Looking for a different distro that works on my old HP dv6 notebook.

[steve7233]

As many of you know I haven been trying to find a version of kubuntu that runs on my machine. Even running dmesg in 14.04 still shows several errors including one in red about Intel firmware missing. I tried Neon, but no go there either. I think the GMA 45, is just too old for Ubuntu. I was able to run it a while back but all those are now EOL. I am talking about my main system so of course no EOL's allowed. I am going to try VLocity Linux Standard ver 6.0 live. I will come back and look here before I try installing anything.

[claydoh]

While I don't believe that your gpu itself is the problem, it is very likely that most distros will exhibit similar problems, if the graphics is the cause.

I'd suggest starting closer to home, first: Lubuntu and Xubuntu, Ubuntu Mate. Lighter on the gpu, and still feature rich and with Ubuntu's utilities, such as the driver manager, etc.

Vector is a great distro, been around forever. I ran it for a while a long time ago. It will/can be much more hands-on, but not anything in the way that Arch is.


For any distro, check out their forum head of time to see how active it is, and how much help the user community provides. Look at their documentation and wikis to see if those seem helpful.
Luckily you can try them all out and see which one you like

[steve7233]

I must have downloaded the wrong file. It boots to a slackware type installer. There dosn't seem to be a live system option. I tried the installer a bit just to see what kinds of file systems it can read. It dosn't seem to understand the butter file system (BTRFS). I am going back to distrowatch.com to search some more.

[claydoh]

Vector is based off of slackware

[claydoh]

Also :
http://vectorlinux.com/products
try the live version

I will guess many lightweight distros that are not based on a major distro will likely not support btrfs just yet. it is not a "light" filesystem

[steve7233]

@claydoh, Thanks for the suggestions. I will grab those and see if they work. It might be that Ubuntu is changing the way GUIs and such work. Like Wayland and such. I agree with that since xserver is a bad idea to continue into the future. Black hat hackers are getting more devious and so forth, so we need stronger systems with better security. I will get a new computer that will be only a year or 2 old as far as technology then install 17.04 or 17.10 and then set-up the hyper visor so I can help test new kubuntu versions and such. 17.04 If 17.10 still needs testing when I get my new desktop. I will either take this notebook to a recycle pick-up or donate it to my church or some school when the time comes. Its pretty old even for a school but we will see.

[steve7233]

I guess VL doesn’t have a live version any more. I think they are dying and the website is slowly decaying. All the download mirrors don't work any more. It takes many tries to download anything.

[Bings]

There's a recent rundown of some lightweight distros here http://www.techradar.com/news/10-of-...-linux-distros

[whatthefunk]

I used CrunchBang for a long while. Its not around anymore but it seems like the project lives on as BunsenLabs. Great little distro.

[chimak111]

I used CrunchBang for a long while. Its not around anymore but it seems like the project lives on as BunsenLabs. Great little distro.

And their forum is at https://forums.bunsenlabs.org but I get the feeling that one has to be tech-savvy to get it going.

[whatthefunk]

CrunchBang (BunselLabs) was pretty simple. It was one of the first Linux flavors I used. Its basically Debian with Openbox instead of a traditional DE. Configuring things is a little more labor intensive than KDE/Gnome etc but I wouldn't necessarily call it difficult.

[steve7233]

Just tried Lubuntu 17.04... No wifi and since the gateway is all the way on the other side of the apartment then the cable probably won't reach and this notebook has a bad battery. Looks like this ones a no go. To bad to because I found the i965 GMA45 kernel module in synaptic. No wifi = no driver.

[GreyGeek]

Just tried Lubuntu 17.04... No wifi and since the gateway is all the way on the other side of the apartment then the cable probably won't reach and this notebook has a bad battery. Looks like this ones a no go. To bad to because I found the i965 GMA45 kernel module in synaptic. No wifi = no driver.

Your laptop has a wifi. You have a wifi router. Does the Lubuntu repository have wicd? (python-wicd, wicd, wicd-cli, wicd-curses) If so, it has both a CLI and GUI interface. Can you move your laptop close enough to your gateway to plug in an ethernet cable so you can install wicd?

[steve7233]

I was able to move the gateway and use another wall cable outlet. It doesn’t work. Connection manager sees the Ethernet, it just can't connect. Apparently the Ethernet needs a driver also. So no WiFi and no Ethernet = a useless install and useless live DVD as no internet is possible so no updates are possible!can lubuntu 17.04 do BTRFS? If so maybe I can install it beside Kubuntu 14.04 and get something from that install? Probably not since they are not the same version, but I figured it couldn't hurt to ask.

[GreyGeek]

I was able to move the gateway and use another wall cable outlet. It doesn’t work. Connection manager sees the Ethernet, it just can't connect. Apparently the Ethernet needs a driver also. So no WiFi and no Ethernet = a useless install and useless live DVD as no internet is possible so no updates are possible!can lubuntu 17.04 do BTRFS? If so maybe I can install it beside Kubuntu 14.04 and get something from that install? Probably not since they are not the same version, but I figured it couldn't hurt to ask.

Lubuntu does come with Btrfs but you may have to install btrfs-progs and/or btrfs-tools to your installation USB stick if you don't see it as an option during the partition format, but you would want to install those packages anyway, if they are not installed. My first guest is that btrfs is pre-installed on the ISO and so is one of the tool packages.