Ubuntu 7.04 on Dell Latitude C600

Hi folks,

To make a long story short I'm trying to install Ubuntu on a Latitude C600 (PIII 750/600MHz, 128MB, 30GB, 24X CD) with no prior Linux experience. I boot from the CD, tell to Start/Install Ubuntu and let it run.

The problem is, the Ubuntu loading screen goes for a bit before I get a series of errors:

[200.916000] Buffer I/O error on device fd0. logical block 0
[239.020000] Buffer I/O error on device fd0. logical block 0
[302.632000] hdc: drive not read for command
[367.636000] hdc: drive not read for command

And here my CD drive just spins up and down and up down and I don't really want to let it run and find out how long it's gonna do that.

Googled for some answers and didn't find anything that worked. The general response was the disable the floppy drive and check the hdd for errors. I've already disabled the fdd in the BIOS (there is no physical fdd, just the cd drive) and this machine runs XP with no problems, so I doubt there is an hdd problem.

Any help here would be much appreciated.

 

Have you tried other distribution, other version or other CD?
Maybe there's a problem with the CD itself

 

I will try burning another CD. Can you recommend another distribution to try?

Also, did it matter that I was initally using Ubuntu "Desktop Edition"? There isn't a "Laptop Edition" as far as I can see...

 

No laptop edition exists...

Ubuntu, Mandriva, OpenSUSE, Fedora,etc. are among the best
Since this laptop has 128 RAM and 600MHz, I wouldn't recommend a distro like OpenSUSE which will be really slow. Ubuntu 7.10 is actually in release candidate state so you could also try it. Always better to be up-to-date in versions since linux on laptop is constantly improving

Somes distros are more lightweight than those mentioned but also harder to use/install for a beginner....depends of you...

 

I have never seen this error message before...that's why I'd try first other version (ie Ubuntu 7.10) + burned on an other CD...it would give an hint about the fact that it's hardware-related or not (when loading a livecd of this kind, nothing is installed on the harddisk during boot process that's why it doesn't mean automatically that there is a harddisk problem)

 

Alright, I will try 7.10 and failing that, a new copy of 7.04. We'll see how it goes.

 

Just curious, which burning software do you use?

 

Nero 7 Essentials. Was bundled with a Lite-On burner my dad bought.

 

Alright, Ubuntu 7.10 installed without a hitch.

But I'm somewhat disappointed; though I definitely give it props for Just Working; I've had no compatibility issues whatsoever. But it is definitely slower than XP. By a significant amount. To the point that if I'm browsing with FireFox and playing music in the background, the music will break when I'm loading a heavy page. This was definitely not the case with XP.

I was under the impression that a Linux distribution should have been blazing compared to something like XP. Is this simply not the case or is there something I can do to optimize the system?

 

Try Kanotix, it has an excellent hardware recognition and it will give you a nearly clean Debian install.
It worked like a charm on my Vostro1500 (apart from the fact it did not see my sound card, but that is due to a bug in Alsa, I gather).

Add a screen=XxY to your boot options line to have your screen working at native resolution out of the box (X and Y depends on your screen, in mine I had 1280x800)

 

Hmmm, is DMA on on all your disks?

man hdparm might help you.

 

For your hardware, some distros will run faster but like I said, they won't have eye-candy user interface, easy setup, etc.

Don't forget that XP has stayed the same since 2001 in term of requirements while linux has constantly improved, particularly on the graphical side

Linux is usually better at multitasking...I have seen some cases where people had no problem playing music while doing other things on linux but had problems on XP

 

What do you mean by "is DMA on all your disks"? And what's "hdparm"?

Anyways, I will look into some lighter distros when I go back home again, but my question still stands: is there any way to optimize the system as it is right now?

 

Ubuntu is really great, but it is rather bloated, has higher resource requirements, and is slower than many other Linux Distros.

Check these Linux Distros out instead. They are all said to run well and fast on lesser systems.

Absolute Linux

VectorLinux

Zenwalk Linux

 

Vector, Slackware, Zenwalk,etc. are lighter

I recommend you to visit this site to discover the most known distros: http://distrowatch.com/

This site is the reference....reviews, news, packages versions,etc.

There are some ways to optimize a system but it wouldn't give you necessarily a big difference

 

DMA is Direct Memory Access: it can boost the data trasfer to and from your hard disks and Cd/Dvd reader. From 1-2 MB/s to several tens of MB per second.

hdparm is an utility that can be launched from the shell (command line) and allows you to set many HD PARaMeters, DMA, for example.
Certain distros have graphical utilities that interface with hdparm (knoppix, for example).

man is not the masculine for woman, by the way, but a nifty utility that will print the MANual pages for commands. Type "man hdparm" in the linux shell to see what hdparm might do for you.

 

I already went there and did the research for them!

I like your avatar!