old laptop, PAE or non-PAE....which distro is likely to work?

D

Dag

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Hi,
I am browsing through all lightweight distros I can find to see which one I can get to play on an old Acer travelmate 2301LC (Celeron M320, 1Gb RAM). What I have read about the Celeron M32o is that it should support PAE, but almost all distros halt during installation or at startup after install. Most distros reports that the CPU does not support PAE, hence I have applied "forcepae" to start the installation.
All distros I have tried have been the most recent version (downloaded not earlier than 3 weeks ago)

So far I have only succeeded with Crunchbang and Handy linux. Both installed nicely without "forcepae". Any theory on why these two are the only ones that work on the old laptop?
At first I thought it was that these two did not require the PAE flag, but during the boot sequence, it seems like that PAE is indeed invoked.
I understand that these two are Debian-based, which probably could explain the difference in behaviour versus Ubuntu-based distros that will not cooperate at all. However, AntiX linux (even the non-PAE version) and GALPon MiniNo linux are based on Debian too, and they both chrashes.

Trying out a non-linux OS, ReactOS did not yield any success either. The install halts near the end of the process.

Anyone with a suggestion to other distros that might be suitable for the cranky old Acer?

Dag
 


I don't know.... That seems strange.
Crunchbang do have a non-PAE version for older machines. Are you sure you didn't download and install the non-PAE version of it? Also Handy Linux is aimed at older machines that do not support PAE from what I recall. I'm surprised that Antix crashes though!

I've had good experiences with crunchbang's non-PAE version on older machines. But I tend to install and use dwm as my main WM, rather than using Openbox... Nothing against Openbox, I just prefer tiling WMs! But that's just me!

Puppy linux might be worth taking a look at too.
Also there is AnitaOS - a puppy derivative aimed at older hardware, created and maintained by linux.org's own @Darren Hale :
[url]http://www.linux.org/threads/anitaos-a-diy-distro-you-build-it-yourself.4401/[/URL]
http://sourceforge.net/projects/anitaos/
 
Most of the major Linux distros have dropped PAE support around 2012...
 
I'm not sure you really need PAE since you have only 1 GB of RAM. As far as other distros, I think I'd also take a look at LXLE and Lubuntu to see if they would load.

Wikipedia says, "Physical Address Extension (PAE) is a feature to allow 32-bit IA-32 central processing units (CPUs) to access a physical address space (including random access memory and memory mapped devices) larger than 4 gigabytes.

Good luck!
 
The others seem to agree..... :3 Of course, it could be a rare case..... Nevertheless, try BOTH ISOS..... PAE and NON-PAE!..... :)
 
It will probably require NON-PAE. AnitaOS is for non-pae machines or try Puppy Linux Slacko has a non-pae version I can't recommend the Precise version though. Also Lucid version is also being updated. Version 5.287
 
Darren Hale said:
It will probably require NON-PAE. AnitaOS is for non-pae machines or try Puppy Linux Slacko has a non-pae version I can't recommend the Precise version though. Also Lucid version is also being updated. Version 5.287
Click to expand...

That's what I thought, too..... :) After all, I got Puppy NON-PAE, I think, to boot in Virtualbox, as WELL as PAE..... :3 Ahhh..... Nothing like relaxing Jazz to go to sleep to, with Ambient sounds in the background, while practicing Python in Gedit....... :3
 
G'night, Linux.org..... :3 Behave while the MODS are asleep!..... XD
 
bodhi linux 2.4.0 32 bits - 64 bits and Non Pae flavor

i installed in my laptop Non Pae... wow very quick

Other distro in my laptot non pae : Slitaz 4.0 same bodhi but not for me.
 
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