Linux and Xwindows

[José]

I'm unable to install RedHat linux on my Toshiba 200 cds if I want to install Xwindows and Gnome, or any other type of graphical program.
Does anyone have any experience with this and can you let me know what to do?
Thanks

Joe

[error27]

so you have redhat installed but you can't use graphical programs?

is that what you are saying?

[bdg1983]

Most of us here have experience with X and either Gnome, KDE or others.

What exactly is the problem you are having?

It's kinda hard to help you if you don't tell us what the problem is. What have you tried? Any error messages?

You get the idea...

[José]

Hi.

The problem is that I can't install it or else I get a large amount of error messages telling me that the installation was unable to create a bunch of directories. I've tried installing RedHat with all the installation options available on that distribution ( server, workstation, custom ) and each of them fails near the end. Finally after reading the messages carefully I noticed that there was a theme of directories not being created that had to do with either Gnome or Xwindows. To see if I was correct I installed Linux while excluding anything to do with Gnome and Xwindows and it runs great. The Laptop is a Toshiba 200 CDS with a
P90,
16meg RAM,
2meg video card (Chips and Technologies CT65550),
accupoint mouse,
regular US keyboard,
passive matrix screen,
no PC cards,
internal CDRom and external floppy but they're both swappable,
an ir port, a
serial port, a
parallel port, a
replicator port, a
video port for an extra screen,
mouse and keyboard ports, and a recently purchased
1.4 gig IBM HD (this was purchased in an attempt to repair the installation problem, but no go). I know that there isn't anything physically malfunctioning with the laptop because I ran Windows on it and it runs fine, also, I currently have Linux installed on it and I'm able to mount and find everything, also, I've gone through my bios settings and tried to reinstall the complete RedHat 7.2 version and it still didn't work. The settings that I played with were the ones for the HD (ide or eide), and the individual ports. I couldn't find any bios settings for the video.
Let me know if you need any more info.

Joe

[bdg1983]

That's odd.

I've run Linux on my old Toshiba 500CDT that has the same C&T CT65550 and the install went fine.

You could search for your laptop model at www.linux-laptop.net (http://www.linux-laptop.net) to see if anyone else has had similiar problems and perhaps a solution or try downloading and installing XFree separately from www.xfree86.org (http://www.xfree86.org)

I would suggest you try the 3.3.6 version instead of 4.03 or 4.1 as you have limited disk space and only 16mb. Get the X source and compile it yourself. There should be instruction provided at the site on how to get it installed. It's not that hard at all.

Post back if you get stuck. Check the linux laptop site first though.

[Jfielding]

I am new to Linux but all the new distro's I've looked at require 32 megs ram minimum and reccomend 64 megs. Your laptop has only 16 megs. I realize to some extent this can be overcome by using the swap to drive capability but in a graphics environment this sounds like this is going to be one pokey OS.

I have Caldera open linux 2.3 on a desktop and even with more than 3-4 windows open things tend to slow down badly. I am sure that I am not telling you anything new here but adding more ram sounds like the first step to take here.

[José]

Thanks.

I'll let you guys know what happens. I actually think I'm going to try Mandrake to see what happens. I'll also try installing xwindows seperately and I've looked at that laptop site that was mentioned earlier. I used the instructions that I found.

Joe

[ 07 September 2001: Message edited by: José ]