downloaded the older ISO files from the Ubuntu site... http://old-releases.ubuntu.com/releases

Then on my work machine (Dell Optiplex 7010 running Win 8.1) I clicked on each ISO. These Dells came with a "Cyberlink ISO Viewer" from "Power2Go", I don' t know if your laptop has that or an equivalent or not. Anyway, from the menu bar, I simply selected the "Burn Disc Image" option and burned straight to the DVD.

If you don't have that app on your machine, there should be something similar out there. The point is, tho, with a Win 8 machine and a DVD burner installed, it shouldn't be a problem.

[W3WN]

The update from U11 to U12 went fairly smoothly. Took a little over 90 minutes; keep in mind that it was hooked to the 'net via a relatively slow public WiFi connection (for internal security reasons).

Of COURSE, as soon as it was done... and I mean just after rebooting... my boss walks over and decides to play with it. Well, he is the boss. He's impressed with the machine in this configuration. So that's good.

[KJ3N]

If you don't have that app on your machine, there should be something similar out there.

http://www.imgburn.com/

[WØTKX]

^^^ My favorite. :agree:

[NM5TF]

Ron....

you might consider the Ubuntu MATE distro.....llighter on resources than "regular" buntu...

also...look here:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2130640

welcome to the dark side...good luck & have fun

[ad4mg]

Yep, the Mate desktop is very similar to XP. Makes the transition from Windows a bit easier. I haven't tried Mate on Ubuntu, but I'm running it on Linux Mint 17. Mate isn't as resource hungry as Unity (Ubuntu) or Cinnamon (Mint).


Ron....

you might consider the Ubuntu MATE distro.....llighter on resources than "regular" buntu...

also...look here:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2130640

welcome to the dark side...good luck & have fun

[W3WN]

Ron....

you might consider the Ubuntu MATE distro.....llighter on resources than "regular" buntu...

also...look here:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2130640

welcome to the dark side...good luck & have fun
I'll look into it. But will it run on a Pentium laptop that was originally configured for Win98SE? Previous attempts to put older versions of Ubuntu on this failed.

[NM5TF]

I'll look into it. But will it run on a Pentium laptop that was originally configured for Win98SE? Previous attempts to put older versions of Ubuntu on this failed.

....go here:

https://ubuntu-mate.org/about/

scroll down below the video to see minimum requirements...
depends on the hardware installed

[N1LAF]

http://www.imgburn.com/

I'd be careful with imgburn, as it is reported bundled with OpenCandy now.

Ref: http://www.dpreview.com/forums/thread/3618404

I use Gizmo Drive, free, multiple drives, and copy folder to ISO.

More here: Best Free CD-DVD Emulation Software - http://www.techsupportalert.com/best-free-cd-emulator.htm#Quick_Selection_Guide

[W2NAP]

I like Lubuntu... ubunt. with LXDE very light on resources.

[KC2UGV]

The PAE warning is a bug in the 15.04 installer, due to the Intel Centrinos not advertising the PAE feature of the proc:

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/PAE