New install on Panasonic CF-72

[chrisdtwyman]

I have a Panasonic Toughbook CF-72 which is a Pentium III with 256 MB memory and a 30 GB HDD. I have been running Windows XP but now have a problem (corrupted file) it won't boot up. I wanted to re-format it anyway as it was running very slowly. I wonder what version of Ubuntu you recommend that I should download to use on this laptop. Can I boot this directly from the CD/DVD drive. I have tried version 11.04 and this does not boot. I have set the BIOS to boot from the CD drive first but it says "no operating system detected".

[jerrrys]

with 256 of ram you are pretty much limited to xubuntu or below. however you can download xubuntu and then install gnome desktop and try it out

[steve11911]

Specific to your model:


http://www.linlap.com/wiki/panasonic+toughbook+72

http://www.linux-laptop.net/panasonic.html


and this fine page tailored to meager hardware options:


http://www.tuxradar.com/content/whats-best-lightweight-linux-distro

[spcwingo]

I'd give Lubuntu, Crunchbang, or Puppy a shot on that hardware. I would personally recommend Puppy (the current version is Ubuntu 10.04 based).

Lubuntu (http://lubuntu.net/)
Crunchbang (http://crunchbanglinux.org/)
Puppy (http://puppylinux.org/)

[snowpine]

A fresh reinstall of Windows XP will work wonders. :) If you want to try something in the Ubuntu family then Lubuntu is your best bet, you are just at the minimum hardware specs to run it. You can also try using the forum "Search" feature to read previous discussions on the Toughbook.

[chrisdtwyman]

Based on advice above I tried XUBUNTU 11.04 as from the web site it looked as though it should run on my CF-72. At least my laptop started to load but I get this message "ISOLINUX 4.02 debian-20101016 EICD Copywright (C) 1994-2010H. Peter Anvin et al" and nothing further happens. Any idea what this means?

[steve11911]

One beauty of the live cd's is the ability to find out quickly what works and what doesn't.Often,older hardware has trouble with newer distros.I recommend looking at the tuxradar page I linked as these are geared toward less robust hardware.If you want a linux distro up right now, I'd suggest ubuntu 9.10, as the first link I posted reports a fully successful install with this on the cf-72.