Linux woes

[chaotic_lady]

My dear husband got an installation DVD for Ubuntu 7.4 from a friend. He tried yesterday evening to install Ubuntu with that disk on his computer. the istallation went through, but at the end, wen the system prompted him to remove the disc from the drive and to press enter to get on, it didn't react to him pressing the enter key. No success

Comments

[real_skeptic]

I had a similar problem (boot menu showing, but screen going blank after kernel load) with older Mandriva versions and my intel machine at work. It turned out that it was set to enable hyperthreading (in the BIOS), but you need an MP kernel for that (multiprocessing-enabled). The kernel in the installer CD was not MP, and thus there was no response beyond LILO. What I did at the time was disable hyperthreading in the BIOS, load and install the system, make sure I have an MP kernel installed, and then switch the BIOS settings back to hyperthreading.
Of course, your problem may be entirely different... Like that time I installed Mandriva 2007.0 on my spiffy new home PC, and after it loaded it informed me that it couldn't find the CD-rom... from whence it booted. Turned out the kernel didn't have an up-to-date driver for that CD-rom. I had to wait for Mandriva 2007.1 (rather, I installed its RC version).

[chaotic_lady]

Thanks. My problem had a similar reason. The default resolution was way too high for the monitor.

[real_skeptic]

In that case I think there's an option to start the system from the boot menu with parameters that let you, at the very least, install in text mode, and I believe there should be a way to specify screen resolution as well.

[chaotic_lady]

There was a way to set the screen resolution, I just had to find it (and found it at the last try).

71" screen? Wow! ;-)

[fakiiri]

The problem that you had with the 7.4 DVD sounds like the disc is bad. If you still want to try with the newer version, you could download the DVD image yourself. Or you can do the distribution upgrade straight from the os. I've had two good experiences with 7.01 to 7.04 both with kubuntu and xubuntu.

Good that you got the problem sorted, though.

Re: 71" screen? Wow! ;-)

[chaotic_lady]

not 71", just 17". It was a typo, not really big. :)

I have neither a DVD burner nor DVDs to burn the iso on. And I suceeded in installing the system to my hard disk. I just need to mess around with the graphics driver, to make it work. At least I know what I will do in my free time this week.

Making the upgrade from the system itself is no option in this case. I don't have any ubuntu version that will install with graphics support.

[fakiiri]

Phew! :)

Since you have an internet connection, just the cd is enough. The installation will download rest of the required stuff automatically. Same with the distribution upgrade. What it does is it basically reinstalls a newer version of ubuntu. It downloads new packages from the Internet for aöö software that are available (which should be basically everything since the version gap is so big). It could even solve your graphics problem with the latest drivers.

*shrug*

You do as you want, of course :)

[chaotic_lady]

I see two possibilities here: either fight against the system until it behaves,
or wait for 7.10 and then reinstall everything.
I don't think my husband wants to wait that long to have his own working computer again.