11.04 on a ten year old Dell laptop?

[Preston Hagar]

On Thu, Oct 20, 2011 at 2:08 PM, Jimt <jptran at vtidea.net> wrote:
>
> I had gotten ubuntu 11.04 up and running.   It is running the older GNOME windowing system.  About 2 weeks ago, following an update/reboot ... The reboot hung on "checking battery status".  I am competent with programming and software design, but very new to Linux/Ubuntu.  This 'hanging' on one issue or another plagued my installing process.
>
> If you have seen/have a workaround .....please pass it along. Thanks.
> Jimt
> ps- I also have a bootable CD of the 10.10 --- it apparently runs OK.
> thanks in advance
>

Depends on the model, but it may be easier to use an older version
(unless you really need the latest and greatest).  I had a Dell
Inspirion 1100 from about 2004 and tried to put 11.04 on it.  The
video doesn't work right, the sound doesn't work right and there were
other general issues.  I started going through endless how-tos, fixes,
etc and although I am sure it would have eventually worked, it was
getting tedious.  I took a Hardy 8.04 CD I had still, installed it,
audio worked, video worked, everything worked right out of the box, no
extra configuration needed.  I am sure there are lots of reasons to
not use an old release (8.04 was at least an LTS, so it shouldn't be
too out of date security wise), but sometimes with old hardware, it
may be the easiest way to go.

Preston