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[ridgeland]

Try /etc/X11/xorg.conf
You'll need admin rights so something like:
$ sudo gedit /etc/X11/xorg.conf
I haven't done anything with the mouse myself though.

Always make a backup copy first and/or use # comments to just comment out what you replace when editing system files.

[wowie]

Hi Ridgeland,
Sorry I haven't been around lately, work has been nuts!
Well, here's what's going on now, sheesh, what a pain! I cannot get Ubuntu to install on the older box, the HP PII, I bought another hd, a 30 gig, and found out the hard way that I had to go into the Bios, enable the LDM?? something like that, it tells the computer to recognize a hd larger than 8.4 gig, only way to do that. Well, then I loaded the disk, loads fine from the disk, but when I go to install, I get to the Partitioning part, and that's it, total stall. It's not recognizing the new hd. Well, I bought the hd from ebay, and the seller just sent it in a bubble wrapped mailer, I think it's dead, but I can't be sure, I don't have another box to test it on. So, he sent me a replacement, another 30 gig, but I haven't installed it yet. I'm asscarred, lol I'm afraid this one won't work either, since I can't test it on any other box than this one. So, here I sit, hd in hand, waiting to get up the nerve to try again! Or, just decide to buy another box, cheap, a PIII, and see if I can get this thing working properly. It seems to me I need to upgrade my testing box anyway. Well, wish me luck! I'll keep you informed
wowie

[wowie]

Hi everyone, and Ridgeland,
Well, here I am again. I installed the new hd, everything went fine, so I loaded Ubuntu, and guess what? It also installed. Wahoooo, I was very happy. Everything went fine with the install, until I rebooted, I get black screen that says "Operating System not found" I can't get into the bios either. So now what? Any suggestions anyone?
Well, I'll be online looking for info, any help would be appreciated.
Thanks, wowie

[ridgeland]

Hi Wowie,
What is this PC you're installing on?
How much RAM? Processor? How old? Windows 98?
With less than 256MB of RAM you should use Xubuntu not Ubuntu.
Or even DSL (Damn Small Linux)
I've had install fail on an old PC due to low RAM.

[jamesstansell]

"Operating system not found" sounds like a message from the BIOS (or maybe a boot ROM?) Are you able to boot from a CD?

[wowie]

Hi ridgeland, and james (I hope you don't mind me calling you by james, it was just for the sake of typing)
K, the box is an old PII,450 /500mgz, HP Pavilion 6470z. I have 256 of ram in there, I think that's plenty for any PII, I did put in a new battery when I got this, since it's a 1999 computer, and I loaded Win Me on here with no trouble at all, even on the old 4 gig hd. It had a bad sound card with modem in when I got it, so I put a different sound card in, good thing I had one lying around here Everything worked fine under Windows-(boy, I hate to say that!) But, I did do some homework on this, and this box was built to run Win 98SE.
I can boot from the cd just fine, it will run the live cd no problem, even installed it just fine, just won't ?acknowledge? the installation after the reboot.
I cannot get back into the Bios, at least I haven't been able to since the installation of Ubuntu, it very well could be me just not hitting the key fast enough, but I've tried every which way you can, and it still won't let me into the bios, and the "no operating system found" screen looks like it might be DOS, but I can't get a command prompt, the cursur-line is the flat one that you can't type to.
But, I'm not giving up yet, I really think it may have to do with a bios setting, at least that's what I'm looking into now-well, when I get time, not much of that during the week when I'm working. I'll check back for any other suggestions you may have, and thanks for hanging in here with me! wowie

[ridgeland]

Hi Wowie,
You have to be able to get to the BIOS, keep trying to hit keys faster or something. Maybe search on HP's web site for a manual that explains the key stoke, Usually F1, F2 or F10 or F12, as soon as you turn it on start pecking at the right key until it agrees. Quite possibly the BIOS is set to only allow boot from CD or network, not the hard-drive. Or a master boot record problem, but the install should correct that.

When you boot from the LiveCD (install CD) you should be able to find sda1, sda2 etc and see if they are OK.

I have an old Pentium 5? at 200 MHz with 196 MB of RAM. It runs Xubuntu but not Ubuntu, takes it about 10 minutes to boot. Once running it's fine for Firefox and Abiword (like OpenOffice->Writer).

