Problem installing from alternate CD

Thu Feb 7 19:13:22 UTC 2013

Hello Barry T,

First of all, thank you for valuable feedback and thank you for choosing
and showing Lubutnu to other people - we do appreciate that a lot and I
just started a project [1] to do exactly the same thing :)

Second of all, I'd like to introduce myself. I'm one of the members of
Lubuntu Team [2]. Please, be sure we take each and every feedback very
seriously and we do whatever we could to improve our users experience.

I'm really sorry for such experience but as you may know, nothing is
prefect but that is for sure not an excuse at all.

Firstly the Alternate CD comes with Chromium as the default browser,
> however my experience showed that Chromium would not work reliably on a
> machine with only 256Mb of RAM. Should the Alternate CD build have a
> lighter weight browser as its default?
>

> Secondly Lubuntu has the touchpad 'tap to select' feature turned on as the
> default. I could turn this off after installing the software but it made
> using the live CD very difficult indeed: it was so sensitive that, unless I
> was very gentle, when I tried to scroll the curser I would unintentionally
> selected something.

I do agree with your two points. However, we need to keep in mind that with
256MB of RAM, we can't expect much.
I had a very tough experience before when I was trying to prove to myself
and to everyone else that Linux can be installed on a very old and very
limited resources machines [3]. But again, that does not mean we should not
highlight that.
If truth to be told and from my experience with Linux Distributions on old
systems, Chromium and/or Firefox will not do wonders on 256MB of RAM. As
for the touchpad, I hear you.

If you are interested to get your hand dirty, get deeper inside Lubuntu and
getting involved, I would suggest to have a look at this page:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Lubuntu/GettingInvolved

Thank you once more and hope your next convert attempt will go better than
this one ;)

[1] - https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Lubuntu/CommunicationsTeam/Lubuntu101

[2] - https://wiki.ubuntu.com/amjjawad/

[3] - http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=11832431&postcount=152 (full
story: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1590614)

On Thu, Feb 7, 2013 at 7:44 PM, Barry Titterton
<titterton.barry at gmail.com>wrote:

> Hi All,
>
> This is my first post on the Lubuntu mailing list. I have been using
> Ubuntu for three years but this is my first experience of Lubuntu, and it
> didn't go very well.
>
> I used to attend a computer club in Derbyshire and had been evangelising
> Linux in general and Ubuntu in particular for over a year. A couple of
> weeks ago a club member asked me to help him install Linux on an elderly
> laptop. The machine in question is a Toshiba S2410-504 with only 256Mb of
> RAM. I decided that this was a good candidate for Lubuntu, and the low RAM
> suggested that I needed the Alternate Install CD. The install went well
> until the very last item when it failed to install GRUB, after this the
> laptop would not boot. I spent several hours trying, and failing, to fix
> this manually. Most of the proposed solutions for a failed GRUB install
> referred to a dual boot situation or required running a live CD but this
> machine really struggled to run the live CD. I did manage to run GParted
> which suggested that the partitioning of the disk was faulty. I had chosen
> the default partitioning option of "Guided. Use whole of the disk.",
> however GParted showed that the partition 'sda' didn't have a mount point
> (should have been '/') and was not flagged as being bootable. I therefore
> repeated the installation but chose a different partition option "Guided.
> Use whole of the disk with LVM". This time the installer gave me feedback
> screens which confirmed what partitions would be created and their size and
> mount points. This feed back was missing from the first install attempt.
> The rest of the install went smoothly, GRUB included, and the laptop booted
> into Lubuntu.
>
> Does anyone have experience with the Alternate CD?
> Is this unusual behaviour for the Alternate CD?
> Does it need reporting as a bug with the installer?
>
> This whole episode was rather embarrassing as it happened in front of a
> potential convert to Linux. It could get even more embarrassing as he
> intends to report back to the club members with an account of the
> installation attempt. As a small apology to him I have also invested a few
> pounds in more RAM boosting it from 256 to 768Mb, which has made a big
> improvement in the performance.
>
> I have two more points to make about my first encounter with Lubuntu:
>
> Firstly the Alternate CD comes with Chromium as the default browser,
> however my experience showed that Chromium would not work reliably on a
> machine with only 256Mb of RAM. Should the Alternate CD build have a
> lighter weight browser as its default?
>
> Secondly Lubuntu has the touchpad 'tap to select' feature turned on as the
> default. I could turn this off after installing the software but it made
> using the live CD very difficult indeed: it was so sensitive that, unless I
> was very gentle, when I tried to scroll the curser I would unintentionally
> selected something.
>
> Both of the above points are merely annoying to an experienced Ubuntu user
> but they could make a bad impression with a brand new user.
>
> Cheers,
> Barry T.
>
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-- 
*Best Regards,
amjjawad*
*https://wiki.ubuntu.com/amjjawad/*
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