problems installing ubuntu via cd

Question

I am fairly new to the whole Linux system. I used it very little in college and decided to get back into it 4 years later.

I have been trying to get Ubuntu LTS installed on my old laptop (about 8 yrs old) and once the install gui gets to restart and I let the computer do the whole restart it just sits on a black screen if I remove the CD.

I have no clue what my hardware specs are anymore, I've been trying to figure that out for a couple weeks now. All I am working from right now is the fact that it is a Sony Vaio PCG-GRT270.

UPDATE:Sorry I forgot to mention what I do know about the HW, it has 512 MB of RAM, 60 GB HDD and Pentium 4 processor, but not sure of the speed.

Answer 1

Your laptop only has 265 MB of RAM. Along with other components in your laptop lacking the power to run an operating system built for modern computers, I am afraid to say Ubuntu 12.04 will not run on your laptop.

Give Xubuntu and/or Lubuntu a try, these are spin-offs with different desktop environments that do not require as much horsepower.

Answer 2

• Reboot your system and Keep Shift pressed untill you get the grub menu.
• Highlight the first menu. Press e
• Use arrow keys to go to end. Where it is written like quite splash.
• replace quite splash with nomodeset.
• Press ctrl+X. Now you should be able to boot though screen may be distorted. You need to install drivers.

Your graphics card driver is legacy 173 driver from nvidia. Which has some problem with 12.04 as for newer X Server version. This bug indicates it. Though it is said that the bug is fixed. I was not able to install it. To get correct drivers do the following

sudo apt-add-repository ppa:ubuntu-x-swat/x-updates && sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade && sudo apt-get install nvidia-current

Next time you should be rock with ubuntu. :)

However based on your spec, it will be wise to opt for xubuntu or lubuntu.

OR install gnome-shell and use gnome classic.

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