I had an issue with an older PC and two hard drives. It refused to boot from the second hard drive only the first. Do you have two hard drives? Two drives may require jumpers to define master and slave.

[wowie]

Hi Ridgeland,
Well, you may very well be correct about it being the older computer, or the mobo is going bad on me. I think it may be the latter, I have been working on this, and now I'm having problems with the mouse and keyboard connecting, or being recognized on boot-up. They did just fine before, I've been using a wired optical ps2 mouse, and a wired ps2 keyboard, just because of the age of the computer. Now they take turns, seems like, on which one will work on boot. I think I just have to give up the ghost, and put this old p2 to rest. I think it's time is up.
I have a question for you though. I have an older ibook, it's a 500mgz, dual usb with firewire, cd rom only, 10 gig hard drive, and 576 ram in it. (the first thing I did with this little ibook, was max out the ram) I think it's called a Pismo. Anyway, would I be able to put Ubuntu on the ibook? I think it should work just fine, since they both run on a GUI. I don't have any disks for the ibook, that's one of the draw backs of it, and I bouight it to start learning Mac's, but I don't seem to be doing to well with that, and mostly it sits here, doing nothing, not being used. (I know, I know, seems I'm more windows whipped than I thought!) Anyway, I don't want to waste the little ibook, but I'm not sure if it's a good idea to put ubuntu on it either. Let me know what you think, Ridgeland. Oh, I could have a Ubuntu disk for the ibook, I have an old external cdrw, that's Mac compatible, so I would be able to burn the ISO disk for it. That's a plus for me. Anyway, I hope to hear from you soon, and Thanks very, very much for all of you're help! wowie

[Ek0nomik]

Hi Ridgeland,
Well, you may very well be correct about it being the older computer, or the mobo is going bad on me. I think it may be the latter, I have been working on this, and now I'm having problems with the mouse and keyboard connecting, or being recognized on boot-up. They did just fine before, I've been using a wired optical ps2 mouse, and a wired ps2 keyboard, just because of the age of the computer. Now they take turns, seems like, on which one will work on boot. I think I just have to give up the ghost, and put this old p2 to rest. I think it's time is up.
I have a question for you though. I have an older ibook, it's a 500mgz, dual usb with firewire, cd rom only, 10 gig hard drive, and 576 ram in it. (the first thing I did with this little ibook, was max out the ram) I think it's called a Pismo. Anyway, would I be able to put Ubuntu on the ibook? I think it should work just fine, since they both run on a GUI. I don't have any disks for the ibook, that's one of the draw backs of it, and I bouight it to start learning Mac's, but I don't seem to be doing to well with that, and mostly it sits here, doing nothing, not being used. (I know, I know, seems I'm more windows whipped than I thought!) Anyway, I don't want to waste the little ibook, but I'm not sure if it's a good idea to put ubuntu on it either. Let me know what you think, Ridgeland. Oh, I could have a Ubuntu disk for the ibook, I have an old external cdrw, that's Mac compatible, so I would be able to burn the ISO disk for it. That's a plus for me. Anyway, I hope to hear from you soon, and Thanks very, very much for all of you're help! wowie

You should be able to install Ubuntu on your other box just fine. You will notice in my signature my fourth box which runs Ubuntu 7.10 Gutsy Gibbon only has 512MB of RAM and it installed smooth as a whistle. Gnome only requires 256MB of RAM I believe. The only downside is the 10GB hard disk which is a bit low. A fresh install of Ubuntu is around 2.5GB I believe. Although, as long as you don't use the box to download or store a lot of music and movies, you will actually probably be fine on space if you are only installing software to make use of the operating system.

[ridgeland]

My last PC ran fine with 512 MB of RAM. I had Ubuntu, Fedora, SuSE and tried many others. I use OS partitions of about 8GB. But I keep Data, Images, Music on a partition of 120GB. 10GB will be fine for learning an OS and downloading lots of packages to try.
I haven't tried the Mac world though. The processor matters but from
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/
searching for "ibook" I see others have done it with earlier versions.
Try it
When you install don't forget to create a swap partition. I would try 1GB (or just 576MB).
Once installed from the terminal use
$ df
to see how much of the remaining 9 GB in / is used and how much is free. You'll see you have lots of room to grow.