Infancy-like new user ... help?

[slennishughes]

Hate to be the dummy but here i am ... want to breathe new life into old gateway laptop if i can ... a tad fewer RAMs than recommended but want to try anyway ... advice sought ... have downloaded Linux Lite ... would love to donate ... but need to see if this will even work ... please advise what to do now that i have the download on the desktop of currently running xp system ... anxiously awaiting any advice ... thank you for providing an alternative

[Valtam]

Welcome slennishughes, please provide as much information about your hardware as you can eg. make, model, cpu, graphics card, ram etc etc.

[slennishughes]

thank you

i have a Gateway MA2A laptop, celeron cpu 1.5 GHz, 504 MB Ram, DVD/CD HL-DT-ST DVD-RW GWA-4082N, uncertain video controller (VGA compatible), Audio Codecs, Conexant AC-Link Audio, ... does this help?

... thanks again and again and again ... if i can get this working many volunteers would like to thank you too ... definitely worth a generous donation

[gold_finger]

... please advise what to do now that i have the download on the desktop of currently running xp system ... anxiously awaiting any advice

Now that you have the ISO file downloaded on your desktop you need to burn it as an "image" to either a CD, DVD or USB.  Doing that is not the same as creating a regular data burn or copy.  Follow the instructions in the Help Manual here:  https://www.linuxliteos.com/manual/install.html.  (If the old Gateway can not boot from a USB, make a bootable CD/DVD instead.)

Those instructions show what utilities to use for making bootable CD/DVD's from the ISO file and/or a bootable USB.  Once you have that, restart the computer with the bootable disk in the tray.  (Put the CD/DVD in the computer; then shutdown; then power on again while disk is in it.)

If the computer boot straight into Windows and not into the Linux Lite CD/DVD, then you will need to enter your computer's BIOS settings menu.  You'll need to press a certain key immediately after powering on the computer to get into the BIOS.  Usually when you first power on the computer a quick message flashes on the screen that will tell you what key to hit for that.  (Sometimes there are two keys -- one for BIOS settings and another for a Boot Menu.  If you see one for Boot Menu, just hit that one and choose to boot from the CD/DVD.)  When you get into BIOS settings, look through the categories until you find one that lists the Boot Order.  Go to Boot Order and change the order of devices so that the computer looks to the CDDVD first instead of the hard drive.  Save the change, then exit and it should boot the CD/DVD.

Once you boot from the live CD/DVD, it will work just like an installed system so you can take it for a test ride.  Open some programs in the menu, surf the web with Firefox, etc.  If decide to install and plan to dual boot with Windows, read this section from the Help Manual first:  https://www.linuxliteos.com/manual/install.html#prepare.  If you have any questions, ask first before trying to install.

P.s.  A live CD/DVD will operate much slower than an installed system (especially on a computer with only 500MB of RAM) -- so the main purpose is to see if it works on your computer.  If it does, then you'll have much better performance once it's installed, so don't be discouraged by the speed when running from the CD/DVD.

[slennishughes]

thanks

[slennishughes]

was able to boot from the dvd but having keyboard probs (i=5) and doesn't find my home wireless network ... so i can try to web browser etc. ... do you mind helping a little more?

[gold_finger]

Your forum info indicates you are testing out LL version 1.0.8 -- is that correct?  If so, download and test out the new version 2.0 (found here -- https://www.linuxliteos.com/download.html).  The newer kernel may handle things better than the one used on 1.0.8.

Regardless of the version you are using, follow the instructions near the bottom of this post to install a utility called inxi to the live DVD.  After installing and running it, copy/paste its output back here in the forum for us to see.  It will give detailed information on your computer hardware that might help us answer some of your questions.  (See here for how to post the output between "code blocks".)

[gold_finger]

slennishughes,

I suspect my last post made no sense because stupid me forgot to include the link you need with instructions for installing INXI.  I fixed the last post to include the link now.

Sorry about that!