Friday 19 December 2008

My old laptop - too weak even to boot old Ubuntu

I thought I had hit upon a master stroke this week. My personal laptop at home is rather sluggish and a bit under-powered, even for things as simple as web browsing. It is also, it seems, too weak to boot the latest Ubuntu live discs. Since the really old version, Dapper Drake (released in 2006) is still under support for a little while longer, I thought I would burn that disc and see how it goes.

Alas, the little machine only has the energy to boot the live disc and not to actually install to the hard drive. The confusing thing is that Linux is supposed to be *easier* on hardware than Windows, but it seems Windows XP is the only thing that can actually boot on this machine, including the "low-power" version, Xubuntu. It is just barely possible that Xubuntu 6.06, if such a thing exists, would boot and install, but I'm not counting on it.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - The laptop is otherwise unused.
PPS - Linux would help bring it back to life.

2 comments:

Kammorremae said...

Curse your incessant techno-babble! I signed on for zombies and natural disasters, not someone smarter than me!

On a sidenote, my wife's computer is also woefully in adequate, but that's due in part to the number of times she drops it, a day.

Any suggestions on what I should look for when I go to replace it?

John said...

Shock absorbers. ;)

Seriously, though, it kind of depends what you need to use it for. If it's just web surfing and email, just about anything will do, but probably make sure it's double the minimum recommended specs for the operating system.

As for this blog's content, until another natural disaster hits me, it will probably be technobabble on weekdays and zombies on Fridays.