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andy_b2
September 3rd, 2014, 11:13 PM
Hi all,

I have an older Dell Inspirion 5150 laptop that has served me well over the years. It had XP Pro on it and I decided that I like Ubuntu after installing and running it on a desktop that also had XP.

My problem with the laptop, that has a Pentium 4 a whopping system mem of 2 gb, NVIDIA GEForceFX5200 Video controller w/32 mb of video memory and a huge 40 GB HD that's now erased except for Ubuntu. Back in the day it served me well.

So my problem is that I decided to see if I could use Ubuntu as an alternative to the obsolete XP OS and use the laptop for the kids to use for the internet.

I installed Ubuntu 14.04 over XP and now all I get is a dark screen on boot except for the cursor. Shall I toss the laptop in the scrap pile of old laptops or is there any hope for it.

Any input much appreciated.

Mark Phelps
September 3rd, 2014, 11:20 PM
NVIDIA GEForceFX5200 Video controller w/32 mb of video memory

An OLD laptop with this little video memory is most probably NOT going to be able to provide the video power needed for a current version of Ubuntu.

You might try Lubuntu to see if that works, but even then, you might not have enough video memory.

ibjsb4
September 3rd, 2014, 11:31 PM
I have positive results with Lubuntu with as little as 12M of video memory. I say give it a go :)

yancek
September 3rd, 2014, 11:48 PM
Lubuntu should be a good choice. You might try Zorin Lite, hardware requirements below. Do not install the standard as I doubt it would work but Lite should.


For the LXDE based versions (Lite):
266 MHz x86 processor
2GB of Hard Drive space
128 MB of system memory (RAM)
Graphics card capable of 640x480 resolution

Zorin download page if you are interested:

http://zorin-os.com/free.html

mörgæs
September 4th, 2014, 12:13 AM
Requirements like this tend to give people a false hope. I prefer that they are not quoted - my personal opinion, not writing as a moderator.

If people with this kind of hardware actually installed Zorin Lite (or some other lightweight distro) they would get terribly disappointed because 1) the installation was a pain, if it succeeded at all, and 2) everyday applications like a browser and a media player would not be able to run.

Zorin is a fine distro but still it does not do magic.

andy_b2
September 4th, 2014, 02:41 PM
Thank you all for the input and I think I'll just scrap it.

mörgæs
September 4th, 2014, 04:16 PM
What? I am running Lubuntu on weaker hardware than a 5150.