I just installed dsl linux to harddrive on an old gateway laptop.
Laptop:
Pentium II
64mb ram
5GB hdd

I made three partitions and installed, everything went smooth.

I tried the frame buffering option, but it makes it imposible to see anything.

So it's off to the first option, I tried in 800x600 and 1024x768
Fluxbox loads, but the screen turns green/white and I can't see anything. I can see general icons, basic shapes, but I can't read anything.

Anyone have any idea on how to fix this?

Note, I installed Mandrake before dsl on this laptop, and it worked just fine, all colors were perfect but kde was extremely slow.

They give you two types of video drivers to choose from. I cant recall the name exactly, vesa frame buffer and ...umm the last one gets me I forget.

One of those two you need to be using in addition.

Try going with 16 bit color at 800x600. If that fails then try 16 bit at 1024x768 if your laptop does that. I've got an old laptop that I can only get to work in 24 bit which stinks, as it's way too pretty for what I need and the performance is a little blah. A few other tweaks and I was fine.

You get the choice there after you do install of the video drivers when you install to hard drive, or at least I did on the first boot back up and in.

You can also install DSL from just when you boot with some commands.

I did that on a pc that would not take for some reason when I installed to hard drive from in DSL. But when I loaded it from console when u first boot in off the cd it worked for some reason. I dont know why.

I installed it from command line in level 2.

Like I said in the first post, when I run in frame buffer it turns into wierd shapes, it's impossible to see anything.

When I run in the first option, no matter what reselution I choose, and no matter what color setting I choose, it turns green.
Fluxbox loads and everything works, but it's just not usable, I have to focus for a minute just to read what the menu says...

//
I installed it again, and this time, when I startx it says .xinitrc is missing, I found it and placed it in /root and fluxbox now loads correctly, the color is right but there are no applications. The menu has three options:
exit, terminal, and shutdown


...
Note:
this laptop is not and cannot be connected to the internet at this time.

are you logged into the desktop as "root" as you copied the xinitrc there. that /root folder is basically the home folder of the root account. try logging on as DSL or a different user.

Yes I was logged in as root, and as dsl, and as a new account I made, no difference!

This is becoming a pain, is there a small distro (not a live cd) that can run on this hardware and comes with fluxbox as the main window manager?

oh you have a 5gig drive, go get slackware and just run the newbie install.

it takes aobut ...2.5 gig it will have KDE in there, but you just type in console

and choose XFCE and hit enter, it's preloaded, as in blackbox, fvwm, twm also.

the benefit of having KDE in there is you get access to the Koffice suite which will run really nice on your hardware, and is not as intense on your resources.

If you want to see how Slackware will detect your hardware, then just download and run the live cd of "SLAX". It's a stripped down live cd of slackware. But it has KDE and XFCE on there. When slax boots up you come to a window that asks you to log in. Since Slax is Slackware, you just type 'xwmconfig' and choose xFCE and you can run the live cd with that or you can use the default window manager KDE in Slax. this will give you a good idea how slackware will run for you.

A minimum install of slackware can be 800 meg in theory tho the smalles I got it was about 850 meg of hard drive spacw with XFCE.

If you go "zipslack" included on the slackware 4 cd..then you can have a 250 meg linux install with blackbox and surf the net with opera.

Slackware distro's worth mentioning: mutagenix, tho it is KDE it is really nice too. I don't know if they have XFCE on there.

KDE runs really slow on this laptop, it's almost impossible to do anything!
I don't want Koffice, open office or anything like that, i just want simple apps like Nedit and so, I'm mainly going to use it for webdesign.

Thanks for the xwmconfig, that will help alot, I've been trying to figure that out for a while

now can you do something like "startx fluxbox" or something, what would be the syntax?

I have SLAX, two versions actually, but I didn't know that it came with anything but KDE, thanks. I'll be getting Slackware then, I'll let you know how it goes

yes Slax comes with XFCE the "cholesterol free" desktop.

you can get into it when you boot slax, you get the "root/toor" login screen.

type in console "xwmconfig" that is a blue screen wizard in slack to allow you to arrow up/down and then click OK for XFCE. then you just type in startx and you'll be in XFCE then. it's much less intense on an older pc. it comes standard in slackware and slax

also, in slackware, as soon after you install it if you chose KDE, when it starts up it starts a program "Kpersonalizer" which is a wizard to reduce all the eye candy and sound effects out of the KDE environment.

bye for now.

I have similar specs on a laptop but no h/d. I was also getting the green screen untill I booted with the xselect option. I pick the xfbdev selection and everything is fine.