"Installer Crashed" every time at install wizard....

[doonze]

Every time I try and install 10.04 I get an error at the first wizard screen. It's the one that asks about what language you want. If I just leave it there I'll get an error after a time. If I click on next it will work for awhile (little spinning dots) then locks up, requiring a restart. I'm not talking about the screen when the live cd first comes up. It's the one that next loads after you click "Install Kubuntu".

It's an older computer, 500mhz with 196m ram, Celeron processor. Is it just not enough to run 10.04? It WILL run it, if the install fails it loads up and runs off the CD, but talk about SLOW!!!!!

Is there a way to install directly to the HD from the CD skipping the GUI installer

If not, any idea's on how to get this thing to load past that first wizard question?

Pretty much most of the crash report seems to be about it pulling the info itself. The only thing that seem to point to an error is the last line that reads "IOERROR: [errno 32] Broken Pipe"

Any ideas?

Thanks!

[claydoh]

Re: "Installer Crashed" every time at install wizard....

with that low amount of ram, I suggest you download the Alternate install cd image, it is text based so it does not have the overhead the live cd needs. the livecd requires 256 mb minimum, while the Alternate needs less.

And in all honesty, your system WILL be quite slow with 196mb ram. 384 is the recommended minimum, and in my experience 512 really should be the minimum. You probably will not be happy with the speed, but luckily there are other alternatives - Lubuntu is one, and Puppy linux is another choice for lower spec machines

[doonze]

Re: "Installer Crashed" every time at install wizard....

And in all honesty, your system WILL be quite slow with 196mb ram. 384 is the recommended minimum, and in my experience 512 really should be the minimum.

My main question here would be if it would be slower then XP on this same machine. This is a box I'm building for the kids at home to surf the internet, that about the long and short of what this box will do. Since windows is the world leading standard (much to my sadness) I'm trying to keep the interface as close to windows as possible, since that's what they are used too. However I'm gonna check out the other Linux's you mentioned, but if they are text based that's not gonna work.

But THANKS for the input!!!! Good stuff!!

[doonze]

Re: "Installer Crashed" every time at install wizard....

Ok, so it looks like Lubuntu may not be a bad idea, am downloading the installer now, so we shall see. So with a "early beta" how beta IS this thing? Running Kubuntu 10.04 on the laptop and was wanting to run it on everything. Even typing this with a droid at the moment, so not wanting to have to keep the crappy windows, going as much linux as I can. I guess if Lubuntu doesn't work for me I'll try the alt installer for Kubuntu.

Thanks again for the heads up!

[claydoh]

Re: "Installer Crashed" every time at install wizard....

no, they are NOT text based (ewwww!) Lubuntu is an Ubuntu derivative, similar to Kubuntu, but it uses the LXDE desktop. It is great for lower-spec systems, and has a more familiar desktop layout (ie similar to win98/xp)

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Lubuntu
http://lubuntu.net/

Puppy linux is also good, even on lower machines ( I run it on a 1998 pentium mmx 233 Thinkpad with 196mb ram) but imo is *slightly* less user-friendly in setting it up, and does not have the vast selection of software that *buntus have

[claydoh]

Re: "Installer Crashed" every time at install wizard....

the good thing about using Kubuntu/Ubuntu is that you can easily add another desktop without having to do a complete reinstall. If you install Kubuntu, and it seems too slow, you can simply install the package lubuntu-desktop and it will install the desktop-specific bits alongside the KDE. All the under-the-hood bits are the same, you just select which desktop you want at login.

But I know you will find KDE dog quite slow once installed, but if it is just for web browsing and simple tasks, it might be just fine once the apps load.

[doonze]

Re: "Installer Crashed" every time at install wizard....

Think we were both posting at the same time for awhile there! LOL

Thanks Claydoh for all the input, I'm for sure going with the Lubuntu, I'm a big *ubuntu fan, if I could get it on my droid I would!!! LOL I just didn't know about Lubuntu, just the (K)ubuntu flavors. I hope it becomes a full part of the Ubuntu family and fully supported. It would be great to have something light but still awesome for all those aging but still running computers out there.

[vinnywright]

Re: "Installer Crashed" every time at install wizard....

xubuntu isent bad eather I use it on a 700 Mhz-CPU 190 Mb RAM lappy ......I still like fluxbox for a window manager on older stuff like that though.

I find it's good to pre partition with a rather large swap 1-2 Gig's and then let the livecd/DVD load up to a desktop even if it takes forever and make shure the swap is mounted befor I start the installer.

VINNY

[doonze]

Re: "Installer Crashed" every time at install wizard....

Ok, so have been installing Lubuntu, I can get through the wizard at least. Now when install finishes and it goes to reboot I get a error about no disk info and a grub recovery prompt. I'm finding info on how to use that prompt hard to come by, seems everything I try gives me a error about unknown command.

So I'm reinstalling.... I know this is a Lubuntu issue, but I think it still the Ubuntu installer so I still posted it up anyway. We'll see how the 2nd install goes.

[doonze]

Re: "Installer Crashed" every time at install wizard....

Just an update for those that might find it interesting:

Reinstalled Lubuntu, took like 2 hours. On restart it came back to that "disk" error again. But no recovery promt. Just as I was getting ready to power it down Lubuntu loaded.... it does give me that error everytime, but it goes ahead and loads so I guess I'll call it good.

In other news, once it did load it was a total dog....slow almost as the live CD. In fact it locked up chrome, so I had to restart. After the restart it was as zippy as it could be. No lag at all, ran like a champ.

Am installing KDE 4 as I write this. Will report back for people who might come across this same issue and need more info.

[doonze]

Re: "Installer Crashed" every time at install wizard....

So here are my findings.... there was no problem installing KDE on top of Lubuntu. However once installed and when loaded from the login screen.... KDE took no less then 10 minutes to just load the desktop. I could never get the launcher to work at all. Just powered out and am back using Lubuntu! LOL

Lubuntu runs fast as I could ever want on my 500 MHz machine with 196 meg ram. Drawbacks? Buggy and a bit simple. Networking wasn't working with the included file manager, but once I installed KDE Dolphin is now installed in my Lubuntu as well, and the networking in Dolphin works better on this machine then on my Kubuntu machine! Lol

So my .02 cents here is that if you are running a flavor of Linux that runs too slow on your machine, or if your installing on a legacy machine, give Lubuntu a try. The only major bug on mine is if you use the screen saver and require login, it won't let you switch to another user. The option is there but gives errors when clicked. Not too bad for a beta.

If you got an older machine try it out. They are trying to get Lubuntu "official" so the more people who us it the better chance Canonical will pay attention!! LOL

Also, anyone know a forum like this they are using for Lubuntu? The site itself and google searches don't link to anything active it seems.

Anyway, happy with the end results! Thanks Claydoh for the heads up!!!