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I currently have an old IBM ThinkPad, this laptop has 512mb ram and a Pentium III processor. I have decided to install Linux onto it, and the specific version of Linux I am going with is lxle, although I am open to other suggestions.

When I attempt to install lxle via the DVD drive, the system can boot into the live cd, however, when I attempt to do anything (including launching the installer) the system stalls on reading the DVD due to an excessively slow drive (some operations work if I wait long enough, I suspect every operation will eventually work, but I'm not patient enough to try that as some things have been trying to take 45+ minutes), therefore making anything and everything impossible via this live dvd.

I have run the same ISO I used to burn the DVD in VirtualBox, and everything works correctly as I completely install and boot Linux. The laptop is too old to do a netboot or a USB boot. I do not have any available external or replacement internal drives, not even slower ones. I do, however, have a SATA DVD burner in a different computer that I may be willing to temporarily use in this laptop (if that is even possible, the laptop was made before SATA). There is currently an old, slow, Windows XP installation on the computer. It is also worth noting that I am not willing to spend any money on this, since this laptop is simply too old (15+ years) to warrant such things.

I would like to know what the best course of action to take next, whether it be some sort of DVD speed up, or a completely different distribution.

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  • You can install ubuntu from windows
    – khajvah
    May 21, 2015 at 7:33
  • I'm aware of Wubi, however as far as I know it doesn't work for ubuntu derivatives (ie. lxle), there is no way that the laptop as is will be able to even begin to run Unity without crashing and/or bursting into flames.
    – john01dav
    May 21, 2015 at 7:44
  • I think you can install lxde version of ubuntu
    – khajvah
    May 21, 2015 at 7:55

1 Answer 1

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I'd try creating a "live CD" instead of a live DVD in the faint hope that somehow, your drive is faster at reading CDs than DVDs.

I seem to recall that one of my older PC drives were like that, having 52x maxinum speed for CDs.

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  • The image file is too large to fit on a CD.
    – john01dav
    May 21, 2015 at 17:54

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